Waiting

The Lenten season began this morning.  More traditionally observed by Catholics, since my incarceration I have tried to use Lent as a day of fasting and reflection each week.  I spend time trying to figure out what I am called to do.  Who, I ask, does God see when He sees me?  Lent, I’ve come to appreciate, is a time of reflection, confession, and anticipation.  Lent gives way to Easter and in Easter I find hope.

At 3:50 this morning Lent began for me.  During my devotional period I read Psalm 102.  A verse jumped off the page: 

“From heaven the Lord gazed upon the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoner….”

That verse has sustained me for much of the last five Lenten seasons as I have dealt with my incarceration and the losses that flowed from that.  Where I am now in that spiritual journey is a long way from where I began, as my life – on that sunny August Monday – collapsed around me.  Over and over those first few days I asked myself why, why was this happening to me?  The truth was, I put all that was happening in motion years earlier when I strayed from the course set out for me.  And, the decisions I made had consequences.  The problem was consequences, I always assumed, bore a rational relationship to our action.  Embezzle and be arrested, you deserve to make restitution, spend some small amount of prison time (maybe), and endure a minimum amount of public exposure.  But, that wasn’t how it played out. 

I was scared, angry, and lonely for longer than I care to admit.  I found myself in a foreign world.  Everything I thought I knew didn’t make sense “inside”.  Right and wrong were blurred as both inmates and officers felt justified in behaving expediently. 

There were a number of people who claimed to be my friends who withdrew from me almost immediately after my arrest.  A few came by the jail for visits.  But, I soon realized they weren’t there to lend support.  I was an animal in a cage.  They looked, left, then told our wide circle of acquaintances how I’d fallen.  I thought of Bob Dylan’s bitter “Positively Fourth Street” on more than one occasion.

“You got a lot of nerve

To say you are my friend

When I was down

You just stood there grinning.”

Almost immediately, I knew my wife would leave me.  I had resigned myself to that fate years earlier.  You know the feeling, when you look at that someone and don’t see back what you crave, what you need.  The divorce took its toll.  I heard a minister remark one day that nothing is more painful than rejection.  It was one of the purest truths I ever heard.

I built up scars.  Trials will do that to you.  I lost hope weekly and somehow found it with a letter, a visit, a story, or a simple prayer.  And I decided I wouldn’t let this place, this experience, define me.  I survived perhaps the worst four months of my life going through DOC’s Receiving center and landed here, a low custody facility with an overwhelming need first for GED tutors and later college tutors.

It was as if God’s hand had directed my journey here.  Slowly, Bible verses I had read dozens of times at the start of my incarceration (in my prior life, I was “too busy” for Bible study) began to make sense.  I understood Deuteronomy 8:2.

            “You shall remember all the ways which the Lord your God hassled you in the wilderness…that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart….”

Five Lenten seasons.  Five years of preparation and reflection.  Five years of waiting.  For a man whose main attribute was impatience, waiting has been a struggle.  My friend DC – no odder pair of friends may exist – told me once he felt for me.  How ironic, a man locked up forty years felt sorry for me. “You know the world out there.  You know what you could be doing.  You know how the system plays and creates different results.  Every day must feel like a month to you.”  He was right.

Prison isn’t’ easy for anyone.  And, I’ve learned no matter how heinous the crime, with few exceptions, most people are redeemable.  But that redemption won’t come from places like this.  Even at a low level facility, prison is a dehumanizing experience.  There is nothing to be gained rehabilitatively by locking a man – or woman – away.  We as a society should stop lying to ourselves about prison being about rehabilitation and re-entry to society.

If we want to punish and break people and subject them to a Thunderdome world of filth, violence, heartbreak, and hopelessness at least be honest and say that’s what we believe.  But, we won’t say that because we’d have to admit this Judeo-Christian nation doesn’t give a damn about the tenets of that theology and we’re no better than anyone else.

But, this is about Lent, and reflection, and anticipation.  As I fasted today I realized there was much to be thankful for in this experience.  For one, things could be much worse.  My prison experience is not even comparable to the experiences some of the men I know have endured.  Nor is it on par with the problems so many face around the world.   I have a wonderful support network – close family and friends and others who hold me up in prayer.  My ex and our sons are doing well, very well in fact.  My parents are healthy and together – fifty eight years this May.

Me?  In small ways day in and day out I seem capable of touching the lives of men in here.  This week, three more of my GED students passed the exam and earned their diplomas.  I’ve been able to use my life experiences – my successes as well as my failures – to help some younger men in here who never had a father.  It’s funny, but many of these kids have become like sons to me.   They have helped fill a void I miss so terribly.

I began this blog telling you I ask myself, who does God see when He sees me.  The answer, I’ve concluded is simple.  He sees one of His children and in God’s eyes each child is precious, each child can be redeemed, no matter how far off the path they wander.

If God could continue to love me, to hold me close even as I drifted farther away, how could I do any less?

I don’t know who reads these postings and it doesn’t matter if you knew the “Old Larry” versus the “New Larry”.  I’ve learned one important lesson the past five years, and it’s a “father” lesson – I will never give up hope in my sons, in my life and in my future.

There is a lot I could write this week about prison.  But, this isn’t the time.  It’s Lent and it’s about anticipation, reflection and waiting.  I’m waiting on Easter and Easter is hope.

 

A Matter of Perspective

Last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday. Christians recognize it as a forty day period of atonement and spiritual renewal. Deprive yourself of something you enjoy, break yourself of a bad habit, focus on God and cleanse your heart. It coincides with the story of Jesus spending forty days in the wilderness being tempted by Satan. It culminates on Easter, when believers remember all things are possible with God.



I was never a big Lent guy before my arrest. Every year on Ash Wednesday my ex would go to a brief church service. She’d bring our sons and the minister would place ashes on their foreheads to symbolize our mortality, our spiritual brokenness, our eventual death. Every year she would give up something she loved (ironically, it was during Lent 2009 she decided to go forward with the divorce).


I never participated. Lent, it seemed to me, was one of those form over substance, ritualistic “churchy” things I didn’t have time for. Then, last year I read a Lenten devotional. I gave up meat for the entire forty days, bean trays only at chow, no microwavable burgers at visitation. I fasted one full day. From evening one day, through an entire day, until the next day’s breakfast. I had nothing but water. At the end of Lent I looked back and realized I had done it, I’d made it without breaking my vow. Still, something was missing. Other than the day I fasted, when I stopped five times during the day and prayed specific prayers I’d written down, it was more an exercise in willpower. I realized I’d missed the big point. Lent is about overcoming self and recognizing as humans without God we are nothing but ashes. We wither and fade away, but the spirit dwells forever.


As my blogs reflected the past few weeks, I’ve been in a very difficult trying period. I allowed the circumstances of my incarceration to overwhelm me. I felt hopelessness about the future. I felt utterly betrayed and abandoned by the woman I’d spent 28 years with, the woman I still deeply love. Many of my friends, even my own sons, had turned away from me, I was tired of beating my head into the wall helping guys in here who didn’t care enough about themselves to change. In short, I just didn’t give a shit about anyone or anything anymore.


That changed this week. I’m not sure exactly why, perhaps its God’s way of answering our prayers in not the manner we expect. The other morning I read from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Here was Paul, imprisoned and in chains in Rome, facing death alone, abandoned by almost every friend he had, and he writes this beautiful, impassioned letter to the church. Not once in the letter does he complain about his circumstances.


Over and over he reminds believers that God is bigger than any hardship, any trial we face. It’s all a matter of perspective. The more we talk and complain about our circumstances, the worse they look. Eventually, the trial becomes larger than our faith. Paul was reminding the flock the trials of life can’t compare to our loving, powerful God who exercises His might to see us through.


Deuteronomy 8 is an amazing chapter of the Old Testament. In it, Moses reminds the Israelites of their wandering and struggles for the past forty years.


“You shall remember all the ways which the Lord your God has let you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you to know what’s in your heart. . .you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you. . .for your God is bringing you into a good land. . .do not forget God, then you will become proud and will forget God who brought you out, who let you through the great and terrible wilderness.”


I realized I was truly blessed, even in this place. My beautiful wife and sons have been able to go on with life. They are happy, healthy, secure and well-adjusted. I am making a difference in a number of guys’ lives who have never had anyone give a damn about them.


Do I wish things were different? Yes, and every night I pray with a list of “miracles”. But, I discovered inner peace this week. My God is bigger than any difficulty I’m currently facing. Whether it’s the loss of my spouse and kids, or lack of progress on my sentence, He will see me through. Over and over this week I was reminded of that, in devotional readings and conversations with guys in here; I realized there is a good land coming.


Lent this year will be devoted to not giving something up, but rather gaining more perspective.