Saturday

“We exalt in our tribulations …” I have those words underlined and hi-lighted. That is a tough concept to run with. Face it; we all have days when we think, “I just can’t get through this.” It’s part of the human condition. Life throws adversity at us, and usually it’s unexpected. James Taylor summed it up pretty well in “Fire and Rain” when he sang,

“Won’t you look down upon me Jesus

You got to help me make a stand

Just got to seem me through another day

My body’s achin

And my time is at hand

I won’t make it any other way”

That’s Saturday, that day when everything you believed in, everything you placed your faith in, comes crashing down and you’re alone and scared. You’re ready to give up. Hope is just another four-letter word.

I was arrested on a Monday; it was a terrible day. And yet, it didn’t compare to that first Saturday, five days later when I was ready to give up. You’ve heard of “come to Jesus” moments – that Saturday was mine. A year later it was on an early Saturday morning when they woke me up at receiving. My mail had been “misrouted” the C.O. said. For weeks I’d held on to some ridiculous (in hindsight) hope. Four a.m. they woke me. “Sign for this,” the officer said. It was an envelope from the court; my divorce was official. I felt an emptiness and heartbreak I didn’t think possible. All the hope I held was dashed and shattered on those three legal pages.

            “In a clearing stands a boxer

            A fighter by his trade

            And he carries the reminder

            Of every blow that laid him down or cut him ‘til he cried out

            In his anger and his shame

            I am leaving, I am leaving

            But the fighter still remains”

Simon and Garfunkel. Those two guys knew where I was that dark fall morning in October 2009. I was “beyond” hope. I have that date recorded next to Paul’s words in his letter to the Romans: “We exalt in our tribulation …” Go to hell Paul, I thought. He didn’t have any idea how lost and discouraged I was that Saturday. And what kind of ironic twist has me reading that particular verse that particular day? Yeah, it was Saturday.

I had always considered myself mentally and emotionally tough. I had become a lawyer not out of any real intellectual curiosity, but instead because of the dream of gladiatorial combat in the courtroom. And I thrived in the battles. So often, like the victorious boxer standing over his vanquished fore, I exalted in breaking my opponent in court. But here I was, humbled, broken, feeling more alone and scared than I could ever imagine.

I’m not sure when it hit me, but sometime during Lent an idea blossomed in my mind. As it would be expected I came across Paul’s exhortation to thrive in difficulties, and I saw the different dates registered around that verse, each date an emotional scar, a reminder of blows that laid me down and caused me to consider throwing in the towel. And, I thought about another time and other people.

They were a small, tight knit group. They had given up everything to follow him and they hadn’t been disappointed. Their three-year trek had been one miracle after another; and his words – they were like nothing they’d ever heard before. Everything they’d been told about God, and life, and justice, was turned on its head. They believed. With everything in their being, they believed he was the long-awaited Messiah. Then came Thursday and the terrible betrayal. One of their group, one of their own, turned against this Man of God. And Thursday led to Friday and Friday was even worse. They killed all their dreams Friday on a desolate hill.

It dawned on me that Saturday was a lousy day to be a disciple. You had said out loud this man was the Son of God. Now, he was dead. The fear must have been overwhelming that Saturday. At that moment, I knew they – and He – knew exactly how low I felt all those days. It was life and life kicks you in the teeth and knocks you to your knees and its Saturday and you have nothing left and hope is gone. And then it’s like the Tom Petty tune:

            “The waiting is the hardest part

            Every day is one more yard

            You take it on faith you take it to heart

            But the waiting is the hardest part”

           

It is so very tough to have hope and go on on Saturday.  But, that was what Paul was getting at. It’s an idea as old as humankind; it’s an idea King David expressed over and over in the Psalms:

            Wait for the Lord

            Be strong and let your heart take courage

            Yes, wait for the Lord

I realized, looking at my Bible, there hadn’t been another “Saturday” in almost two years. There’d been dark, terrible days during that time, but never the fear and hopelessness I’d known and documented so many days before. It’s because I knew there was a “Sunday.” Pauls’ verse about exaltation doesn’t end with tribulation. It goes on; tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint….

And I thought back to “The Boxer” – “But the fighter still remains.” You don’t quit; you don’t give up; you go on because you know no matter how bad Saturday is, there is Sunday.

            Prison had made me an Easter believer. I know that sounds funny, but Paul was onto something. It’s in those Saturdays, those terrible days when we are at our lowest that faith flickers and we hang on because we know what happens Sunday morning.

I’ve seen way too many Saturdays, but those Sundays, well I know anything is possible. Prison is Saturday … but the future is Sunday.

On the Road

Perhaps it’s not so odd to dream about being on the road while you’re passing days behind barbed wire fences. Prior to my arrest and conviction, I spent a good deal of time on the road. Each day, Monday through Friday, I’d commute sixty-eight miles one way to get to my office. Two or three times each month I’d be on the road to cover trials in various parts of the state. Each month, I’d find myself in an airport flying off for business and later gambling trips to Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

            Then, there were the vacations, the trips each summer to the beach, Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, and the trips tied into business meetings where our children would see the country: Seattle, Park City, Utah, Sun Valley, Idaho, New Mexico, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We’d travel over Christmas to Caribbean Islands or head back to the beach. Travel, being on the road, was a focal point of our family dynamics.

            On the road. How ironic that what I’m going through now is also a road of sorts. It’s ironic that all the travel I had “before,” all those resorts and beautiful vistas, pale blue waters, they were all on a road to nowhere. They were an escape. I was running, running from my failures and self-loathing and guilt over my behavior. Stealing, embezzlement is too sanitized a word, didn’t come easy to me, at least at first. Moving, constantly bombarding myself with travel and work and meals and dice, kept me from thinking about what I’d done. So I focused on the road and it led me right to this prison.

            Recently I’ve been thinking about roads. I’ve wondered where this road is taking me. My life is not where I expected it would be. And maybe that’s ok. Maybe I’m on the road I’m supposed to be on, the road that was meant for me.

            I think often of Paul. Here was a man well regarded in the elite circles of his culture. He moved freely among the well-heeled and intellectuals. He was, by all appearances, a success: Good family, devout, articulate, on the right side of the law. And, he was arrogant, an arrogance built on being so sure you are always right, always justified in your actions. There’s no mention of Paul, before his conversion, ever had any doubts about what he was doing even as the blood of innocent men and women stained his hands. Their crime, punishable by death, was to believe that an itinerant carpenter was the Messiah who had come to set them free and reconcile them to God Almighty.

            So Paul did what any law-abiding leader of his time (and our time it seems) would do. He sought to keep his nation, his people, within the code of conduct handed down generations before. And he did his work well. Still, I asked myself, did he ever have doubts?

            So many days as I’d drive alone along the backroads of Virginia, traveling from rural courthouse to courthouse, it would hit me “You’ll lose everything,” and that strange, small voice in the back of my mind would whisper.  I would be overwhelmed with guilt, and fear, and dread. I’d begin to speak out loud to no one in particular, or maybe it was to someone specific; I’d cry out “God, I don’t want to lose my family. I don’t want to go to prison.” The voice would pass, the road would lead me home, and I’d try and forget the voice and my response.           

            It didn’t seem like Paul went through that, which made his trip to Damascus all the more powerful. Paul, it seems, never saw it coming. Paul never thought he was going the wrong way. And then, he left for Damascus.

            Have you ever been lost? You’re driving, sure you know where you’re headed, then get to a point where things don’t add up. You sense this isn’t the right way. And it’s a strange uncomfortable feeling not knowing if you’re lost.

            No one wants to be lost. No one wants to feel the insecurity of not recognizing where you are. Your heart flutters and races a little; your breathing is more rapid; your palms sweat. You go over how you got there. Maybe, you think, you should have turned left instead of right a mile back down the road? But even that doesn’t make sense. It hits you: You are lost,

            Paul knew the way to Damascus. He knew the route and was headed in the right way. Or was he? Sometimes you’re headed the right direction for the wrong reasons. And sometimes you’re headed the wrong direction for the right reasons. Either way, you’ve got to get back on track. Paul needed to go to Damascus, just not for the reason he thought. He was struck down, blinded, laid out on the side of the road. He was bewildered and scared and alone. He had to trust, trust that voice he heard; the voice who called out to him and struck him blind was God, and God would lead him where he needed to go.

            It’s ironic isn’t it? Paul, blind and alone, ends up in Damascus and regains his sight. And for the rest of his life he traveled the known world of the Roman Empire. He encountered storms which sank his ship; he was stranded on islands, run out of towns, beaten, stoned and dumped in jails from Asia Minor to Rome. Not once in any of his travels after Damascus was he ever lost again. His entire remaining life is spent on the road and his sense of direction is perfect, never a day lost. Lost, it seems, is a state of mind.

            After my arrest I spent almost a year confined in the regional jail living, at times, three to a cell. One man would have a mattress on the floor of the cell, a cramped eight by ten concrete block room complete with commode and cold water sink. We were locked in that tiny space ten to twelve hours each day. The rest of the day the dayroom was open. Dayroom is a sterilized name for the common area for all the cells in our pod. Twenty-four cells triple bunked. Seventy-two men moving around a space the size of half a basketball court. Monday through Friday I’d leave the pod and walk two narrow corridors to the adult basic education classroom where I worked as a tutor.

            That pod, those narrow hallways were my whole world for a year. I only saw the outside, only felt fresh air on my face, eight times that entire year. Four times, I was shackled and handcuffed and driven the twenty miles to the rural county courthouse where my trial, was a cause celeb. I noticed very little on those rides, my mind awash in a thousand screaming thoughts about the disaster that was my life.

            Four other days our pod – along with two others – had outdoor rec. Outdoor rec was a blacktopped, open-air, basketball court smack in the middle of the jail building. Every side was three stories of brick and barred windows. You could see the sky, feel the sun, and then mill around with one hundred other inmates. You knew you were still locked up. And because of the time of day – usually mid to late afternoon – the sun was beyond the blacktop area. Shadows from the tops of the jail covered the court; shadows formed stupid, reckless decisions that covered my life.

            It’s funny, but that small, closed in world soon became comfortable. I learned multiple paths to the same location. I became known to inmates in every pod. Each time I‘d leave the confines of my pod and venture out to court an article in the local paper would follow. With each article my status at the jail grew. Each day, as I’d walk out of the pod and down the hallway to class I would hear “Heh, Mr. B, can you look at my paperwork?” And, hands would reach out through the bars with an assortment of legal documents.    

            I saw it all, divorce and custody papers, foreclosure and debt notices, and warrants for every crime imaginable. This was my world, hallways measuring less than the distance around a high school track, artificial light, bars and deputies and the smell of disinfectant trying to kill the smells emanating in the stale air. Still, I knew my way. I was comfortable. My road had become compressed, controlled, and contrived. I didn’t think about the mess I’d made. I only thought about getting from point A to point B.

            August 12, 2009. 6:00 a.m. Breakfast in the pod. I had been at the jail 359 days, almost one full year. My life was completely changed in that year. I had gone from a claims attorney for a property and casualty insurer headquartered in Richmond to a convicted felon early into a fifteen year sentence. I’d pled guilty to six counts, paid over $600,000 in restitution on my sentencing date, signed all my other assets over to my wife (that was the deal I made with my employer: I’ll plead guilty; you let me take care of my wife and kids), and she promptly hit me with divorce papers.

            In one year, I’d gone from first-class airfare and evenings at the Ritz-Carlton to shackles and dirty, worn, threadbare sheets. I’d gone from sixty dollar glasses of Johnnie Walker Blue to tepid water; from fourteen ounce ribeyes, lamb shanks, and seafood alfredo to grayish “breakfast gravy,” instant scrambled eggs, and white bread. I’d gone from the life of the party – a man with dozens of people who would hang on to his every word – to a guy with less than five friends. Hell of a road I was on that year. There was a suicide attempt, prescribed anti-depressants to “help me sleep,” and bi-monthly visits to the State’s forensic psychiatrist to prepare my case for sentencing. One year. I didn’t want to think about moving on. I just wanted to survive, survive in my small world I’d built at the jail.

            6:00 a.m. and the call came. “Pack up. You’re transferring to D.O.C.” DOC, the Virginia Department of Corrections, prison, real prison with real time, with real crime, real despair. Yet, I treated the news with ambivalence. I was scared, but I was also tired, tired of everything my life had become.

            Everything I had fit into a plastic trash bag. The deputy at the jail took my things and dumped them right into the bag. My papers, a Bible, a few pair of underwear and tee shirts, socks, all tossed in and tied off in that clear plastic bag. My clothes from the day I was arrested were handed to me. “Put these on,” he said, and I stripped off the two piece v neck jump top and elastic bottoms in the drab olive green color. There I was with my navy blue blazer, oxford shirt, and khakis from the day my life changed. I put them on and they hung loosely off my waist and shoulders.

            “Lost weight.” The deputy was staring at me. I had. When I was arrested I was embarrassingly overweight, heavier than I’d been my entire adult life. It was too much scotch, too much rich food and it had made me puffy and bloated. A year in hell, depression, despair, and a lack of meaningful exercise and the liquid weight fell off. So did the muscle tone. I was twenty-seven pounds lighter, back to my marathon training weight of 170, but I was gaunt and weak. My clothes, wrinkled from a year balled up in a bag sitting in the jail basement hung from me. Even they were tired and ready to quit.

            The handcuffs and shackles were put on. My bag and I shuffled – that’s the only way to describe it, shuffle, how you walk with shackles. One foot slid forward eighteen inches then, as the chain tightened, the other foot drug forward to the sheriff’s car. Seat belted in, we pulled out into the warm, humid August air and I felt the sun hit my face.

            And as we drove out into the country into the neighboring county and DOC’s inmate receiving prison nestled in the middle of farmland, I watched the homes and lots go by. Everywhere there was green grass and trees in lush, dark summer green. I’d been down that highway so many times traveling with work and I’d never noticed how green everything was.

            For the first time in a year, I was on the road and I had no idea what I faced. I didn’t know where I was going or what lay in store for me. But, instead of fear, I was calm. I’d seen so much, been so far off the right road for so long, this drive felt right. I was going the right way. I’d been lost, but had slowly started to find my way. I didn’t know how long it would take, but I’d find my way back, I vowed.

            I remembered Paul again. Blinded, broken, he found his way. The key I realized was he didn’t find the way. The way found him. That’s where the peace came from. Even as he traveled, even as he faced immense suffering and setbacks, he never despaired. He was on the right road. No matter what he faced, he knew he was going the right way.

            I thought about that as we travelled along those rural Virginia roads. That thought stayed with me when we pulled up to a real prison complete with gun towers and razor wire. And, that thought stayed with my when I was dumped in a sticky, one hundred degree cell with an anti-social twenty-four year old gangbanger starting on a seventy-six year sentence for murder. Each day, as I walked the narrow concrete walkway back to my cell or tier two, and I passed men whose lives were forged on violence and hate, I doubted I could go on. The road was over. I would look below, at the concrete floor, and think there was where my road would end. I’d gone so far off course, thrown away so much, there was nothing left to do. I’d hear a little voice tell me after so many years off track I was finally going the right way. “Don’t be afraid. I know where you’re going.” Funny little voice. But sometimes that’s all we need to see the big picture.

            The road led to a tenth of a mile sandy track outside our building where almost every day I’d go and run. In a prison jumper with Velcro sneakers, in August Virginia heat I’d run round and round that little track under the gaze of a shotgun toting officer just feet behind the fence. It felt right. It felt good. It felt free. The voice was right. There was healing and redemption on that unlikeliest of roads.

            Roads lead so many directions. You can get anywhere really. If you aren’t careful you’ll head out the wrong way. You’ll end up lost and confused. Just like using GPS, there’s a way you can get turned around. And, you may find the road to lead you back isn’t what you expected. It may go through some valleys and broken pavement may be the surface. It won’t matter. You’ll know you’re headed the right way.

            I travelled so many places, took so many roads but never knew where I was going until I admitted I was lost. Now my travels are confined to concrete prison walkways and a gravel track, but I’m going the right way. I found out who I was and who I was meant to be. And the road? I see it clearly in my mind and it’s not defined by this prison.

"2"

About a week ago a friend, who always seems to ask me just the right question at the right time, wrote me in reply to a letter I sent him.  In my letter I had described being in the worst moments of my “funk” and concluding “maybe God just doesn’t give a damn”.  In his letter, he expressed interest in that point and wondered where I went from there.  As I tend to do more often than not, I wrote him back with an explanation that seemed to satisfy me momentarily but, in hindsight, was woefully simplistic and weak.  And then, I read an essay about Bill Petit and my heart stopped.

Who is Bill Petit?  You may not know the name, but you know the story.  He’s a doctor in Connecticut.  On a July evening in 2007, two men broke into his home. They savagely beat him with a baseball bat then tied him to a pole in his basement.  They forced his wife to go to the bank and withdraw cash then repeatedly raped his seventeen and eleven year old daughters and wife.  The three women were tied up, gasoline was poured on them and they and the home set ablaze.  Dr. Petit, having lost approximately seven pints of blood, somehow managed to unhook his legs.  He crawled from his basement out a side door where he then drug himself across his yard and collapsed in his neighbor’s driveway.  The neighbor – who called fire and police – described Dr. Petit as “unrecognizable”. 

In the span of little more than twelve hours; two career criminals, drug addicts, brutally tortured and destroyed everything that was precious to Dr. Petit.  The crimes – so horrific that even grizzled investigating officers wept as they testified.  No one, it seemed, could look Dr. Petit in the eye.  Ironically, on the Sunday morning this would unfold, the family attended church together.  The congregation recited a liturgy containing the following:

“Will we stop our building a better future because of evil?

No! Our God will deliver us from evil.”,\

The writer asked “How does a man survive that?  He has two choices.  He goes on living or he doesn’t.”  There is no “happy ending” to this story.  Dr. Petit is not the man he once was.  He does not speak with joy.  He lives at home – his parents’ home – a mid-fifties man who lost everything.  He goes forward in silence dedicating the remainder of his life to his beloved deceased wife and daughters, but he is no longer who he was with them.

After I read the story of Dr. Petit, my friend’s question came back to me.  Does God really give a damn?  After all, the Bible does tell us He causes it to “rain on the good and evil”.  But, how do you keep faith when you hear Dr. Petit’s story?  How do you accept as true Romans 8:28 “In all things God works for the good of those who love Him according to His purposes?”  How do you keep believing?

When I was at the receiving unit I witnessed the most horrific thing I’d seen in my life occur.  I never spoke about it until recently, never let friends know.  The entire four months I spent in receiving were hell, but there were days – when I saw things that I still have a difficult time comprehending how we can be so cruel to each other – that it took every bit of strength I could muster to not go to the third tier railing and jump.  There were days, I concluded, where death was preferable to living with what I was experiencing. 

At night, I would fold my pillow over my ear to block out the screams of the deranged young man on the tier below.  I would wonder if I was destined to lose my sanity in that place.  And, I would pray “God, just restore me to my wife and sons”.  I heard nothing back.

Two months later, our divorce was final and I was still in receiving.  This past February, I learned, in a matter of fact manner from a friend at home, that while I was going through all of that, the woman I loved, who I’d been with for almost thirty years, had embarked on a long distance relationship with a married man.  When I found out, I was crushed, devastated.  I wondered if I had thrown away thirty years of my life.  And, I tried to give up on God.

Don’t misunderstand what I am suggesting.  I don’t blame my ex for behaving the way she has.  I know how I feel, but that is controlled by my circumstances.  I don’t know the pain, loneliness, fear, disappointment and anger she felt learning of my misdeeds and dealing day to day with the fallout from my actions.   I can’t and won’t judge how she handled things.  I don’t know how I would have behaved if the roles were reversed.  And, I know I’ve been no saint through this.  There are many words I have written her I deeply regret and wish I could take back.

My frustration, my disappointment, with God came out because I had lost everything and not once, could I tell, had He bothered to answer me.  Or, worse yet, He was answering me.  He was saying “screw you, Larry.  I gave it to you and you didn’t appreciate it, so I’m taking it all back.”

As I read the story about Bill Petit I wondered if he ever asked “what did I do, God, to deserve this?”  My church experience, my religious experience was big on “look how much God has blessed us with.”  It was short on when your life has spun hopelessly out of control due to you own arrogance (me) or someone else’s evil (Dr. Petit) and you cry out to God at that darkest, deepest point and you hear…nothing.

As I lay there last night seeking to make sense of my circumstances (and numerous blessings I’ve had to remind myself about) and pondered the sad courage of Dr. Petit, I remembered Job 2.

Job is one of those Bible stories we all know.  God, it seems, is a gambler.  He bets Satan Job can suffer unspeakable calamities and personal tragedies yet he won’t curse God.  God, as we know prevails.  The fix was in.  God was the first point shaver.  He knew what Job would do.

There’s the powerful dialog at the end of the Job where Job lays it on the line to God “why are you letting this happen to me?”  His family has been slaughtered, his wealth removed, his health taken, his friends tell him it’s all his fault and his wife – she just tells him to die.  And then God answers Job and says, in effect, “Hey, little man.  Who are you to question me?”  Job discovers his insignificance in the presence of God.  All the crap he’d been through doesn’t seem all that important anymore now that he’s seen the Almighty.

But, the table was already set for that reaction in Chapter Two.  Job – having just lost his children and all his wealth- is now disease ridden.  He is so covered in boils that “even his friends don’t recognize him”.  Job’s wife looks at him, sneers and says “get it over with.  Curse God and die.”

But Job says something that now makes such amazing sense.  He tells his wife “if we accept the blessings from God, shouldn’t we also accept the adversity?”  I think what that means is there are times when it is completely dark and silent and we are just struggling to survive.  We wonder “what is God doing?  Where is He?”  Job was saying God is still God.  Even when our lives turn to complete chaos; even when unspeakable horror is being perpetrated on those most dear to us, even when we look at a sixty foot high catwalk and railing thinking we should jump, God is still God.

Years ago, the British comedy group Monty Python did a movie called “Life of Brian”.  The premise was quite simple.  Its 30 A.D. in Roman occupied Israel and this young Jewish man, “Brian”, is mistaken for the Messiah.  Crowds flock to hear him, he “miraculously” heals people, and all the while he’s telling the multitudes “I’m not the savior. I’m Brian.”  As you guessed by now, Brian is betrayed, tried and crucified.

He’s on the cross still trying to convince people he’s not the Messiah when the dozens of other condemned men, all on crosses listening to him, break out in song.  Over and over they sing “Always look on the bright side of life…”

Sometimes, just surviving in the dark, and the loneliness and the stillness, is a testament to our faith.  God is still God, even when we don’t feel His presence or hear His voice.  As long as we have that, there really is a bright side.