Prison Place

MY Hubby is at Lychner state jail...

Mrs.Chavez — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:24:00 GMT

Well my fiance is in Lychner state jail...and i moved back to fl for college... i want to know will he receive the $150 i had put in his inmate account! from harris? cause i had deposit it and it only took a hour from western union quickcollect for harris to receive it...and i saw the next day they put him on chain...than i got his TDCJ# from haris...the next day...

I'm so new to this whole jail thing...especially when im the only one thats helping him! his family are the most workless piss of crap! im all he has...and i know they know it cause they keep calling me to see if im taking good care of him...they think im going to leave but i wont!!! i dont even have the $$$ half of the time im with-out a job! and i dont want to see him suffer...thank-god i have my mom who helps me out...that's how i get the $$$ to feed him...

I want to know what is this jail like...i heard some nasty things about the female officers and it stresses me out that i keep hearing they sleep with inmates...i hope this isnt true...i dont have nothing to worry about cause our love is stronger than any nasty thing...its just im sure all you females out there get that feeling sometime...

also what about special visit cause i am in fl and will be planning to visit him...will i get contact or no...

looking for a friend

butterflyaffect — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:40:00 GMT

i'm new to this site looking for my friend he's @ sci @ camp hill

16 and in a prison relationship!! AHH!!

Ms. RideorDie — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:04:00 GMT

Hello all. I am sixteen years old and a junior in high school. I have a man that is in prison he is 18 years old and I love him. He is amazing and he treats me well. We met when I was thirteen and we dated for a little while. We really connected. I broke up with him from hearing some unpleasant news but it turns out it wasnt tru at all. Well I switched churches and I ended up at a church with his family. I didnt know they were his family at first but then I started really missing him and I asked one of them if they knew him and he told me that he was his uncle. And one day his aunt invited me over after church and she said that she was going to see her nephew I asked who he was and she told me it happened to be him. I told her I wanted to go see him also so we went. At first we just started off writing each other and he began calling me. I was on a friend basis but he wasnt plannin on that ha. We continued to write and he began calling me like everyday. He told me about a month later that he wanted to be with me and have a relationship with me and that he had been thinking about me a lot since we broke up. I felt the same so we are now together. We have been together for 6 months now and we really love each other. We have a lot of trust and love and we communicate alot. He was sentenced to 7 years with one year time served but we are in the process of an appeal and have been granted the appeal so his sentencing and trial is being redone. I really love him and I want to be with him but it gets really hard sometimes. I am not a person that really needs to have sex I guess but I do need that emotional relationship and we have that but every since he been at the prison we havent been able to communicate as much. I want to be his ride or die especially because I know he did not really commit this crime and he is doing someone else's time. I never stopped loving him and wanting to be with him. In my mind I know that he loves me. He even asked me to marry him. I said yes. BUT! So many people are being very negative and I just need some support sometimes. His family is very supportive but mine is not for real. I take care of him by sending him money and food and visiting him and trying to be there for him in anyway possible I have a job so its not a big deal. So many people say that he will not be the same when he gets out and that he will not wan to be with me and that its all just jail talk. I really love him but I'm just not so sure how to cope with everyone else. Can someone please give me some advise on how to deal with peoples negativity or even just your opinion on my situation.

Starting a relationship

shlemon16 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:41:00 GMT

Hi all, i need advice !

I have started writing to a guy who is looking at at least 4 years, he calls me almost every day and i know this sun silly but we have cnnected in our letters, there is a trust with both of us that is so pure, i live in a "upper class" area and all my friends and family fit this discription very well, theyhear the word jail or prison and turn thier noses with out listening to the wole story , so i fee i can not ask them about thi becoz i get told to stop writing him with in the first sentence of my question , I am starting to fal for this guy , and i dont tend to fall easy i take everything in to account, but with him its like all rules ar void ! he makes me feel something diffrent , i have never met him , but i plan to go to to his next trail and the reason i have not been to visit is for one i have no i.d andfor two i am to worried that it will hurt me to much he is looking to get a home visit thingwhere he wil be out for a bit , and he sas he wants o meet me, I know i am only young at the age of 19, am i only setting my self up for hurt and pain, we both understand that it is to much to ak for me to not date any one for 4 years not knowing if when he gets out we will work ! but is it the right thing to casually date for 4 yrs ( at least) to find out , i care for him so much in the short ammount of time we have spoke, and i feel i am in a catch 22 as i can not imagien nw my life with out him in it , wit out his contact but i also cant see my self staying open for him for that length of time , and to people 4 years may not seem alot but when you have nver had a private moment or one of those memories that stay with you forever its a life time to wait , i dont want to hurt him by going eith what i want now , but fr a year or two downt he line realiz that i am not strong enugh for it ! Has any one been in tis situation ??? or something sim? if so please can you get back to me, i need nothing more than some one to tak to about this, so even if you think that i should get rid of him cut it off now i wold still like to hear from you ,

i am at a loss !!!

Suzy

xxxx

New To This Site, Looking For Some Info On Ulster Correctional Facility

merciercarolyn1981 — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:30:00 GMT

My husband is in the middle of a draft, now he's landed in Ulster. I can't seem to find Info on it anywhere. Can anyone help me?

Mercer Prison

Camille — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:47:00 GMT

Hello all!

I am so glad that I found this site. I hope that I can get some information that I desperately want to have. My brother has recently been transferred to Mercer State Prison in Pennsylvania. He is housed in 14-A-101. Does anyone out there know anything about Mercer or what that housing number means? I have tried searching the Mercer web page, but I really cannot get any information. I would be so very very grateful is someone out there has any information that would like to share with me. This is such a difficult journey for us all. God bless each of you and may we all find some inner peace as we learn to live with a loved one who is enprisoned. Thanks!

Looks like 1 more year

Trishaborg — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:30:00 GMT

Hi I am Trisha, looks like my son will not be getting out here real soon he got denied parole due to inability to obtain Anger management treatment. (they do not have it in Fort Dodge Iowa). I just thought I would introduce myself looks like I will be spending a long time writing to you.

#144 Prison Love: Hanging on or letting go (new)

Nolaw97 — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:32:00 GMT

Prison Love: Hanging on or letting go

Well, this seems to be a pretty sensitive subject to talk about today.

First off, my thanks to those who have been emailing me recently about my blogs, and those who have asked how to support it. I actually should be writing more on these issues, but those of you that know me KNOW I love sports, and college and pro football on, well, you know where I am.

And I had not been on for awhile because sometimes when I don’t get many responses, I have to step back and re-evaluate my writing. I told myself that I am not going to force a blog, it has to be something put in my heart to talk about before I spend the time writing. I don’t usually write short blogs, you know that by now. So if I sit down to blog, I am going to spend anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour writing… I don’t take that lightly because if somebody took the time to email me, and I felt they could use my help, I am going to do my best to help.

So recently I got several emails, many based around the blogs I write about prison love. And there are generally two schools of thought here, one on the idea that people who are so in love with someone in prison, and it tears them up to be apart from them. The other thought is those who have loved ones, and DO indeed love them, but are torn in whether this person can be trusted or not.

This puts a lot of people in a position of whether to hold on to your loved one, or to let go of him.

And I will grant you this, it is easy for anybody outside the circle to give a cheap opinion. You don’t have to be attached to a person in Texas with a loved one doing 20 years to say, “dump him, he’s not worth it”.

Easy to say since you don’t know either person. It also makes it insensitive.

What I have to be careful of here is not being too judgmental on one side or the other, but to try my best to speak as best I can, as fairly as I can, and as constructively as I can to give the reader hope. But sometimes hope comes with a strong look at reality, or your faith.

Sometimes those can be complete opposites.

And let me say for the 12 millionth time, what I share here may not speak for any inmate, and I am speaking from my experience as an ex felon, and a guy that has been writing posts and blogs since about 2002. But that does NOT make me right, it just gives you some guide to bounce on or off of.

So, let’s talk about this situation. What do you do when you are in a prison relationship where you have to make a decision of whether to hang on to the man you love, or drop him and move on.

There is no answer I can give you based ONLY off that question, because it requires YOU to take a hard look at yourself, your loved one, the things you desire in the relationship and the problems that are keeping that relationship from bringing forth fruit. And all this is under the prison umbrella, so this does not apply as the generic relationship that others have. We’re talking about a relationship with a man that has done time, or doing time, and the difficulties of him and it that may have you at the crossroads.

So to sort it out, we need elements to look at. I would like to identify a few elements that maybe you can look at and help make your decision. Those elements are:

What you give in the relationship

What you expect in the relationship

What your loved one gives in the relationship

What your loved one expects in the relationship

The main problem with the relationship

How, or IF the problem can be overcome

Now I know I am no Dr. Phil, but this could give you some idea of where you can start. Remember though, these elements are based on a man that is in prison, or has done prison time, that is the only area I can speak from, so as we go through this try to remember that I am blogging for those with loved ones in prison, or those who have gone through prison.

So let’s try to address each one. And as a guide, I am going to use a general example from a person who emailed me about her loved one. In her situation, her loved one has a serious addiction to drugs, and has been in and out of trouble constantly, and she is starting to wonder if the relationship is worth hanging on to, and whether she can trust him in what he tells her.

This is pretty timely because I have another dear reader who has been reading my blogs for awhile and she has the same issues with a loved one who has done time but just does not seem to be getting his life together. So maybe I can touch on both of these by going over the elements. Again, this is NOT gospel, so don’t take my words as the only way to address this. But it is a start to getting you to a more positive outlook. So, let’s begin:

The first two elements key in on you, the person with the loved one in prison (or one having just done time). This is important that you make some reflections on yourself and your part of the relationship. Lots of times when things go wrong, we like to believe that more than half of it is someone else’s fault. And to be sure, many times that can be true. But sometimes we fail to be honest on both sides, realizing that maybe we could have done something better to help the situation. Or, sometimes you get to the point that maybe you KNEW that this was a problem to begin with, and you should “seen the signs” and got out of the relationship sooner.

This is not to imply that it’s all your fault, it is just the step in identifying all the areas in this situation. So we look first at what you give to the relationship. And when it comes to a loved one in prison, this is easily identifiable. If you have a loved one in prison, I am pretty sure you allow expensive phone calls, write to him, often, send him money every now and then, and things like that. If you have a loved one in prison, or jail, or one who has done time, I am pretty sure you have indeed GIVEN him much, sometimes to your hurt.

Lots of women go into debt trying to please a man in prison, and to me it is not a source of support when it depletes from your life. There has to be a line drawn when you realize that if he expect you to answer that phone 5 times a day, 5 days a week, then that phone bill will have a comma in it every month. Is HE paying for the bill? Probably not.

But it’s hard to put a price tag on someone you really love. For that I can understand how some feel. But in this element, you have to sit down and say, “what am I giving in this relationship?”

Once you do that, then be honest in looking at what you expect in the relationship. This is where your heart can be shown. Whereas what you give can often times be material, what you expect can many times be emotional. What do many people WANT in a prison relationship? In the case with one of my readers, she spent a lot of money on phone bills, and visits. Another reader gave her loved one a place to stay, but he did not respect her.

This is part of what is given, what then do those people expect in return? I think the answer in general is very simple…love. But does this have to be more defined than that? I mean, that is very generic, and no two relationships are the same, especially when we are talking about prison relationships. What is it that women expect from a prison relationship?

Of course, being a guy, I can’t answer that personally, but because I am writing to help, I think the answer goes more along the lines of not just love, but respect, in an almost unconditional way. You see, you can LOVE somebody in a carnal way, and not care about them. But when it becomes an emotional part of you, then it is different.

In the case of the lady with her loved one now in jail, she questions his loyalty to her, because she said that she has reason to believe he has been lying to her. And with his addiction to drugs, there seems to be some strong support since drugs can often cause people to do things they normally would not do. She expects him to be loyal to her, because she has been the same way to him. When a woman commits to one man, and one man ONLY, she expects him to be just as loyal and respectful to her as she has been to him.

The basis of her problem is tied to lack of trust, which may well be true considering his situation. The same can be said for my other reader, who loved her man and gave him a place to stay, but only to have him disrespect her. In both cases, trust was a major issue.

So which is greater? Trust, Respect, Loyalty or Love

These are all the things women expect from a prison relationship, and rightly so. I can write and defend inmates in many ways, since I was once one, but I know that were it not for kind women and loving women, prisons would be full of very, very depressed men. My hats are clearly off to any woman with a loved one in prison or jail. I have read much about what you have given, but often times it is unclear what is expected.

I think each of those four factors is what a woman expects in a prison relationship. But the foundation of this is around love…thus the relationship. Yet I wonder if this is the main thing women expect in relationship. Yes LOVE in the true form is what we expect, but I think the key ingredients has to be something I hear more times than not…respect and loyalty.

I think women expect more respect and loyalty from their man, because so many times I read posts about women who found out their man was cheating on somebody else, or they abused their respect, or were not good stewards with what the women gave them. I think they have every right to expect a man in prison to be loyal to them, and not have 2 or 3 other women “on the side”. They expect a man to respect their wife or girlfriend and consider that it costs a heck of a lot of money to accept a phonecall every day for a month, or to travel 300 miles on a Saturday for a one hour visit.

I’ll be honest, lots of guys don’t fully respect what women give while they are doing time, some do, but many don’t. If a woman can believe that her man is loyal to her, and respects her, then the issue of the relationship isn’t about those problems, it may be more about missing someone they love.

Now, there is another side to this as well…the inmate’s side.

These factors are important too, because it takes two to tango. Sometimes people expect more than a person can give, and when they can’t deliver, we find fault in them. Who knows this more than inmates, or ex inmates? As a guy that did time, I know how incredibly hard it is to live up to abnormal goals set by society just to prove that I am a citizen. Sometimes we expect everything to go as we planned, and not realize that we never talked to our partner about the same plan.

Keeping in mind we are talking about inmates, it is important to understand what THEY give to the relationship. And when you are talking about this angle, it is critical that you remember that in most cases, the inmate has very little material substance to give you. In many cases he is in jail or in prison, so he has nothing to physically give you. Now to expect anything physical KNOWING this can be unfair to him, even with a couple of exceptions I will share in a second.

What the inmate gives to the relationship is something of great value… companionship. I mean, you give that too, but so does he. In many cases it is ALL he can give, and it must be of great importance because so many women are on prison support sites worried about their loved ones. That person is your loved one and you would do almost anything to help him, or at least keep in touch. To many of you, it is worth the huge phone bill just to hear his voice. It’s worth the long drive just to see his face, to touch his hand or even get a kiss or hug.

It’s worth it for somebody you love.

But it is usually all he can give in the relationship. But I did mention exceptions. Those would include letters, visits or phonecalls. But this can sometimes cause problems when what YOU expect from him is something he is unable or unwilling to give.

Case in point: visits.

I read many times where some women desperately need to see their boyfriends or husbands, but they are told that he does not want a visit. So some reason to themselves that they will go anyway and visit him, even if it is not what he wishes.

In this case, the inmate is being forced to give something that he may not be in a position to give…a visit. Yes, this is companionship, but when a person makes a visit when the inmate does not want one, it is a forced companionship, and brings nothing but stress.

Same with letters. Some women send 500 letters a week to their boyfriend, and wonder why they tell her not to send any more. It’s kinda like that book, proving that maybe women are from Venus, and men are from Mars. While women in these situations are looking at showing how much they love their men, those guys are fighting to make it in a very hostile and negative society that is prison.

Now don’t take offense to that, this is the nature of prison. Inmates can only give limited companionship, and it is guarded because a man cannot show “soft” emotions while in prison. Odd, because often times women want men to do just that, not realizing the consequences of a man breaking down in prison can be.

So what does an inmate EXPECT from such a relationship? The carnal way to answer this is easy…money, phone calls, visits, letters, stuff like that. I didn’t say it was right, I said it was carnal. I am sure if I had money a little more often while I was in prison, I would have been able to deal with it much better. But at the same time, money was not an issue when I was in county jail, and I attempted suicide more than once. So in some cases, material objects don’t matter if your feel miserable about your life.

An honest heart of an inmate can expect support from his loved ones, along with a healthy dose of understanding and forgiveness. Remember, they are in prison for a reason, and with their condemnation comes a lot of grief, stress, depression, anger and shame. You don’t fully understand the burden that comes with that unless you have them yourself folks, trust me.

And one of the saddest things in prison is a guy with nobody who cares. It’s not the spiritual Hell that the Bible talks about, but it can be a good description of a hell for a living person. Many inmates fear that they will lose all their loved ones, and be left alone in prison. When that happens, then maybe prison is all they have to live for, not society. But in a prison relationship, an inmate can expect to have companionship of someone who can overlook their faults and still care about them. I mean…which of YOU can say that you are perfect?

So this brings in the next factor, of the actual problem of the relationship. This can be a host of things depending on the relationship itself. Pinpoint the reason why there is a problem, don’t make it generic. Is the problem that you don’t trust him, or because you strongly believe he is having a relationship with another woman? Is it that you feel he does not respect you or that he is always getting locked up. Is it that you feel he can’t be trusted or is it based on his addiction to drugs? There is the generic, and then the specific.

In the two cases with my readers, the key problem centers around drug addiction. I can say with some relief that I have never been addicted to any drugs, nor have I ever smoked anything. When I was in college I drank a little beer…and I mean that literally… a little. One night on campus a guy hands me a 20 ounce can of beer, and I swear I sipped on that thing all night, and ended up throwing about a third of that can away. Just not my stuff…hand me a soda or some orange juice anyday.

So I can’t speak of drug addiction, but I can say that an addiction can be something so strong that it can alter your life. An addiction can actually change your way of thinking to accommodate the lust you have, even if it seems illogical. If you have a loved one that is addicted to drugs, it can be easy to condemn him for his actions, and in truth you can. But in condemnation there also has to be room for compassion, something many of us forget.

Sometimes when we watch sports here at the house, and we hear of athletes who get into trouble, the first thoughts are, “man, what were they thinking? That was just stupid, he’s making millions of dollars and gone off and done something dumb like that”!

It’s easy to condemn folks, it takes no heart to do that.

But before you condemn a person, take time to look in the heart of the matter, with some compassion instead of snap judgments . One example I remember is a recent story of Junior Seau, a professional football player for the San Diego Chargers. A few weeks ago a tabloid celebrity (of which I will NOT name) accused him of physical assault and refusing to let her leave. The police arrested Seau and he posted bond and got out.

During that day, some of the media talked about how this was a distraction and I remember one person saying to me along the lines of , “what was he thinking!”. But as the story started to unfold, we learn that the accusations were false, and it is quite possible that Junior Seau may well have saved her life by refusing to let her leave while intoxicated. Not only her life, but quite possibly others as well.

But it’s easy to condemn, you don’t need much to do that, just look for faults.

Yet when we look at prison relationships with issues like this, it begins here. What is the specific problem, not a general one. In the cases I mentioned, drug addiction is the problem. And while blame has to be placed somewhere, I suggest that it be placed carefully, because after all, that is someone you care about.

Too many times when people have drug or alcohol addictions we judge the person, and not the sin…the two are actually more separate than you think, but often times we don’t have the time, or heart, to separate the two.

Which leads us to the final element, deciding how, or IF the problem can be fixed.

Having said everything I have said today, I know these are not easy to look at if you are at these crossroads. But if you have gotten to this final element, we have to help you determine how or if this problem can be fixed.

But this isn’t as hard if we look at this more spiritually. Can it be fixed…absolutely. Is anything impossible? Well, yeah, with man it is (or mankind). Sometimes however when we have problems that are over our heads, we may have to seek help in a Power that is higher than ours.

This is where a lot of us miss it…or just plain refuse to accept.

If you truly, truly LOVE somebody, wouldn’t you do everything you can to help them? If you have done everything your natural body can do, how about trying the spiritual? There is a saying, “prayer changes things, but that pretty much applies to those that believe it.

I blogged awhile back about a kid that was in county jail while I was there, he was about 16 years old. Not a real troublemaker, but got arrested for trespassing and juvenile stuff. I got to know him and kinda saw him like a little brother, and we got along really well. When I went to prison and did my time, I had no idea how his life was going. When I got out in 2001, I remember getting a letter from him and sent him a letter back to call me. We got reconnected and as it turned out he had been in and out of jail. But after awhile he got out, and I invited him to our house to visit, and play some video games.

It would have been our first time meeting each other outside of jail, and he came over that day…and stole about $600 from us.

I honestly did not know that my brother left some money in the living room, he never told me about it, but it was odd that my friend saw it, took it and never told me. So when we realized it was gone, and he was the only person that came to the house, we added up 2 and two, and had to call the police.

As it turned out, he admitted to taking the money and did some extra time, like 30 more days. My mom was disappointed in it, my brother was angry, but I could not bring myself to hate the kid. At the time I was working for less than minimum wage for a so-called Christian radio station, but had offered every check I got to my brother to make up for it.

It would have been easy to condemn the kid, and to be honest I had every right to do so. I offered him a place to visit, I had often times sent him a few dollars when he was in jail, and while we were in jail together, I shared much of my canteen with him. I GAVE a lot in this friendship. But as God as my witness, I could not bring myself to condemn the kid, he was a homeless juvenile that hung out with the wrong crowd…who was I to condemn him?

I say that because it goes back to that element, if you LOVE somebody, won’t you do something to help them? Now in prison relationships, that goes further, but it still comes down to what you are willing to do for your loved one. Is the problem too much for you to handle? Is his drug addiction too much to bear on your relationship, or are you willing to do what you can for him to get professional help?

This is not an easy question to answer because to help him means extending your patience beyond the breaking point. If so then this could be your answer…with a loophole. Sometimes you have to put the ball in your loved one’s court by letting them know that under their addiction, there is no real relationship because his addiction has more of a chokehold on not just his life, but your as well. Such a relationship cannot possibly work when a person has a strong addiction to drugs.

If so, then your solution could possibly be to let him know that you have to release him from the relationship until he makes a sincere effort to change. This does NOT mean that you can expect him to be perfect…again, a show of hands of the perfect people out there…yeah, thought so.

But it does mean that you expect him to make an attempt, an honest attempt. And if he does so, then if you love him, you need to be quick to support that. It also means that IF he falls, don’t condemn him totally. We all make mistakes, and those with addictions carry a very heavy burden….the last thing they need to hear is somebody saying, “I told you so” or something with little compassion. If it takes you ending a relationship for him to get his life together, then so be it…it might just save his life. But keep the door open to see if he is willing to do what it takes to make it right for you. After all, he is your loved one…or at least he was.

Let me end this on something more spiritual, in any problem the consensus is that if we have faith and pray for a person, then such problems can be overcome. That sounds a little corny to some, and many of you won’t buy into that…your loss. I have personally seen God work some miracles in my life, and others by prayer. Sometimes it comes down to your faith, and you don’t have to be an every-day Sunday-go-to-church person to have faith. Yeah, it helps but it is not the qualifier. Simply put, if you have a loved one that you really, really care about, isn’t it worth it to at least pray for him?

It could go a long way in really deciding if you will hang on to this guy you love so much, or letting him go. Think on that.

Anyway, my fingers are kinda tired…9 pages is a lot of writing for one subject, but I just could not cheat some of you on my best effort. I hope you can get something out of this, and to remind you that this is not gospel, just the words from a guy that did time. Again, my thanks to those who email me and who support my writings. Hang in there.

one I wrote earlier......... Please let me know your views-opinions etc....

3000miles away — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:22:00 GMT

Just thought I would use this Blog thing to give my words some air pace..... Some people have found comfort, some have seen inspiration, some found peace and others were able to find their own closure. BUT in each of my poems, songs or just rants so many people can see so many different things... I am going to add them reularly on here. I wrote MANY after meeting my man, and I send him some too, BUT I have many I still havent let anyone read yet.... hense me starting this blog....

PLEASE FEEL free to comment and even critique what you see, I WILL be sure to learn something from every post/comment added......

Hope you Enjoy.....................

Ive learnt the subtle difference
Between holding a heart and chaining a soul
And I have learnt to love
And hold you close to me
While still being gentle with your heart
As gentle as a rain drop
on the petals of a rose
I have learnt that each day that comes, is a blessing on its own
I have begun to accept my defeats
With my head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And I will learn to build all our roads on today
Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans,

But all these strengths, and new learning's
were shown to me by you
Through the kind and gentleness of your soul
The sweetness of your mind
The caring warmth from with in you
That I am so glad that I have found

A love that met, and grew this way
Is to be cherished
not smothered and scared away
Its to be loved and nurtured
For all that it is
Two souls that entwine as one
Two hearts that Love
Two dreamers that share the same dream
To be together soon
To be as one...

Paul Free - Marijuana Lifer

downtheline — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:41:00 GMT

After 15 years still in prison with a sentence of life without the possibility of Parole despite the fact he has proven that he is innocent. The government does not deny that it knew another man - who worked for the DEA - actually committed the crime it blames on Free. Should the District Court have granted his release? You be the judge!

Read the following 'Statement of Facts' from the brief he filed or more information log onto US Court of Appeals for Free, 6th Circuit, cause# 08-2043, Free vs. USA or write to:

Paul Free #42235-198 USP Atwater PO Box 019001 Atwater, CA 95301

http://photobucket.com/PaulFree

Southwestern

qtna4x4 — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:59:00 GMT

Hi Eb

I am new here my honey bunny is at southwestern correctional facility. Does anybody else have a love one there if so I would like to talk and find out about the facility and the visits any information would be appreciated. Thanks

SENTENCING TODAY.......AGAIN!

Reko36 — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:58:00 GMT

Boy has the last week and a half been super stressful. On Wednesday, September 16th, 2009, My husband was re-arrested at our home. I came home to him standing outside with the Sherriffs in handcuffs. I was so stunned and shocked at the same time, that my anxiety began to set in. The Sherriffs of the County that we live in was there just to transport him to another county that issued the warrant. I was clearly upset, but the one thing that was TOTTALLY clear was RAGE. I wanted to sock him in his face. I didn't need to go to jail that day neither. Once he got where he was going, he settled back into prison like it was the best thing going. I have been so pissed and disgusted these last few days that it is unreal. My husband turned 35 years old yesterday, and was not home to even celebrate it. His court hearing was today. I didn't even bother to go, because when I think about all the times that I had advocated for his freedom in the past, it makes me SICK to my stomach.All I could think about was that I warned him, I had been begging him to stay home, but no he wouldn't listen and too stubborn. HE NEEDS TO GROW UP. Unfortunately I will not be sticking around to wait for him to do all that. I am so DONE it is ridiculous. Stick a fork in me. I got a letter from him yesterday, and trust it was not the kind of letter I was looking for. Not one word of apology for the humiliation, or embarrassment that me and my sons have had to go through once again. He only apologized for not being the husband that I expected him to be. What nerve. To think that I have wasted 10 years of my life knowing him, also makes me sick to my stomach. I have done a total of 2 bids with him, and I REFUSE to do any more. He already knows this. I was put on the visit list for tonight, and I am going to do this LAST visit, and I am definitely going to have the floor. I don't care what happens to him in there, and I certainly don't want anything else to do with him. I tried to work on my marriage, I went ABOVE and BEYOND, trying to be a wife, and this is what I get?? I stood by him all this time, and him returning to prison is damn near an open handed smack in the face. Not just mine, my sons also. My mother-n-law had the nerve to ask me last night if I was coming to court today. I politely told her that if I could leave work, then I would. Knowing all the time that I wasn't coming. I just immersed myself into my work, to take my mind off of my husband's current situation. I will not take on any more of his mess. I don't totally hate him, I feel more sorry for him than anything. I still pray for him, and have prayed for him this morning. I am at that crossroads where I don't want to be bothered any more, and then part of me can't completely turn my back on him. But I must because if I don't he will always think that whatever he does, I am always going to be there for him. I am NOT the one. Trust and believe. No one has EVER been that loyal to me, and I don't know why people always take advantage and take my kindness for a weakness. He doesn't know how I feel like a complete idiot for defending him to my parents, and putting up with all the things that he has put me through. He let the streets, the money, and the women take precedence over having a family, not once, not twice, but yet a third time, and now ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

lost visits

tear drops — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:32:00 GMT

in april i was visiting my husband and 2 make a long story short they took away his visits for 90 days and they barred me for 1 year they accussed me of jerking him off which isn't true i have wrote to etters trying oto appeal it but the superintendent is an ass i called the adc and they said the superintendent will reduce it to 6 months but doesnt seem like he is budging . i also should be able to see y u think i was jerking him off like the tape also i a the only one who visits him its about that time to write another letter just looking 4 some help in the right direction. also since i have had not been able to see him my anxiety and deppression have increased he is all i got so please help me in ay way u can thank you

still have trouble

Whitegirl — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:23:00 GMT

Hi all I am so upset right now with my bf he been writing me these letter accussing me of causing problems in our relationship. I believe he emotionally abusing me like when I ask him a question he turns it around and make it seem like I've done something wrong. He told me numberous time it's my fault that he is in prison because I nagged too much, he in there for DUI his third offence by the time I meet him, he also told me I was to fat, and ugly. I not sure why he doing this but I just went off on him and told him he couldn't man up and accept his blame for the stuff he does that I wasn't going to take his abuse. and maybe we should start thinking about spliting up. I've been through a 6 years relationship with an abusive man who beat me and verbally abuse me. I can't go thru this crap again. Help I need advise.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Prison Adjustments pt 3 (new)

Nolaw97 — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:17:00 GMT

Prison Adjustment pt3

So let’s see if we can finish this discussion on how to adjust your life with a loved one in prison.

If you missed the first two parts, you will want to jump back and check those out. In the first part I identified three different modes of though that many of us may fall in. When a loved one gets sent to prison, or put in jail, we have to immediately change the way our lives were previously going, to adjust to a sometimes very traumatic change in life.

But typically speaking, there can be at least three way we can go about this adjustment, or adaptation. We can either adapt in a negative way, meaning preparing for the worst, or a neutral way, in working with “the cards that have been dealt”.

And most of us fall in one of those two categories, as a guy that did time and a guy still trying to get my life back on track, I certainly have been in both of those categories. But I have also been on another mode, one I want to share with you today. Today we’re gonna talk about positive adjustments with a loved one in prison.

This one is obviously the most desired…but often the hardest to maintain, because it often requires one element that the flesh has a HARD time dealing with..

Faith.

Now when I speak of that word, we might try to define it as maybe, “the desire for situations to get better”. One might even crack open a dictionary to give a natural definition, which according to my Oxford American Dictionary says, “reliance or trust in a person or thing”.

And that sounds close, but that’s not REALLY what we are trying to apply here.

And maybe, just maybe, this is how so many of us slip and create the true difference between positive adjustment and neutral adjustment. As I said in the previous blog, neutral adjustment does not mean you have NO faith, it just means you are not applying it. You might really want to believe that your boyfriend doing 10 years can MAYBE get out before then, or that your husband with a criminal record MIGHT get a good paying job after he has done 15 years, but more times than not we end up just working with the situation, rather than aggressively trying to change it to a positive one.

The difference between the two, that being neutral adjustments and positive adjustments is faith…and let me add one more…patience.

“Well then I’ll never be able to do that, I’m not the most religious person in the world”

Folks, this is not about being religious, because that very term has been twisted to say what self-righteous folks want it to say. A religious pastor can sit in front of a pulpit and preach “Love Thy Neighbor” but outside of his church he can refuse to help a man who just got out of prison, needing a job.

You know I have shared with you numerous times about the problems I had with people who call themselves Christians, and how some of these people can “talk the talk” but when it comes to doing it, they are far from it. This is by no means every person who is a Christian, because I can write for days about some very, very good ministries that got me through tough times.

But my point here is that being “religious” is not what we are aiming for. To be positive in your adjustments you are going to have to have some faith and patience. So how can you make those adjustment, how can you adapt to a positive role when you have a loved one in prison?

The steps I spoke about in the neutral adjustment must first apply. I say this because the basis of neutral adjustment is that you don’t know what to do. But we are going to try to install some things that you can do, to pull you from neutral to positive. And because of that, we also have to understand that you can’t have the faith or patience unless you can get yourself under some form of control.

For that reason, it is still critical for you to not panic, to maintain your health and to learn a little about the environment your loved one is in. Those things we covered in the previous blog on neutral adjustment, go back and read those.

Why is that important? Because faith and patience can’t work if you are in a panic, or sick with worry, or afraid of the unknown. The natural body has to find a level of comfort before you can work on the spiritual. I am not saying you have to be completely at ease, because that is likely not going to happen, but we are trying to tone down that panic, that fear, that depression so we CAN apply some faith.

This is important because if we can get you to a positive mentality, then with the faith comes some form of action, and the patience to see it through.

So I have kinda identified three elements that you need for positive prison adjustment, FAITH, ACTION and PATIENCE. Let’s go over each one and see how we can apply this to your adjustment, and how it can work for you.

Now before I continue, let me say that what I am sharing is based on my experiences and what I believe, which means that to a critic, it is just my point of view, because we all do our time differently and we are all different. But I am sharing this in hopes that some will find a measure of hope so they can get through this.

Now, let’s continue by talking about the first element of positive adjustment, that of faith.

I gave you earlier the dictionary’s definition of faith, which as they say, is the reliance on a person or thing. While that is nice, that is NOT the definition I would use, I would rather define it exactly as the Bible defines it:

“Faith IS the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen”.

You see the difference?

I wrote a blog awhile back on this, I wish I could remember where it was amongst all my writings, because I went into depth about the difference between man’s definition and God’s definition.

Man’s definition is based on people and things, the natural. God’s definition is based on the things we can’t see. There is a very strong difference in putting your faith in a man, or a thing, rather than in God. It is here where you can make a strong impact on your positive adjustment.

I mean, if you have a husband or son or boyfriend doing time in prison, what are you hoping for? Think about that for a minute. A mom with a son in prison might be worried and hope that her son does not get in a fight. What is that hope based on? In an odd way, she is hoping that the prison can protect inmates from one another…after all, that’s one of the main reasons for having prison guards, right? So inmates don’t kill each other.

So her faith, her reliance, her trust is in the prison itself, and the guards, that they can keep her son safe. Take some time to think on this folks, because if you have a loved one in prison, consider where you are placing that faith. Now, I don’t think anybody would really SAY that, because often times those same people are on prison support sites asking people to pray, pray, pray. But many times those same people, even though they mean well, are actually asking out of panic…and fear.

Prayer does not work based on fear, it works on faith.

A wife with a husband about to finish his sentence can hope that her husband can get a good job, but what is that hope in. She is hoping that society will allow her husband to get his life back. She is putting her trust and reliance that her husband, with a criminal record, can get a job from people in society. In an odd way, she is putting her faith (by natural definitions) in man.

And most times it does not work that way.

To get into a positive adjustment, you have to redefine where your faith REALLY lies. That can be tricky at first, because all the natural circumstances with him being in prison and you worried about him can make it kinda cloudy. But if you are going to step into a more positive adaptation, you have to start working on placing your faith in something far greater.

I mean, even with the best intentions, man can fail. We know for a fact that people in prison are attacked, even killed. I once got in a fight myself while in prison, getting a busted lip. Hey, it happens. And I am a perfect example of how society will continually judge you after you have done your time. Mankind is not perfect, so putting your faith in that, while on a natural level is fine, can be problematic when you really need help.

Now don’t get me wrong folks, I am not saying to not trust man, that is not what I am saying at all. But I am saying if given a choice of who to trust, man or God, you should always choose God. Sure, continue to have faith in mankind, but put your faith in God.

This is important because even if you can’t see the prison guards, you can have faith that God can work on your behalf to protect your loved one. I mean, think about that, would you rather have faith that God will look over your son while he is in prison, or God?

Would you rather have faith that God can find your husband or boyfriend a great job after he does his time, or would you rather put your faith in mankind? See folks this is where it starts, the moment you start placing your faith in a stronger foundation, it allows you to believe, to TRULY believe that things can get better.

But you’ve got to believe it CAN….otherwise you’re not in the positive adjustment.

Once you’ve grabbed some faith, you then need to do something with it. This is where action comes in, a clear difference between positive, neutral and negative adjustments. And the reason why I list this after faith is based on a scripture that goes, “faith without works is dead”. Simply put, having faith is great, but you still have to act on that faith.

If you have a loved one in prison, it is important that after you set your heart on believing that somehow, someway, things can get better, then you have to act on that. Just believing things can get better might not be enough, it might require you to do something to affirm your belief. Well, how do you do that with a loved one in prison?

You can do this by controlling your communication with your loved one. A lot of people never really realize that what you say in that letter, that card, or over the phone or even at the visit carries a LOT more than just words. What you say to a loved one in prison carries hope, or robs him of it. It carries joy, or robs him of it. What you say to him gives him strength, or robs him of it.

If you are going to make a decision to be positive, then you must be aggressive in not only believing it, but sharing it. Consider what you talk about when you are at that visit, make an effort to be positive with him, even if you have to talk about negative things. I mean, if your husband’s mom is sick and in the hospital, don’t ignore telling him, he needs to know, but how you DELIVER that can make all the difference.

Consider the examples:

“Oh John, I know you heard about your mom in the hospital…I just don’t know what to tell you. Everybody has been by to check on her.”

Or:

“Oh John, I know you heard about your mom in the hospital. There are a bunch of folks that went by, and I am praying for her recovery. If you can hang in there and have just a little faith, I think she will be ok.”

See the difference?

Lots of people will get cynical and try to see the “logic” of that comparison. But folks, logic and faith don’t mix…you’re either going to have faith, or you are going to trust the logical things of the world. Remember, the natural definition of faith says that it is a reliance or trust in people or things…God’s word says faith is the substance of the things we hope for, the things we CANNOT see.

So your action are going to be directly affected by your faith. After all you won’t act on what you don’t believe. What you say to your loved one needs to be faith based as often as possible. I am not saying ALL the time, hey, we’re human. I wish I could write 1000 blogs about being super positive all the time, but anyone who has read my blogs over the last few years knows there were times I was really pissed off about things happening around me.

I don’t have a halo around my head folks, but I say from experience that I have seen miracles in my life, so I know there is a God that cares. In that experience I can draw faith that He hears if I pray (and you too), and from that I can take some forms of action based on that. One of them is the very idea of sharing this with you now.

If you have a loved one in prison, take action in a positive way by keeping his strength up, keeping YOUR strength up both in faith and physically, and stay with it. This brings in the final part, that being patience.

This is critical because you can have faith, you can take action, but if you give up after 1 month, then it was for nothing. And to be honest, this maybe where so many of us slip.

Anybody can get faith, in fact the Bible says we all have a measure of it, and we can actually apply faith to any situation. The problem comes in waiting for the solution to come to pass.

We all want to think that if I have faith that my boyfriend will get a big-time job after prison, then it will happen the day he gets out. And by all means, it CAN happen, but if it does not happen when WE want it to happen, we start to slip.

We all want to think that if I have faith that my son, who got 50 years, can get out sooner, then he will be home inside of 6 months. And by all means, it CAN happen, but if it does not happen when WE want it to happen, we start to slip.

Patience says to wait until it happens…not when YOU want it to happen. Sometimes it can be a difference.

And I kid you not, I have been there numerous times folks, just like you. I have been there, where I have faith and read where God will do this or that, and Jesus said if you pray you shall receive, and whatsoever you desire when you pray, you shall receive. I read those and said to myself, “ok, let’s believe in some things”. And so I did, and things started great….

But then the doubts and negative circumstance start to come in, and you’re waiting for your miracle or blessing to come through, but all you seem to be getting is reminders of your problem, and you start to wonder if God actually heard you. Then you start to slip, wondering if what you prayed for was worthy or righteous…then you start to think of your faults and wonder if God just refused you because you aren’t perfect. And the negative circumstances keep coming, and you see no sign that God heard your prayer…

Then you slip some more, and some more.

See, what is happening is we are losing patience. Believe me folks, I have fallen flat on my face many times when that happened, but I also know the value of patience. In 2004 my probation was about over, having been on a 3 year probation after I got out of prison. I did everything I was supposed to do, and none of my probation officers had a problem with me at all…except that I wasn’t paying the near $10,000 retribution.

It wasn’t that I was refusing to pay…it was because I couldn’t. I had no job. Oh things started out fine, and I thought for sure I could pay that inside of 3 years. But a lot of things went bad for me, including losing a job at a Christian radio station when the pastor who was paying me $3 an hour (even though I have a college degree in radio and television) fired me when I was trying to get minimum wage. I lost not one but TWO jobs because of him. It was hard for me to get a job, and thus impossible to keep up with the payments. At the end of the probation period, I was served papers because I could not afford to pay the restitution.

Imagine that…going to prison for being poor….

My mom was worried sick, we didn’t have the money and I was not about to ask my family members to come up with the money. I would rather go back to prison for the three 3 years than do that. But mom was doing everything she could. I remember taking the time to call a ministry for prayer, and I won’t lie to you, I was afraid. I didn’t want to go back to prison, but I did everything I could possibly do to get my life back, but it came down to not having money.

I had to believe that somehow, someway, God would come through for me…it was all I had.

I remember the day before I had to go to court, mom was on the phone trying to call a bank or someplace to get the money. My professor from college said he could send some, but he didn’t have enough for the whole amount. We needed a miracle. I was actually on the computer, I think I was even blogging, when I saw mom’s worry.

I remember her telling me, “I can’t get the money” and I could tell she was about to cry. I said to her, “well, don’t give up, the day isn’t over yet”….

Let me pause there folks and say to you, I HAVE NO IDEA WHY I SAID THAT. I knew the situation, I was worried too, but something deep inside of me just forced me to say that. I was telling mom that there was still a chance, when she tried everything.

After we talked for a bit, I went to my bedroom and closed the door. I sat on the couch in my room and said a little prayer, and ran in my head scriptures of faith. Oh sure, I was worried, but it just seemed that my panic, my fear was held in check by God. It was almost like God was saying, “I will not let you fear”. In retrospect, maybe he was doing just that.

Anyway, about a half hour later mom gets a phone call, and she comes to my room and tells me that she got a loan from a bank that, with the addition of my professor’s contribution, would cover the retribution.

We got our miracle, at the last moment.

I say that to you because it took until the last minute…but God honored that prayer and faith I had…no matter how little it was. I saw a similar miracle when I was in college, needing money to finish my senior year. I had to wait to the last minute to get it, but I got it.

However, lots of people don’t have that kinda patience, and we often fail when things get more difficult. Our loved ones might get sick while in prison, or get in a fight, or might even not communicate with you as much as they used to.

These things are hard to deal with, so I understand how you would feel when you are trying to hang in there, but it is so hard to do. How do you apply patience in the midst of troubling circumstances? How can you make patience a part of your positive adjustment?

I grant you, that isn’t easy ,but IF you have faith, and if you are acting on that faith, then having the patience will come naturally, but it will be tested. There may well be times you just feel like it’s not working…been there NUMEROUS times.

When I originally started blogging, I needed support to do some of the things I wanted to do. That meant having a good computer, a printer and software to do some of my prison cards, prison encouragement certificates, flyers, my prison books and other things. Getting support at first was difficult, and because of the lack of it, I gave up on writing prison issues a few times.

But many times I had people email me asking how they could support my writing, and it helped me many times when I had nothing else. The irony is that a lot of people don’t like it when an ex felon is being supported by readers, because they feel that ex felons ought to be working like everybody else…

And that’s fine and good, but those same people who believe that are the very ones who would deny that same ex felon a job because of their past. Kinda like with Michael Vick. I said before, yes he did wrong, and he got sentenced for that. But he did the time, he paid his debt to society and needs a second chance. Yet lots of those animal rights people don’t want him to play in the NFL, and didn’t want him do anything but suffer. Lots of times people get so self-righteous that it has nothing to do with being righteous.

Anyway, for me to blog and get support, it took patience. I had to believe that IF I was doing the right thing, then sooner or later God is gonna bless me. I have had tons of people say that to me in an email. So I have to believe that as I blog to help those with loved ones in prison, there will be blessings…but I have to be patient.

That does not mean I have been perfect in my faith walk, not at all. Like I said, I have fallen many times, and the results of that have been me taking all my blogs offline. If you have only found my blogs in the last 6 months, you missed hundreds of other blogs I wrote, all of which I still have on my computer, and share as retros from time to time.

When or if it happens to you, when you feel like you are losing patience in your hope, just hang in there. Even if you fall down, tell yourself that this is just a phase, and you can get through it. You might feel down for a day, a week or even a month, but if you can just still believe that things can get better, then you give yourself a fighting chance to stay in the positive adjustment.

If you can do that, then not only would you be adapting to a better mode of believe with one in prison, you also put yourself in rare air to even change the situation from a negative one to a positive one…

After all, you DO believe that all things are possible with God, right?

#139 Prison Adjustments pt 2 (new)

Nolaw97 — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:10:00 GMT

Prison Adjustment pt 2

Originally the title of this piece was much longer, but I shortened it to “Prison Adjustment”. I think I originally called it “Adjusting with a loved one in prison”, so if you read that one, this is the second part to that.

What I want to try to do is touch on some things that might help you adjust to situations revolving around jail or prison. Mainly, having a loved one in prison. We all know that when it comes to the incarceration process, your entire life can be tipped upside down, leaving you with very few venues of help or support.

When your loved one goes to jail, or to prison, you are thrust into changing your life in ways you never thought you had to consider. For many people this brings very heavy burdens on their life. But whether we want to or not, we have to make adjustments when a loved one is in prison. The very idea of having a loved one in jail or prison changes your life anyway, whether slightly or tremendously. What I would like to do is try to talk about some ways you can adjust.

Now if you read my first segment on this, I had to identify three different modes of adjustment: positive, neutral and negative. I talked a bit on each one, describing what it means to adjust in each level. Jump back a few blogs and see if you can refresh yourself with that if you have a minute.

Today, I want to talk about Neutral Adjustment, and how you can take hold of your life with a loved one in prison. This pretty much extends to prison issues in general, so I may touch on a few other subjects as we go along.

Now, if I may, let me pull a direct quote from my first segment, describing Neutral Adjustment:

“Neutral Adjustment is based more on endurance, the necessity to just make it through. Thousands of people run the Boston Marathon, but only a very, very small fraction believe they can win. Most just want to get through, to endure the challenge. That is great when in a sporting event, but when it comes to having a loved one in prison, there is no real expectation for seeing a favorable outcome.

This is where most of us are when it comes to having a loved one in prison. Our boyfriend, husband or son is in prison, and we are trying to adjust ONLY to the circumstance. Notice that the difference between the positive adjustment and the neutral one is that the adjustment does not require faith. Now I didn’t say it required NO faith, just not much.

The neutral adjustment takes into account that you have to adjust your life based on the fact that your loved one is in prison, and there isn’t much you can do about it. I mean, you can’t change what has been done with his sentence any more than you can change his charge, right?

(that isn’t true, but we usually believe that)”

This may well be where a huge majority of people are, trying to adjust or adapt their life on the basis that there is not so much they can really do to change the situation. Your boyfriend got locked up and you have no idea what to do, your husband is in prison doing 15 years and you don’t know what to do. Your son is doing 30 years and you don’t know what to do. YOU might be looking at time and don’t know what to do.

Neutral adjustments are based on the common denominator…you don’t know what to do. And it makes sense if you think about it…if you DID know what to do, you could take some form of action to prevent or counter the negative situation.

The thing about this form of adaptation is that everybody reading this deep down WANTS to do something. If you have somebody you love that is incarcerated, you WANT to do something, but you just don’t know what to do. How do you adjust and adapt when you don’t know what to do?

Remember folks, we’re not talking about positive adjustment, where you are making an aggressive adaptation to change a situation. It would be great if you could but most folks fall in the neutral category for a time. So we’re talking about how to carry on “with the cards you have been dealt”.

I think maybe 90% of people on prison support sites are in this area, and the very idea of them coming to a prison support site is to get help. Why? Because they don’t know what to do. There is certainly no sin in not knowing, and also great value in finding others that know your tribulation, but what I would like to do is try to get you moving in a more positive direction.

So one of the first things you can do is not to panic…not to allow fear to grip you like a vice. This is so critical because it prevents you from slipping into the negative adjustment, that of expecting the worse.

The big difference here folks, between neutral and negative adjustments is your belief. If you are worried sick about this, you are falling prey to the fear. What we need to do is get you to not fear so much (hopefully not at all) and stand on your strength.

You’re not going to be able to be any good to your loved one if you are in panic-mode, it is imperative that you find a neutral ground of mentality to work from. This means fighting off the great fear of prison. I know we can’t eliminate EVERY fear about prison, heck, I had numerous myself, but we can keep from going into a full blown panic mode.

This means to stop watching prison stories like Oz, Prisonbreak and some of those National Geographic shows about “Locked up Abroad”. Stop doing that! What are you gaining from watching that? Stop reading everybody’s horror story on the prison support sites IF you don’t have the strength to feel encouraged. If a story depresses you, STOP READING IT.

By doing that, you are feeding your fears and stealing your chance to adapt to a neutral life with a loved one in prison. It would be impossible to do this because instead of “holding it together” you are always going to be worried about him.

Understand, it is ok to be concerned for his welfare, I understand that, but to be worried sick, to be so worried that you cannot sleep, or cry uncontrollably… that isn’t good at all.

So it is critical that you calm down, and refuse to panic. I say again, we are always going to be worried about a loved one, that will never change, but the point is to keep it under control. Under the neutral adjustments, this helps you keep your self together.

Once you can do that, maintain your health. That sounds corny doesn’t it, but hear me out. Stress, as we all know, causes numerous negative effects on the body. Simply put, stress can kill you. And tell me what good will you be to your loved one if THAT happens?

Lots of people, when a loved one goes to prison or jail, start taking sleeping pills, because finding rest is hard, or impossible. This starts a road of possible medication abuse which does not bode well. The reason you need to be healthy is because you need to BE there for him.

So many people ignore their body and succumb to the effects of long term stress while a loved one is in prison. Let me tell you guys something…we all know that it is stressful IN prison, but many of those guys find ways to stay healthy, to burn the stress.

One of the most common ways for a guy to fight stress while locked up is to do pushups. All you need is a floor and you are off. When I was in county jail for over a year, I knew many other guys in other cells that told me that they did pushups to keep their mind occupied.

Read between the lines and you understand why they were doing it…because they were stressed. Many times the only way to relieve stress is to do something physical, to tax the body and “purge” the stress out. I am not saying it will get rid of it all, but it certainly seems to help. I used to jog quietly in my cell, sometimes for a couple of hours, to burn the stress out of me.

In prison, guys have access to weight piles and other sports equipment. Many guys are active in many ways because it takes their mind off their problems. Now, if the guys IN prison can do that…why can’t you?

I’m not asking you to go lift weights or do pushups, I am asking just to do something active. Take a brisk walk two or three times a week, anything to burn a little of that stress out of you. The more it builds the more damaging it will be to your body.

The importance of this is that YOU have to take care of YOU so that you can become a strength to your loved one in prison. Do not forget that during this situation, you have to adapt your life to the stress that is on your shoulders and heart. Your life has likely gotten more stressful, so your adjustment must include a way to cope with the additional stress. Exercise is a very powerful way to do that.

You don’t have to run a marathon, just do anything to relieve the stress.

The third thing you can do is to learn more about prison. This almost counters what I said earlier about not reading all those sad stories on prison support sites. But that’s not quite what I mean.

There are some posts there to inspire, some to inform, some to gossip, some to just bicker and vent, and of course some that just share negative news. To learn more about prison, you need to separate the valued posts from the lesser ones.

And why is this important? Because one of the main reasons we worry about a loved one in prison is because we don’t know what goes on there. The unknown creates a fear with us, especially when it comes to prison. When your loved one was not in prison, did you worry about him going to the store? Or to church? Or across town to see grandma?

It sounds silly but only because of the simplicity of it. You didn’t worry because you KNEW the place he was going. You were very familiar with it, and that familiarity didn’t cause fear. Or, take parents sending their children to school for the first time. The first day can be stressful or anxious because the parent is going to worry about her child going to an unknown place. There are many questions about how the child will fit in, how they will react, how others will react to them, things like that.

But that same worry won’t be there in March, long after the child has adjusted. Why? Because you know much more about the environment, and with that knowledge you were able to conquer any fears about your child or the school.

Prison works kinda the same way…although we are talking about apples and oranges. The less you know about prison, the more subject you will be to the stereotypes and fears. This is one reason why a first time offender brings a lot of stress to his family, and why so many mothers, wives and girlfriends are so stressed out.

It’s stressful enough to know that prison is a very negative, and sometimes violent place, but to know so little about how it works can easily create fears with any mom, wife or girlfriend.

This is why I say it is so important to learn more about prison, to understand some of the basics of it. I said on another blog, it’s not like you have to know how to make a shank or stuff like that, I am talking about some of the more basic things about prison.

The idea here is that in order to calm some of your fears, we have to fill those gaps of unknown with known stuff.

I mean, think about it, what do inmates eat? When do they eat? Who cooks that food? How many meals a day do they eat? Do they HAVE to go to each meal? Can they share food? How much time to they have to eat? See, those are several questions that, if you had some more understanding, might take a sliver or two off your fears, because the more you understood about prison, the less you would be worried about your loved one.

But don’t misunderstand this, I am not saying that knowing about prison will cure you from all fears. But on those night when you can’t sleep, wondering what your husband or boyfriend or son is doing at 10pm, or what he did that day, these are the things that can help.

If I told you about how the prison canteen works, what guys do out on the “yard”, how the dayrooms operate, and how some guys have a “hustle”, it just might give you a little comfort to know that life in prison can be pretty “normal”…all things considering.

Look, there are some very rough prisons in this country, but not every prison is like that. Many prisons are full of guys who want nothing better than to just do their time, and go home if they can. There are troublemakers in every prison, bar none, but a host of guys that are incarcerated just want to be left alone, or do their time as peacefully as they can.

But most people don’t know this because they are constantly barraged by violent stories, and some sites seem to thrive on sharing ONLY the violent and very negative stories. But by doing that, they are only feeding the fear, creating no venues for hope.

That’s got to change folks, and you can start by learning a little more about prison life. If through my blogs I can talk about things like the prison library, the clothes house, the grievance procedure, sending letters, watching tv, and things like that, I can hopefully open some doors of understanding for you. It won’t have you dancing in the streets, but even a little bit of info can be helpful in fighting off the unknowns.

When you are dealing with neutral adjustments, it is critical for you to stand your ground, and not slip. We have all been there, many are still there, so I understand how difficult it can be if you have a loved one in prison. But the adjustments you make, the adaptations you make can give you some strength to hang in there, rather than slip into negative adjustments. Above all things folks, you can’t give up. And granted the neutral adjustments may not build up your faith, or create a powerful sense of hope, but what it can do is give you the ability to stand, and not fall down in a heap of stressed and depressed humanity.

If we can get you to stand…then maybe we can get you to believe. That that takes us to the primary level of adaptation, that being Positive Adjustment. We’ll talk about that next time.

#138 Help me, my son is in prison! (retro blog)

Nolaw97 — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:04:00 GMT

Help me, my son is in prison!

Tonight I want to do something I have done a few times, and tonight I want to try to talk you through a problem.

This blog is for anyone who has recently (or at any time) lost a loved one to the prison system. While the title says “son”, it can mean anybody you love that has gone behind the walls of prison.

Tonight, I am going to try to talk you down a bit, if you will let me.

And this is where is starts folks, at the very point of panic and anxiety, something has to prevent you from going further down into depression. Why is this important? Because the human body does not function well when it is severely depressed.

If we do not give you some hope, it is quite possible that you can go into a tailspin and dramatically affect your health. The body will start to break down and you begin to get sick. From there you will start to rely on medication either to help ease the anxiety or for sicknesses that came from your extreme depression.

Folks…we simply must prevent that if you are going to make it. We cannot allow you to fall down completely because of a loved one you have in prison. To slip, to slump is one thing, and yes, maybe even fall down, but not in a total heap.

You need something to believe in when all seems lost.

How many of you feel that way tonight? (nod your head if you are reading this)

(see, that’s interaction…smile)

Tonight I am going to try to talk you through a very hard situation, to someone who has lost a son, daughter, husband, boyfriend, or whomever to prison, and for the life of you, there just seems to be no hope at all.

It’s like your body is screaming, “help me!” and there seems to be nobody willing or able to help. You need something to get you through this time, and it might be worthwhile to think of taking sleeping medication just to get through tonight…but what about tomorrow…or the next day, or week, or month?

How can we help you get through this, even if for a few days? When a person emails me and has such fear and panic in their words, my heart really, really goes out to them. Why? Because I have been there.

I’ve done time, and it almost killed me.

The burden of prison time was so heavy on my heart that it drove me to attempt suicide…many times. And if I felt that way on the inside, I can imagine how some of you may have felt when someone you really cared about went to prison. If it was a physical pain, you could take something for it, or go to the hospital. But this is emotional, mental and yes, spiritual.

But it still hurts so very bad.

So what do I do when somebody comes to me and says, “my loved one is in prison and I feel absolutely terrible, and I don’t know what to do”.

How many of you feel that way right now, whether your loved one has been in prison for 24 hours or 24 months? How do you overcome that terrible feeling? Let’s fight that right now:

The first thing I will want you to do is determine why you feel so down. A lot of you may mock me and think I am being a jerk in asking that, knowing that your loved one is in prison, but you will miss what I am REALLY asking.

Why do you feel so bad right now? And your answer would be:

“Because he is in prison!”

No, that isn’t the real reason why you feel so bad. There are a few reasons why people feel so terrible, one is separation, the other is fear of stereotypes. A third is the condemnation that goes with it.

Why do you fear so much about your son in prison? Because you are going to miss your loved one, AND you may fear what “they say” about prison. Follow me here, because I am going to try to get right at some of the things many of you worry about.

Don’t tell my mom, but when I first went to college, and got on the bus to take the long trip across the state by myself, I shed a few tears. Why? Because I was, for the first time, actually leaving home, being separated from something I was very familiar with, and would be “on my own” for awhile.

My mom did the same thing when my older brother got on the bus, headed for the military. I remember riding back with her as she shed a few tears, because that was her first born going to the military, leaving home for the first time.

In both cases, a person can cry because someone is leaving home, whether college or the military…even prison. Your tears for a loved one going to prison may be heavy because of the separation of someone you really love.

The second reason is as we said, fear. We all know all the stories about what “they do” in prison. Not very many good stories come out of a prison, only tales of chaos, and more chaos. Many of you fear that your son may be a target of a gang, or some huge hairy looking inmate who has been down for 20 years. Many of you fear what prison will DO to him, that you may not even recognize him after he gets out.

And then there is the condemnation, the mark that is branded on an ex felon, like myself. Life after prison becomes harder because society does not practice what it preaches, and we tend to not want to give ex felons a second chance. There then appears to be no future for your son in prison, so you worry not only that he is now gone, but that he is living in a “hell” and when he gets out, life gets no better for him.

All these things come with a loved one going to prison…and perhaps more.

So at the point of the incarceration, these feelings will overwhelm you like a flood, and there seems to be no way to stop the terrible feelings. Sadness, fear, stress, anxiety, depression and confusion make these days very, very hard to bear.

But I am here to tell you something most people won’t tell you…there is a way to get through this.

There is a way for you to hold your head high and find days to smile in. If you are willing, we can fight the separation, the fear and the condemnation, but you have to want to do it.

And that means no crawling up under a table and crying a river. It means not going to a prison support site and making 99 posts about how miserable life is. I didn’t say you can’t feel down, because that is natural. But I want to share with you some things that must might get you through this, and create some faith and hope inside of you during these very difficult times.

Right now you may be a wreck, but we have to quickly find a way to reverse your way of thinking. It’s like poison, once it gets into you, you have to act to remove the poison, or neutralize it, before it does more damage to your body. And right now, you are being broken down emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

Separation from a loved one can be a very tough emotional obstacle to get over, let’s tackle that first. You feel terrible because your son is in prison, and you miss him. Or, your boyfriend is in prison and you just can’t bear to be without him. How do you counter that emotional scar?

Time.

At such a very emotional time, you must take heart that time will help you get through this, especially the initial days of a loved one in prison. I didn’t cry all the way to college, my mom didn’t cry all the way home because we knew that the separation was temporary. Yet some of you may argue with me that your loved one may be doing a much longer sentence than a mere 4 years in college or a few years in the military. True, but that does not change what time does for a heart.

Remember also that you are talking to a guy that spent time in prison, so the burden of separation was also on me as much as it was on my mom. But when I felt lonely while in prison, when I was missing my folks, I tried to remember only the good things and developed amnesia about my current situation. Many inmates do a very good job of remembering their loved ones in their hearts…not their minds.

I say again…in their HEARTS, not their minds.

Are you really, truly separated from your son if you keep him in your heart? No prison could ever, ever take your son, boyfriend or husband from your heart. That will always stay with you, and those are more precious than you can ever know. It’s weird because I didn’t think much about my family in my head, because when I did, then came the doubts and other fears and problems. But as long as I kept them in my heart, I was fine, and could do my time as best I could.

Separation anxiety is indeed a powerful emotion, but if you keep your loved one in your heart, you can, with time, overcome this situation. I say again, it takes time, but you can get through this.

The fear of what happens in prison is a very dangerous mental obstacle you simply must defeat. Whereas time can ease the pain of being separated from a loved one, the fear of what could happen to him can torment you every single day. When I was in county jail, the worst days were court days, because I never knew when I was going to be called. There was such a fear that gripped me like a vice, like few I have ever had in my life.

Every time someone else’s cell door was knocked on, my heart jumped in great fear because I feared that today would be my judgment. Not knowing exactly which day it would be, or when, was a tremendous fear that I lived with every single court day.

And on the day I WAS called, I was shaking with fear. My life was about to be decided, and I had no idea how it was going to end. The fear inside me was critical because I did not know what the future held for me.

How did I beat it? How can you beat this fear? I tell you folks, you MUST beat it because it will determine how you will be able to cope with this situation. There are two ways to do it, one is information…the other is faith. Used together, it can be the strongest elements to get you through the worst of times. It did for me.

As many of you know, I spent almost 17 months in a county jail before I eventually went to prison, but I spent a lot of times reading scriptures, praying and doing everything I could to stay in faith. I read everything that any ministry sent to my cell, and poured over it many times. I read so many scriptures until I started to put some real faith in what I was reading. I had to believe that there was a God that would listen to me, hear me and not only that, to answer.

I was scared beyond measure, and needed help.

So you can imagine how I felt when the day came and it was my “day in court”. I was so scared I didn’t know what to do except tremble. But before I went, I had decided to whisper some scriptures of faith to myself, any scripture having to deal with faith or deliverance. I was by myself in the holding room before going into the courtroom, and while I had a moment, I gently whispered those scriptures just to keep myself from falling apart. And after awhile, an officer would come back and tell me to get ready to go back to the cell.

Today wasn’t my day in court…which was VERY calming to me.

In fact, this happened more than once. I prayed not to go to court because I was so afraid of the future. And more than once, I got “saved” from the day in court. But I realized that I could not keep praying forever, that sooner or later I had to go to court. When I finally did, my verdict was far better than anyone could have imagined, even my lawyer was completely amazed. To him, it was like a home run, although to me, it was a complete failure. I was not able to see the miracle I actually got, because to me, any time in prison was a loss.

But faith played a part, even though I didn’t quite realize it then.

Still, fear is offset by faith, but it has to be faith in something, not just “faith”. If you have a loved one in prison, and scared sleepless, you must find faith to offset the fear you have. The two are complete opposites, you cannot be full of both, you are either full of fear, or full of faith. The balance of the two determines how well you will be able to get through this situation.

I also mentioned information, it is the most natural way to curve fear of a loved one in prison. Note I said NATURAL, not spiritual. Faith can help offset fear, but so can information, which technically is a form of faith. So many people are scared for a son or boyfriend in prison simply because they don’t know what goes on in prison.

Did you bother to ASK anyone what prison is like? Why not? Because you are afraid of what you might hear? Then you have already given in to fear, and chosen to embrace that rather than hope. Did you ever email me to ask what the prison canteen is about, or how I was able to do my time, or what the meals are like in prison?

Listen to me, the more you know about prison, the more at ease you can be about this. Your fear is based much on lack of knowledge, not necessarily of what WILL happen to your loved one. Yes there are gangs, yes some guys get raped, some get stabbed, some get advanced on, and sometimes there are fights. But lots of guys go through years of prison without ever getting in any of that. Just because you read an article about a fight in a prison your loved one is at does not mean it was YOUR loved one.

Fear of your son in prison will continue until you take a stand to learn a little bit about the world he lives in. I don’t mean you have to know how guys make shanks or things like that, I mean the normal world of an inmate, and what he goes through or thinks. I went through that, and I can tell you about that.

Prison clothes, the cafeteria, the canteen, grievances, visitation, phone calls, contraband, showers, count time, correctional officers, faith in prison, inmates, wardens, these are just a tip of the things we could talk about if you want me to. My goal here is to try to ease your mind on the fear of what might happen and try to give you some sense of calm by understanding the environment of your loved one. Not as one who “heard from another” but as one who has actually been there. Information will break those walls down and get you to see that your loved one can indeed make it through prison.

Fear folks, is torment, and we have to eliminate that if we are going to get you in a better position to be encouraged.

Condemnation is the final piece here, one that is more spiritual than anything else. How many of you are worried about the future of your loved one after he gets out, because he now has a record? How many of you are worried that his past will condemn him from ever having a better life? Is he condemned to a circle of going in and out of prison or jail, or doomed to just have a low-paying job, never getting a chance to enjoy the fruits of success?

I used to worry a lot about it, a LOT. It gave me many sleepless nights where I just sat in my bedroom, asking God why bother living if life itself has closed its doors to me. I did my time, I paid my debt to society, yet I am still seen as a convict. I am condemned, and I felt that there is no real hope for me to really be successful. Oh, I may be able to get a job at McDonalds or some minimum wage job, but my dreams were lost forever.

How many of you feel that way about your loved one?

That has to stop.

I went through that, and it made for a lot of miserable nights, but I started realizing something as I wrote my blogs and posts. For a lot of that time, I wrote with a heavy heart, yet still trying to encourage others to hang in there. And so many people said how much of a blessing I was to them, because the info I shared was something they could not get anywhere else. Nobody was really talking about prison the way I was, nor written so much about it. Without realizing it, I was doing something right.

I was writing about the worst days of my life as an example to help others. It was never my intention, nor my desire. But deep inside my heart, it just felt like the right thing to do. And oddly enough, it then reminded me of some words I “heard” years before, while I was in college. The words, “write for Me” seemed odd then, but years later, I see now that what I am doing is perhaps what God wants me to do….

(you know, God wants everybody to do something, most people just don’t do it)

And now after doing time in prison, it seemed natural to write posts on as many prison sites that I found. After a few years of falling on my face, but not giving up, I have found that God apparently seems to be on my side, I know that He isn’t against my writing, because too many people have said to me, “God bless you”. So I know I am doing something right.

But I still felt that my past, my record, had condemned me from living a decent life. I really started to believe that when I tried to sell my “Grades of Honor” books, and was being kicked out of sites like PTO and others. It had me thinking, am I REALLY condemned, why am I going through so much hell when I am doing my best to help others.

The first thought was to think that maybe I wasn’t in God’s will.

But the greater thought was that maybe all this was happening because I WAS in His will. In the natural, I have been condemned, but my faith in God tells me that He does not condemn me. And if not, then I have His blessing, not His condemnation.

And that seems like blasphemy to some of you, to think that an ex felon can be viewed by God as a “good citizen”. It may even bother some of you to think that God cannot bless your son in prison, or your husband in prison. Some of you think that this is the punishment that your loved one must endure forever…but that is not true at all.

If a man is willing to change, and do his best from his heart, God sees that and will not condemn a person, even if human beings do. Remember, we are the same human race that condemns on color of skin, age, sex and amount of finances. We are not quite qualified to condemn as we think.

When you break down the walls of condemnation for your loved one, and get him or her to believe it, things WILL change for the better. When you understand that God is not looking to “get you”, but rather loves you unconditionally, it will create a level of faith that will be hard to defeat.

I mentioned months ago that I wanted to do a short series called, “Scriptures for Inmates”. It was going to be a series of discussions of scriptures written for inmates, to give them hope. Few people talk to inmates about redemption and hope, they only talk about God giving His Son for our sins. That is true, but every person walking this earth is a vessel for God to work through. Imagine for a second if just 5% of all the inmates that ever did time would write blogs or posts in a positive or constructive manner, to help the millions that are looking for hope.

You can’t do that if you feel condemned, your heart would betray you. And even though I felt that way many times, something deep inside would not let me give up. There was always a very gentle nudge, encouraging me to get up, and try to write some more. Even when I gave up on my blogs, even when I was getting no support and had no money, even when I was being attacked by other members of sites, there was always a gentle strength that said, “don’t give up”. A condemned soul cannot give hope unless he first had it to give. A condemned soul cannot give faith unless he had it first.

Tonight I sit here before you, sharing my best to you in hopes to get you to see that you can get through this, and even overcome. Even if sometime this week I run into problems, it still will not change what I wrote before. Just like you, if you are doing well for a week, and one particular day the weights of your loved one in prison come down on you. If or when it happens, that is ok, do NOT give in and think that it is a failure. Do NOT give up on that person, or your faith. If you fall down, that is ok, I have done it many times myself. But take care to get up if you fall.

Listen to me, you can get through this. Even if you feel just plain terrible, with your heart on the floor and tears flowing like a waterfall, barely able to read this blog. I have been there folks, as an inmate, and even after I got out in 2001. I have been there, but I also have seen and believe that things can get better…MUCH better.

It didn’t look that way when I got out in 2001, or even a couple of years ago, but by enduring and having faith, I am able to continue to help share things about prison. Now, don’t go putting a halo around my head, I am nobody that important, but I do believe that like everyone else, I am VERY important to God. Just like your loved one…and you, if you are willing to believe it.

So you can choose to embrace all the negative things of prison, or you can roll up your sleeves and get some faith in you. You don’t have to have those sleepless nights if you can understand how to get through this and build some faith. I am here to help if you if you need it. I do not promise to have every answer, but if you are willing to have a little faith, maybe I can help you develop it to empower yourself to help that loved one in prison. You don’t have to be a first class Christian for this folks, you just have to love somebody in prison.

You can start from there.

#134 Prison Adjustment, part 1 (new)

Nolaw97 — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:16:00 GMT

Adjusting with a loved one in prison

It’s just after 11am here as I sit here blogging…

Oh by the way, I feel much better, thanks for the emails. For those that read a couple of my past blogs, you know I was feeling pretty beat-up a few days ago, with a neck ache, headache and kinda down on my faith.

Today is a new day, so let’s try to move forward with positive energy and faith, ok?

“Easy for you to say, my boyfriend is in jail!”

“Easy for you to say, my husband is locked up!”

“Easy for you to say, my son is doing 30 years!”

Yeah, I guess you have a point, and I know where you’re coming from. Sometimes when somebody tries to make a positive statement in the midst of your very trying tribulations, you feel like you wanna slap that person with a wet rag.

(picture that….)

It’s almost like somebody is mocking you that everything is nice and rosey, while you are living in the midst of a storm. But the funny thing about that is the natural tendency for people IS to give up and look at the problem…the spiritual thing is to look at the chance that it can change for the better.

But it’s hard to see that when all you see is negativity, stress and frustration. When you have a loved one in prison, it can often be very tough to see anything positive. Let’s talk a little about that, and how you, on the outside, can adjust to life while having a loved one living in prison.

I submit to you the initial stages are not easy, because the shock of incarceration not only affects the person going to prison, it affects those he or she knows. Family, friends, loved ones, everybody that knows that inmate can be affected, some much harder than others.

How can you adjust with a loved one in prison? I suppose to get some ideas, we must define “adjust”:

To adjust: to adapt one’s self to new circumstances (Oxford American Dictionary)

So what we are talking about here is the necessity to adapt to a new circumstance, which in this case is having a loved one in prison. And this goes either way, both positive or negative. You would need to adjust your life if you hit the jackpot for $10,000,000, you would have to adjust your life if in the first week of college, you would have to adjust your life if you moved from sunny Florida to snowy Minnesota in January, you would have to adjust your life if you were diagnosed with diabetes, you would have to adjust your life if your dad was diagnosed with cancer, and any other situation.

But in each situation, the adjustment would be different. How do you adjust to life if you have a loved one in prison? Or even jail?

I recently had a few people email me because I actually wrote a blog titled, “My boyfriend is in prison”. I intentionally titled it that way because I know many times people will google what they are thinking. The idea was to try to get them to find my blogs faster so maybe I can be of some help. It apparently worked, but now it is my responsibility to continue to help them if I can.

Those people are looking for answers because their circumstances were adversely changed. But they are doing more than just looking for answers, they are looking to adjust, to be able to adapt to the situation. And the reason for adaptation is that they may well expect this to be a long situation.

I mean, if your boyfriend was arrested, and you KNEW he’d be out in a few days, then there is no need for adjustment, right? There would technically be a temporary adjustment, but not a long-term one. Kinda like if you catch a cold, you don’t prepare for the next 10 years, or 5 years, or even 1 year based on a cold, you temporarily adjust your life until the situation passes.

But in many cases like this, talking about prison issues, the situation can last a long time…some longer than I dare say.

In thinking over this blog, I had to pause and write some things down, because the more I think on it, the more expansive we can get on the topic of adjusting to a loved one in prison.

“What do you mean?”

Folks, there is actually more than one way to adjust, based on mentality. I can think of three main modes of thought when it comes to adjusting to a loved one in prison:

Positive Adjustment

Neutral Adjustment

Negative Adjustment

Again, we are talking about prison issues, so don’t confuse this with any other subject. When your boyfriend, or husband or son gets sent to prison, there is an immediate need to find answers, to be able to cope with the negative situation. Lots of people go online looking for answers, some fall on their knees to pray, some fall apart and cry…

Some do all three, and many more.

But if I am going to try to share with you what I can, I have to be able to break down the modes of thought, which will determine how you might end up adjusting.

Positive Adjustment is the best way to adjust to a negative situation, and in fact is a LOT more powerful than you can imagine. When I talk about positive adjustment, I am talking about taking actions in your adjustment to change the situation to a favorable one. This is a more aggressive form of adjustment, where you are adapting yourself to try to counter the negative action with more positive ones, in an effort to ultimately defeat the negative circumstance.

This folks…takes faith and a strong sense of determination.

These are the people that believe that you CAN change a negative situation to a positive one. Sure your son might be in prison for 30 years, but can you adapt your life to believe he can get out sooner? Sure your boyfriend got arrested and is looking at doing time, can you believe he can get a shorter sentence, or even be cleared? Sure YOU got charged with a crime and looking at doing time, can you have faith that you can get a favorable outcome?

Having a positive adjustment does not mean being “wishful”, it means accepting what is in the now, but believing with faith that it can change for the better. A lot of people will get that confused because they just want things to get better. Every mom would love to wish that their son or daughter in jail will be able to come home, but not every mom has adjusted their life to stand on that belief. This is a much stronger form of adjustment that takes an effort to do. If you have a loved one in jail or prison, there are indeed things you have to do to adjust your life in this manner. But it is strongly based on faith.

Neutral Adjustment is based more on endurance, the necessity to just make it through. Thousands of people run the Boston Marathon, but only a very, very small fraction believe they can win. Most just want to get through, to endure the challenge. That is great when in a sporting event, but when it comes to having a loved one in prison, there is no real expectation for seeing a favorable outcome.

(that isn’t true, but we usually believe that)

Neutral adjustments are based on the idea that we would love to see things change for the better, but we just aren’t in the position to believe that it will. Sure, it CAN, but we often just don’t believe that it will for us. I think we all are in this category many times, because let’s face it, not everybody can have the faith to change a situation at the moment your life changes for the worse. I say to you though, even though you might start in the neutral adjustment, it is critical that you try to move into the positive adjustment, because if you don’t, you could slip into the third category…

Negative Adjustment, which basically is preparing for the worst.

I will describe what that means on this blog, but I am NOT going to share with you how to prepare for the worst…I will not do that because it adds no value to me trying to help you. I can identify it, and tell you generally what it is, but do not look for me to blog about how to prepare for the worst in adjustments.

The reason for this is because negative adjustments are based on adapting your life based on fear. Fear that your loved one will never come home, fear that you will never see him again, fear that he will be beat up in prison, fear that he will be raped, fear that he will be killed, fear that even if he does his time, he will not change.

And many people adapt their lives, adjusting to the fear of what can happen. This can even be applied before one even goes to prison. I sat in a jail cell for almost 17 months trying to figure out what my future holds, sometimes I found myself trying to prepare for the worst…I think my lawyer told me to do it once or twice. But each time I wanted to “embrace” that fear, something deep inside of me said not to give up.

You can tell if you have a shred of faith in you by how you respond to a negative situation. Even if you feel like the world is crumbling around you, and nothing looks good, faith dares to say, “come on, hang in there, something good can come out of this”. But the natural mind can’t SEE faith, so it does not give place to it. Fear is based on the conditions around us, the things we can see, hear, and touch. When you hear about your son or boyfriend or husband going to prison, the natural mind wants to fall apart and force you to adjust to the lifestyle of fear and defeat.

Many do that. And initially, MOST do that, because we’re all human. It’s the reason I attempted suicide, I was preparing for the worst. And the worst was not worth living for. And even though negative adjustment does not always end up like a bad ending to a movie, it is certainly not the mode of thought I would encourage anybody to do. So again, I will not cover that in this discussion.

So I will (hopefully) cover the topics of Positive Adjustment and Neutral Adjustment, and what you can do to get through this in upcoming blogs. Email me if you have any questions.

See, I had not intended to write this much on it, but as I was blogging there were a lot of thoughts that I needed to add. This could turn out to be about 15 pages, so it may have been a good thing for me to create a starting point, and then cover it in blogs to come.

Anyway, we’ll see where we go from here…hope you’ll check it out.

Prison Issues: The Power of Writing

Nolaw97 — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:48:00 GMT

Prison Issues: Power of Writing

Today it is just after 11am on a Labor Day, after a pretty hard night. Many of you read my blog on “Faith’s Breaking Point”, which I actually posted just after midnight. Last night was pretty rough, and I probably took the wrong medication for my neck pains. Since it was both head and neck, I took Excedrin Migraine for it, hoping it would aleve the tension. I was partially right, but the neck problems were still an issue, making it tough for me to get some sleep. I was up until about 4am until I figured to just get up, get some hot water and a face towel, and apply heat to my neck, head and face to ease up the discomfort. It actually worked…I wish I had thought of it earlier.

So at 10am I wake up with an idea of something to write. I emailed one of my readers and told her that I would write on an idea that might help her and her loved one. She was telling me about how her loved one spends time in the administrative seg cells, and her concerns about his health, and the mail. We both agree that the grievance procedure in prison is a joke, because 9 times out of 10, the prison ALWAYS sides with their own…even if they are completely wrong.

I can very easily speak from experience, as a person that probably wrote more letters, journals and grievances in one year that most inmates write in 3 or 4 years. My writing made me quite a bit of friends of other inmates, but many enemies by the prisons.

One day I am going to share with you the grievances I wrote while in prison…but wow, that would take like 150 pages to share…not sure how much coffee you are willing to drink over that.

But today I can talk about the importance and power of writing when it comes to concerns with a loved one in prison. There is indeed a power in you writing down issues against the prison and presenting them to the right people. I think the reason why so many people don’t do this is because they are afraid of the repercussions. I read so many times when a mom, or wife, or girlfriend knows that something is wrong with their loved one, and they need to speak up, but are afraid that if they do, then the prison will punish their loved ones.

And I won’t lie to you, it DOES happen. But we have some idea that every prison does it every time…not always. I believe, even after all the stuff I went through in prison, that there are some good people in positions in prison that, if you present an argument to them in a decent and respectable way, will in fact help you and your loved one. But I also believe that there are ways to make the irresponsible authority respect your argument, or be accountable for them.

That’s what I want to talk about today.

What can you do to help a loved one in prison, when you believe that the prison has made his incarceration harder through neglect. Remember folks, PRISON is the punishment, not the additional things people add to it. Separation from society, and the ones you love, and freedom, is the punishment. No person of any authority in prison has the right to make your incarceration harder by their neglect or opinions because it is not their job to judge an inmate. That’s what the judicial process is for.

Yet it still happens, so let’s talk about what to do when it does.

I’ll use the general examples from my friend who talked about her loved one’s health issues and mail issues. To many of you it might touch on a few bases, so keep that in mind.

One of the first things that a person outside of prison must do before writing is make a commitment that they are going to help their loved one, if at all possible. This step is based on an decision that you are not going to fear what a prison MIGHT do. I say to you, there are possibilities that a prison can retaliate, but there are things you can do as well. It all begins with your decision to help your loved one. If for example you feel that the prison is neglecting his health, make a determination to help him, not wonder IF you should help him. If you are worried about his mail, make a determination to help him, not wonder IF you should help him. This makes your path a lot clearer once you begin putting actions to work.

The second step is this…find what the rules say, word-for-word.

That sounds almost smart-aleckey, but follow me here. If you are going to write anything to any prison official, you stand a much better chance in making your point once you are clear on the rules. Not what you think the rules are, not what you believe the rules should be, but what they ARE. Trust me folks, half of the power in writing is having facts that you can place in front of their eyes, letting them know that you believe the prison is not honoring their job, and disrespecting other human beings.

And it’s not just rules, it is policy. You may or may not find an actual rule about health care for inmates for the prison your loved one is at. You may not find the actual rule about mail for inmates for the prison your loved one is at. But finding printed words by the prison or by the administration gives you a foundation to work on.

For example, when I was in prison here in NC, every inmate was given a green booklet with the rules and definitions of prison. The book was maybe about 30 pages or so, and covered the very basics of prison. I would imagine that every inmate would have some reasonable access to such rules…if not that alone is worth the argument.

Many of you can probably go online to the DOC in your state and print out those same rules, I know it is so here in NC. If you can do this, you then have an advantage that many prisons don’t count on. Why is that?

Most prisons expect prison issues to always be handled “in house” or “under their roof”. What I mean by that is if inmates have any problems, and grieve such to the prison officials, the prison can manipulate it anyway they see fit because as far as they are concerned, nobody else knows about the problem. Almost a take off a popular slogan, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”. Much the same in prison. And as long as the prison officials believe that, it gives them absolute power to make decisions…even if they are wrong.

And this is easy to do, if they just have to deal with an inmate. They don’t really have to be “fair” and “partial” with an inmate, and can usually work in the best interest of the prison. And many times prisons do work fairly, if properly approached. But all too often, prisons work under their own authority. This makes it harder for an inmate that may well have a good point, to voice his concern.

BUT if that inmate has outside help, a person (or people) who have the same access to the rules and policies, he then has somebody outside the prison that the DOC cannot control or manipulate. When a prison issue get outside the prison’s control, it immediately forces that prison to pay more attention.

I shared an example before about how one member of a prison support site was worried about her boyfriend being neglected by a prison, and was in a seg cell and often in pain. She felt miserable about seeing him on that visit, and how he broke down and started crying because of his situation. Nobody EVER wants to see that in their loved one, no matter how bad things are. It broke her heart to see it and she emailed me about what to do.

It was obvious the inmate had tried to get help and tried to make his case known to the prison, but they were not paying attention. And the lady who emailed me worried that if she said something, it might get worse. We worked on a letter or two to send to the prison in an effort to get them to realize that they needed to look into the matter with her loved one. In fact, I think I still have that letter somewhere in my files, since I wrote it for her.

Several days later I got an email from her thanking me for helping her. The prison not only got the letter, but made swift changes in the situation, and she said her loved one felt MUCH better. But it took outside help for the prison to see that the problem had escaped their control, and now instead of an inmate complaining, it was a citizen outside that prison with a concern of humane treatment.

This is why you getting involved is critical, it is the “ace” in the sleeve for any inmate that needs help. No prison can control a citizen, because that is not their jurisdiction. However, they can control them with fear, the fear that if you write anything to help your loved one, they will make his life 10 times harder.

Once you make up your mind to help him, and read the rules and policies on the issue you are concerned about, you are then in a position to make a move for your loved one.

Now we talked about the grievance procedure, and how I felt it was a joke, but there are some necessary issues that can help. When you are fighting for your loved one, it is still very important for him to write a grievance, because it becomes your official proof that he did in fact express a problem.

If he does not write one, then your initial efforts can be blocked before you get started. If you wrote a letter to the warden about how your loved one wasn’t being looked after humanely, and was in bad health, one of the first things the prison will look for is if the inmate himself has expressed such a problem. I mean, if the inmate isn’t upset about it, then it must not exist, right?

Now there are some holes in that theory, but I’m trying to paint a picture of what prison look for. If you, on the outside, are claiming that there is a problem, most prisons will see if the inmate in question has written a complaint. If he has not, then they will likely say to you that if inmate so-and-so has a problem, they can write a grievance and the prison will look into it.

That grievance is your kinda receipt that there is a problem, one you can use to show that your loved one did in fact express a problem. So I say to you, it is important that he fills one out, even if it does seem bogus and a joke. It may well be your strongest source when you start to argue on his behalf.

I can’t begin to tell you how important the step of gathering info is, I really need to go back to my prison writings and pull out a few examples of how important it can be to have facts, rules and policies together when you make your point. We can talk for many pages on that alone, but know that it is very important that you have your facts about you, and your wits as well.

Many times when people have a problem, they call the prison, and to be sure, that is what they should do. But often times some people call with emotions on their sleeves, and want to ARGUE, not talk. You have to understand that the hand that picks up that phone on the other end is a person, and quite subject to take a different attitude if you start off with a wrong one.

It is very important to work with the prison to see if you both can come to an agreeable solution. Yeah, many prisons may not do that, but a lot of prisons also understand that inmates are people too, and if they cannot treat them like people, then there is no chance of rehabilitation. Sometimes you can talk to a person that cares or is willing to honestly look into the situation.

So phonecalls are important, but sometimes you get the ole “runaround”. This takes us back to writing, and why having facts, rules, policies are important. And let me add this as well…names.

Having names of prison employees is vital because it creates accountability. Some people think that if they just say something like, “officer X refused my son treatment after he got sick” then it would be helpful. It’s not.

In fact, you are doing the prison a favor, while allowing them to maintain control over your loved one. If there is a problem, it is important for you to identify who is involved so that he or she is also part of the solution, or problem.

It’s interesting that sometimes when something happens in a prison, something that gets a local newspaper or television station on it, they always seem to report the INMATES, and keep the names of the officers protected. WHY? It’s like the inmates, whether in fault or not, is being paraded as somebody who is always in the midst of trouble, while the media protects the names of the officers, like they were innocent in the whole affair. But prison officers are public positions too, and if they screw up, they should be accountable.

When I was in prison, if I had a problem and wrote a grievance, I always made sure that the name of the officer or official in question was named on my grievance. I wanted to make sure that the prison knew that I was identifying and being specific in my argument. Now granted many times my grievances were not dealt with fairly, but remember, I did this under THEIR roof. If I had somebody outside the prison that could back me up, I guarantee you many of the grievances I wrote would have been much more successful.

This is because if you take up the cause of your loved one, with the proper rules, policies and arguments, and tag it with names of prison officials, it becomes a source of accountability that the prison has to acknowledge. Identifying names creates accountability, and forces a prison to take steps in solving a problem, lest somebody in particular gets in trouble for something they should not have done (or should have been doing).

But accountability doesn’t mean anything unless you present it to the right people. This is where you are most valuable to an inmate. As an inmate, we are limited to many things, including contact with the outside world. Even as a guy that loved to write, I sent many letters to prison officials, the DOC, state officials and so on, but I was still limited. You however, are not.

If you spent just 1 hour after reading my blog, going on line and looking for names and addresses (email or land address) of prison officials, state representatives, state senators, and numerous other legislators and officials, you can easily come up with 20-50 names and organizations you could write to. And with the computer, it would take no time to write a letter, print out a copy and send it to them.

In prison, not so easy. If I wanted to send a letter to 5 different sources, I had to either write it 5 times, or use carbon paper to write it 3 times (although sending anything by carbon paper isn’t too impressive). Trust me folks, I did it before.

Consider the impact and power YOU have by writing a concerned letter about your loved one’s health, and sending it to not just the prison, but to people over the DOC’s head. Now your first response might be that they may not pay attention to it either.

I mean, if you wrote a letter to state representative Smith (example), stating your concerns that your loved one may not be looked after as well as he should have, and how you are concerned about his health, and how rude the prison staff in medical has been to him, it is quite likely they might flip it off.

But what I have learned is that something else happens too. It’s called delegation, and it can work in your favor.

Delegation however won’t work unless you have made a strong point for your loved one, which is why it is critical that before you argue, you know the facts about his situation, and the rules and policies. Once you have this, and have written it is a respectable form, send it to the prison, but also send it to state officials. By doing this, you can set the ball in motion.

See, if you ONLY sent it to the prison, they can still “cover it” and keep it under the roof. But if you sent it to other authorities, what usually happens is that it gets “handed down” from one official to another. A letter about your concerns about a prison misdirecting mail sent to Senator John Smith might actually get read by him or one of his people, and immediately delegated to the Department of Prisons or Department of Corrections in that state.

The head of that department might read it and immediately delegate it to the warden of that prison where your loved one is at. Even if those people did nothing active, what has happened is that when the warden of the prison gets a letter from HIS or HER superiors, they know that your complaint has reached their ears…by a concerned VOTER. That warden might not care much about that inmate, but he better care enough to look into the situation, lest HIS name be put on the next letter, with implications of clear neglect.

Delegation and accountability will many times force a prison to fix such a matter, whether they want to or now, but it can’t work unless you have your plan of attack well thought out. If your loved one is concerned about the mail, see what the rules and policies say about it. Look into it, call the prison for an explanation while having your loved one write a grievance. Even if both of you fail in that, you have a strong foundation to work on, because when you write that letter, you can make it quite clear that:

“and when I called your prison, I spoke with Susan Smith and asked her why my husband, John Jones, was having problems receiving his mail. Mrs. Susan Smith explained to me that sometimes it happens, but usually if I put his inmate number on the letter, they will usually make sure he gets it. At the same time, John wrote a grievance about it, but they never answered it. To this point, two weeks later, he is still having trouble receiving his mail, and it seems apparent that the prison will not answer his grievance”

See, even though you may have initially failed in getting a resolution, you have already started a base for an even stronger complaint, filled with names and neglect. If you don’t get a favorable resolution, your next step would be to write to the warden, or Superintendent of that prison, or the DOC, or DOP, or one of many other organizations to get your point across. Sooner or later it will trickle back down to the prison warden, and he will be forced to do something about, because he will then see that you mean business.

And that is what this comes down to, do you REALLY mean business, or are you just “whining”? It takes a bit of dedication to separate between the two. It takes getting facts and knowing the rules to separate between the two. It means getting your loved one to do his part and supporting him to separate between the two. It means getting your argument in a smart and respectable fashion to separate between the two. It means getting a list of contacts to write to and address the problem to in order to separate between the two.

And will all this guarantee that you will get the solution you want…no, of course not. But I say this to you, your chances of helping your loved one improve many, many, many times more than doing nothing at all, or worrying about prison retaliation. If that lady that emailed me a year or so ago never did anything, then how much longer would her loved one suffered at the hands of neglect? A week, a month? Several months? But because she got involved, she helped him.

I urge you, consider the same thing. I guess it’s easy for me to say how powerful writing is since I did a lot of it, but for many, writing is hard to do. Not everybody is able to put a 3 page argument in a way that will get the prison’s attention. I’d like to say I can help, but if I got 50 emails tomorrow about that, then there is no way I could help everybody. If necessary I might be able to pull out an older blog or some of my writings from prison to give you a more detailed example, if it will help.

At any rate, consider again the power you have in writing. If you have a loved one in prison that needs help, the prison has their own rules, but often times they can bend or break their rules as long as they think they can get away with it. But once a person from the outside gets involved, the prison has to respect the argument from a citizen IF it backs up a legit complaint from an inmate. Don’t be afraid to help your loved one, many times you are the only one that can.

#132 Faith's Breaking Point (new)

Nolaw97 — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:03:00 GMT

When faith hit’s the breaking point.

I had no intentions of blogging today…

But yet here I am.

Not because of one situation, but rather several. One, I got a headache and neckache from sitting in on of our chairs today. I keep forgetting that that chair is like a torture chamber on my neck and it leads to a headache when I sit there too long. So now I got a headache, and it might be around for awhile.

But I also got some emails during a period where I was fighting within myself about some things. I don’t mind blogging to you guys about it because it I am to talk to you about prison issues, you have to know what an ex felon goes through in the good and the not-so-good.

We all know it’s easy to sing praises and say “Praise the Lord” when our lives are nice and orderly, but when life gets troubling, it isn’t so easy. And when life REALLY gets rough, it’s not easy at all.

Been there, like many of you…in fact, I may be in it now.

You read my blogs, so you know my trials and tribulations as an ex felon, but sometimes life gets heavier when your faith is tested. Sometimes it is severely, and I say to you, it is no fun at all. It can really have you questioning whether God is really on your side, or if you are fooling yourself to think that faith and trust in God will (or can) bring miracles.

Keep in mind folks I speak through the venues of prison issues, either as one going to prison, one in prison or one that has been through it.. I have been out since 2001, and to be sure there are many good times I have had. Just yesterday we had several friends come over to watch college football; had an excellent time. But many days I sit here wondering what do I have to do to get my life back on track.

How many of you have ever been there? You may have a loved one in prison, or worried about going to prison yourself, or have a loved one that has done time but not quite doing what he or she should. Many of you, when the problems started, were quick to run to God and pray for help, and rightly so. I did the same thing when I fell in 1997.

But sometimes you stand in faith…and you keep standing…and you keep standing… and you keep standing….

And nothing happens.

You wait for God to answer your prayer, as the scriptures say He would, but as time goes on, nothing changes, and sometimes the situation gets worse. Maybe it’s your loved one who does not seem to change, maybe you are worried that God won’t answer YOUR prayer and you’ll just have to “grin and bear it” or “accept your punishment”.

How in the name of the Good Lord do you carry on?

I wanna share some personal stuff with some of you. Easy to do since I am not likely to see any of you face to face anyway. When I was in college, I had just started learning about faith and trusting in God. The Bible has promises that say that God will do this or that if you believe or have faith. The New Testament is filled with promises that Jesus Himself said that He or God would do. All that was required was faith…to trust that God can…and WOULD do it…for you.

I went through college slowly learning that, and one of the things I prayed for was prosperity. I mean, my family wasn’t flat broke, but I remember clearly as a kid I said to myself that I didn’t want to be rich unless I could share it with my family. I mean, what good would it be to have $500,000,000 if you had nobody to share it with, right?

Well, I made a prayer for prosperity so that I could be a blessing to myself, my family, friends and others. That was while I was in college. After college I still believed that I could get that blessing, while working in radio, local television, starting my own mail order business, and writing short stories…

Then the bottom fell out and I ended up incarcerated.

In a moment, every dream I ever had was gone, as if the prayers I made in faith to God for prosperity were taken away by my error. It’s like God has “loopholes” so He can always opt out of His promises…which didn’t seem so righteous.

In the worst days of my life, in that county cell, I fought daily for my life, wondering if there was any truth in God’s word. At the same time, I fought the value of my life, wondering if anybody cared for me anymore…I mean, who cares for inmates (as the ignorant would say).

But in that time, I gathered my strength and got back on God’s word, trusting Him to do what no man could. It was not easy folks, as I told you before, I attempted suicide more than once, but each time it was like God was saying, “no, I will not lose you this way”.

In those times I learned even more that there has to be some strong substance in faith, since faith itself was the substance of what we hope for. I learned much in that jail cell on faith, which I carried with me when I went to prison.

In my time in prison there were indeed many times I fell flat on my face, believing that God does not care about me or any person that makes mistakes. Those of you who have my first few books on “Grades of Honor” know that when I first went to prison, I hated God, and told Him so. I swore that I would never trust Him again…ever.

But that wasn’t my spirit speaking…it was my flesh. There is a clear difference between the two, and I think God knows that. In those times I did get back to God, and it was during those times I picked up my prayers and asked again for prosperity. To be sure, I would need it since coming out of prison I would have nothing.

And so in 2001 I got out of prison, and as frightened as I was about life anew, I was trusting in God that He would make a way for me to earn a living, not just for myself, but to be a blessing to my family, friends, and so I could make my tithes, offering and other good deeds. Not that I was going to be a perfect saint, because none of us are, but I truly intended to do my best.

And those years came and went, with me praying for prosperity. A job at a local Christian station turned out to be a bust, with me getting paid less than legal minimum wage by a so-called man of God. A second job working at a grocery store ended up in me having to quit or get fired because the local newspaper did a story on “local do taking a radio station to Department of Labor”. It cost me a second job when the same man-of God said “you can’t trust anything an ex-con says”.

A job working for a local television station didn’t work, because I wasn’t even paid after 4 weeks on the job, even though the people I interviewed on the talk show were high profile figures of society. My mail order business was doing terrible. I was trying to sell my prison books and cards, and although some were bought, many people on prison support sites acted like they didn’t know me when I mentioned it, but would bug me about their own problems, asking me to help them out. I ended up getting banned from many sites for even mentioning my books.

In all this, I wondered, where is the promise?

Many times I got so down I gave up, believing that God just didn’t care about me at all, and His words were just that…words. Many nights I sat in my bedroom wondering what in God’s name did I have to do to show Him that I wanted to be a blessing to others. Many days were tough, but after a time I would get strength back and was back believing that God’s word had not changed, and somehow, things must get better for me.

This weekend was NOT one of those times. One of those times where my faith just seemed to be at a breaking point. I was up about 6am, sitting in my bed wondering where the prosperity was. Here I am in 2009, have written thousands of pages to help others…but ironically I need just as much help.

I questioned God this morning, talking very quietly to myself, asking God where did I go wrong that He apparently refuses to answer my prayer. The Bible says if you ask you shall receive…I asked. Jesus said to ask in His name…I did. He said to love one another…I do (as best as one can, knowing we are not perfect). Jesus said “ye have not because you asked not”, but I have asked. I was completely puzzled as to why I can’t get a job, and why I had nothing but the faith that things MIGHT get better.

Folks, after awhile the faith you keep inside of you starts to feel like a bunch of bologna. You just wonder, “WHEN God, are you going to do what YOU promised”?

And understand folks, this has NOTHING to do with whether you are right or not. Lots of people feel that they don’t deserve God’s blessing because they did something wrong in the past…folks…we ALL did something wrong in the past…and more times than we can count.

Even if you have never gone to prison or even been arrested, nobody is perfect.

I got upset at God because to me, He has had numerous opportunities to fulfill His promise, but yet here I am, still as broke as I was back in 2001. You don’t have to believe what I say, because God knows the hearts of man, but when I said I wanted prosperity so I can be a blessing to others, I meant it.

Even when I didn’t have much, when I got financial support from readers, I used some to tithe or give an offering to some churches, and I also used it to offer free prison cards or prison encouragement certificates to anyone who asked for one. That was when I was offering it. I am not saying to you that every penny I got was spent on charity, heck, I like to buy something nice for myself every now and then. I don’t think God got upset when I bought a video game or a pair of pants.

But this weekend weighed very heavy on me, because my faith had reached the breaking point. Maybe I was believing that when it REALLY comes down to it, God will either help you, or He will not, depending on how HE feels.

And I felt that God wasn’t fair in doing that, because there are a lot of people in this country that are very prosperous, but don’t care one thing about God, Jesus or their fellow man. How then can God, Who gives power to create wealth (as the scriptures say) allow one person to be wealthy and hoard money to themselves, or swindel it from others, while people are praying for finances and can’t see the bright side of a penny?

I remember saying to myself that I thought God was not being fair, that it seems that He punishes those who try to believe by making them go through some ridiculous obstacle course to qualify for a blessing, when others get blessed without even acknowledging Him. Folks I won’t lie to you, I felt miserable. I laid back down and tried to sleep, and had a hard time of it.

That same day, but earlier, I was feeling frustrated about my faith, and told myself that I would not blog for awhile. But I checked my email and had two different emails, one from a person on a site called prison place, and another from a reader I had not heard from in awhile. Immediately as I read the one from the person from the prison site, something deep inside of me said to write a blog, to encourage that person. I wanted to, but I felt frustrated about my life, and refused. I said to myself, “I am NOT writing, because my faith in God has slipped.”

How can I demonstrate faith and love if I don’t believe God will honor prayer?

The second email was from a person that has been a long time reader of my blogs, and I had not heard from her in awhile. Her email was about how her loved one was giving her trouble, and the felt frustrated in the relationship. This lady had been so kind to me, and immediately I felt that I had to say something, even if just a few words, to encourage her…

But I refused. I said to myself, “I am not writing anything today“. I just didn’t feel that love in my heart, because my faith in a Loving God was low”. I was up watching cartoons to find something to smile and laugh at, while reading a few scriptures, but it just wasn’t working. It was then that I went to bed, not getting a lot of rest.

So today (Sunday) I got up, promising that I was not going to write any blogs today. To me, I felt that God had given these promises with so many loopholes that He could opt out anytime He wanted, with us always being at fault. I mean, God can never be wrong, right?

And in that my faith in God was questioned, because it no longer was about God honoring His word, it was whether He WOULD honor it. He could if He wanted to, at any time. I mean, how hard would it be for God Himself to make bring 1000 blessing to a person inside of one day? He could, if He wanted to.

Times like these are hard because I felt God was stringing me along, I mean, God could, in theory, bless me with $50,000,000 when I am age 88, and then I could die the next day. Technically, God could say He answered my prayer…though I never got to enjoy the blessing.

But that would make God a liar, because scriptures say “the blessings of the Lord, it maketh one rich, and He adds no sorrow to it”. God’s not some twisted genie, that will grant your request with an evil twist to it. It’s like the example of the man who had a genie and wished for a million dollars, and the genie granted it to him…only for that man to be arrested for having in his possession money just stolen from the bank.

My faith today folks was at that breaking point, and I promised myself that I would NOT blog today, or Monday, and maybe not until late this week. So I go through the day feeling kinda down, but not showing anybody around here since it would only worry everybody else. About 10pm I sit down with this headache and neckache and decided to check my email just once, but said to myself that I would NOT answer or blog…

But I had to now.

I got an email from a reader that had been following my blogs for some time, and she is going through some very difficult times. I had spent a bit of time emailing her about staying in faith, and while I do believe she has faith, I do believe she has hit that wall, like I have more than once. She’s come to a point where she wonders if God will do what He says He will do, especially since all the circumstances point in a bad way for her.

I read her email and again I was urged to write, to respond. I wanted so much to say, “NO I will NOT write, I have my own problems!” But my heart could not bear leaving somebody out there like that…against my will, and with what might be a migraine, I had to write.

Why in the name of God am I writing in discomfort, knowing that it may get worse. Why in the name of God am I writing when I have issues with God not answering my prayers? It does not make sense…unless I am not seeing this as God sees it.

So many times we struggle with what the flesh FEELS and what we think we know, that often times we ignore what our spirit knows. We think that God takes into account the things of the flesh, and I would imagine He does to a point. But we completely fail to understand that God does NOT see the situation as we see it.

This might be supported in the scripture that says, “Trust in the Lord with all your HEART, and lean not unto thine own understanding, acknowledge Him in all thy ways, and He will direct thy paths.”

Too many times we get caught up in what we feel and see, thinking that God see it the exact same way…not true at all. He sees the entire picture, far, far more than we can. When we hear bad news, we think it has more power than what God can do. If we have slipped and messed up, we think that God will punish us for our sin, and not hear our prayers or save us when we ask. This is based on what the flesh believes, and it does not believe what God says, even if God Himself told it directly to our face…

Which is kinda what the Bible is…God’s word…in your face.

Understand folks, this is an ex felon saying this, writing this with a headache and neck pains, and upset at God that my prayers for financial blessing have not been met. In the flesh, I have every right to stop right now and say ‘screw it, God just does not care”. But I have seen too many times where prayers have been answered, there is no way I can lie to you and say that God cannot answer prayer.

But when our faith fails us, we start to believe that either God won’t help us, or that we are not worth of God’s help. Folks, I have been there and know what you mean. But the truth is that those kinda thoughts are not what God sees or has. Just now I think of that lady that emailed me about her troubles; she said her sister stands in faith for her. Consider that, if your sister, KNOWING what you did to get in trouble, can stand in faith, and not judge you, and also desiring your prayers to be met, why can’t God, who is far higher than all? Is God incapable of mercy, compassion? Is there any human being living or dead that had MORE compassion and mercy than God?

Think about that when you wonder if God is holding anything against you.

And the person says something that I can really relate to, in that sometimes people like to use God to hide behind as the cure-all answer. One example is when I mentioned about me not receiving my prosperity as I prayed. Lots of ministries have there list of “the 3 ways to receive blessing” or “The 5 steps to answered prayer” and “the 7 mistakes why people don’t receive”. I read so many of those, and it seemed like if I can fulfill those then things ought to be ok, but there is always something else I missed.

It’s like God has a checklist of 4,593 things you have to do in order to receive a blessing or answered prayer. No matter what it is, my not receiving must obviously be my fault. The answers are always God-based.

But to my hurt, I have to admit that the answers SHOULD be God-based. Not because He won’t answer my prayers, because that is based on how I FEEL. But because it is the surest way to get an answer, if you stay in faith. Heck, I would much rather stick with that than any man or woman, since we are subject to change our minds and find fault with anybody.

But I understand how she feels, and felt myself saying “amen” to what she said. She has a point, about that and many things, but my purpose had to be to change her thinking from doubt to faith. And believe me folks, that seemed IMPOSSIBLE because I felt quite miserable. Sometimes I go to bed dreaming that God would touch the heart of some kind people that would make bless me so I can do a lot of nice things. It’s happened before, but it’s been kinda tough lately. So I was not in a positive state of mind to try to encourage her.

Yet my heart said, “just talk about how you feel, and you’ll find a positive spin in it”. Sounds foolish, because you had to know how depressed I felt earlier today, but I did it anyway.

In all I have felt the last few days, I have to still believe that God will honor my prayer. Not because I did good deeds, not because I claim to be somebody great, but simply because I ASKED and put my trust in Him.

No other reason. It’s not about whether you broke the law or not, it’s not about whether you are a good person, it’s based on faith. Further, it is based on you believing that if Jesus said to believe, that ought to be enough…even if things get worse. It does not mean the final outcome will be a sad one.

If you get the chance, read about Moses and what God commanded him to do. God told Moses EXACTLY what would happen, both good and bad, but promised Moses that He would deliver the children of Israel. But when those bad things that God said DID happen, Moses felt that God had failed them all because the circumstances looked bad. But in the end, God did exactly as He said, delivering the children if Israel, and bringing them to a land filled with “milk and honey”.

Even the New Testament has such an example. Didn’t Jesus sit there and tell the disciples EXACTLY what was going to happen? They knew, but as soon as the physical circumstances came, they all deserted Jesus for fear of what would happen to them. I mean, think about it folks, if God’s gonna hold anything against anybody, wouldn’t it be against those guys who cut out on Jesus at the most crucial hour? Heck, even Peter denied Christ three times, and quite profanely at that!

But God didn’t look at the actions of the flesh, He knew their hearts. God sees things we cannot possibly see. If you are worried about going to prison, and have prayed for a favorable outcome, God has not abandoned you just because the situation got worse. Even if you feel down, it does not change how God feels, because He sees it from a far different perspective, not as your enemies see it, and not how YOU see it.

If you are concerned about a loved one in prison, don’t get too rattled when circumstances seem hard to bear. When a loved one does not seem to be doing what you hoped, or may not be improving, remember that God sees the situation far better than you can, and has far greater patience than you do. No person can be too far gone for God to step in and change them in a second.

So what of me, if I prayed to God for a better life, how do I survive the breaking point of faith? How do I find the strength to tell you that no matter how bad things are, you can get through it, and not only get through it, but to conquer, and overcome? I don’t know exactly how, but I suppose it begins by trusting that God cannot lie. If the scriptures say that “I sought the Lord and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears” then it MUST be true, if I have faith.

And so I don’t think faith is embedded in the flesh, because the flesh does not trust in God. IF the flesh did have faith, then we could easily trust God, and never fear. But faith lies in our heart, in our spirit, certainly not in our understanding. So there may well be times where the flesh seems to hit that breaking point, God in Heaven knows that I have hit is so many times I have put a hole in it. But the idea that I keep coming back shows that maybe I never lost faith, just allowed the flesh more authority than I should have.

There’s gotta be some truth to it, else I could NEVER have written what I have tonight. I started about 10pm and it is just after 11:30...an hour and a half writing about faith with pain and depression…and yet, what better way to demonstrate faith?

If there is some kinda charge for me to help, then I simply have to give you my best. I would have asked God to do the same if I needed help. I know many of you are facing very troubling situations, and many of you are surrounded by negatives situations and circumstances. As a guy that did time, and has been kicked in the face by “prison support” sites and “Christians” alike, I know the irony.

It’s all too easy to give up. It is far easier than fighting on. But somewhere deep inside of you must be a sliver of faith, just a little. If it wasn’t, you would have given up by now. And if you are even struggling about faith, it means you have some.

Look, take a moment and think about your life, think about anything that God has done for you. Take a serious look and think about times God helped you, sometimes without you even asking. Think about any miracles you have had, or seen in loved ones and friends. Take time to consider that there IS a force that can, and desires to help you. Even when I feel down, I cannot lie that God has helped me many times, so I KNOW He answers prayer. I know that is true, even if I feel like He is leading me in circles.

So if that is true, why not believe He can still do it? I grant you, it may not be easy, some nights I get so upset that I refuse to even read one scripture. I say to myself, “I will not read anything because I am mad at God”. But when I do that, sometimes I feel something deep in me saying, “won’t you at least read one scripture? Just one, even if you rush it, at least one scripture to show some faith”. I’ll admit sometimes I read it so fast, almost in contempt, sometimes I am so stressed I cannot read it at all.

But in these things, I have to believe that faith itself is fighting for you. When you want to give up, and ask questions about God and faith, could it be that your spirit is trying to fight for you? Deep down, you don’t want to give up, but the flesh is weak and will fold at the first sign of negativity or trouble. It wants to give up without even giving faith a chance. Times like this you have to hang in there, even if you feel terrible for days, you can’t give up.

One day things will turn for me, and when it does, I assure you I will be a happy guy, and I will be able to do things I have dreamed of doing. If God’s word is worth anything, then it’s GOT to happen. And the fact that I just spent almost 2 hours writing on faith, when I thought I had none, has to mean God has not given up on me at all… or you either, otherwise I would never have written this. I didn’t write this just to myself, although it seems to be working since my headache has lessened. I might still take a hot shower and maybe let that hot water hit my neck and help me mellow out, but I actually do feel a little better than when I first started.

But I wrote this because some of you need to understand that God does NOT want you to give up. Many of you out there are trusting God to answer your prayer, I say in even small faith that God wants to deliver you out of any trouble you have, or answer your prayer, but you have to stay in faith, just because things LOOK bad does not mean they will be.

All this summer they talked about how hurricane season and what we could expect. The Weather Channel (which I LOVE) had all kinds of promos about Jim Cantore and made it look like he was prepared for the worst storms of the summer, all in some anticipation that we were going to get a bunch of hurricanes.

Many people feared it because well, it’s hurricane season. But correct me if I am wrong, how many hurricanes hit our shores this summer (as of September 6^th 2009)…

None. One tropical storm barely grazed our coasts.

Just because things are favorable for bad tidings does not mean it will be…God always has the last say. Even if 1000 people are against you, if you are trusting in God, there is always a way.

I say to you again, don’t give up. We’re going to slip and fall often, as I am perfect example of. To be sure, if God was vengeful, I would be dead long ago, because I have, in my haste, been angry to God for taking forever to get around to answering prayer. But I have to believe He sees the hearts of man and woman, and knows that even when you feel really down, He knows that there is still faith in you.

Give God a chance to change your situation to something far better than you see now. Please don’t give up on the things you asked for, hold God to His word. It’s HIS responsibility to make it come to pass, if only you believe.

Well, it’s almost midnight, by the time I post this on the blog sites, it will be midnight. I will try to answer my emails after that, but to be sure, I did not think I would be blogging this late at night.

Perhaps God is laughing at me, because HE knew I would…..

Prison Segs aren't always so bad.

Nolaw97 — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:46:00 GMT

Prison isolation isn’t always bad

Well, we have a rainy Monday morning…awesome!

I always liked rainy days, it seems kinda more mellow. At this time of year, it also means that we are about to step out of the summer and into fall. To me, that means cooler weather, college and pro football and soon to come, the holidays.

Which reminds me, I have ALREADY seen a Christmas commercial, can you believe it? Sears had some commercial yesterday talking about some Christmas card or something, can you believe that? Not even in September, and the first Christmas commercial has been thrown at us.

Anyway, I wanted to talk about a subject based in part from a reader who spoke about her loved one spending some time in administrative segregation. There are different words for it, depending on where you are. Some call it the hole, some call it isolation, some call it seg. It all means about the same, although each prison would describe it differently.

I wanted to reflect a bit on this, and speak from the lesser known angle. Now, we know that there are many people that have a very, very hard time in this single cell, and most times if you are put “in the hole”, it is because of punishment. But the very definition of segregation means “to separate” from other people. We know the social definitions of that, as witnessed in parts of South Africa and even here in our country, but for the purposes of this blog, I want to keep it to just prison terms.

Most times, when an inmate commits an offense, he or she will get a write up. But sometimes when the offense is more serious, they can be taken by officers and put in a seg cell to await a hearing. They will spend time there until a decision at the hearing is made, and if he is found guilty of it, he may remain in that cell for a longer period of time. Now I skipped over a lot of details, but that is for another blog.

To be sure, many guys hate being in the hole, because in general, lots of inmates don’t like being separated from other guys. It means loss of social contact, or maybe a hustle they are missing out on, or loss of privileges, like maybe television, canteen or visitation. Being in the hole is punishment, but it carries a loss of other privileges, making the stay there even tougher.

But it’s not always bad, if you have a different mindset for it. I have spent time in the “hole” three different times. The first was when I first went to county jail, spending almost 17 months in one. The second time was while at Pasquotank Correctional, the result of a fight (and a busted mouth). The third time was in Guilford Correctional, the result of Sanford Correctional bearing false witness on me to get me off the camp.

Most times when a guy goes to seg, they are emotionally charged and angry. But sometimes when a guy goes to seg, they see the chance to mellow down, and have time to themselves, something you usually don’t have in population. Now understand, every prison is different so I cannot describe the set up of every prison and how much privacy if any an inmate would have. I can only go on what I went through, to give you a kinda idea of what it can be like.

Lots of people worry when they hear of a loved one going to isolation, and for good reason. Lots of times it just seems that an officer cares even less for an inmate while he is in seg, than if he was in population. And with your movement extremely limited, and most privileges taken away, it can really be a hell hole…perhaps part of the origin of that term “in the hole”.

(Actually the original term likely stems from the fact that in some prisons, an inmate was quite literally put in a hole in the wall, something that nowdays would seem highly inhumane)

And I can write much more on the negatives of the hole, because to be very sure, there are many, but I wanted to twist this just a bit and tell you why sometimes it isn’t all bad. This is based on the mentality one might have to have in order to deal with these extreme stressful times.

As a first time felon, and with all those stereotypes of inmates, I personally didn’t want to be anywhere near other inmates anyway. I just didn’t know how things were going to work. To make matters worse, I was a recent college graduate, and LOOKED like one. I met lots of guys in prison who saw me, and heard how I talked, and said, “you sound like one of them college boys”.

So to me, isolation was fine, it allowed me to keep to myself and not be bothered. But in most cases there is a limit on how long you remain in privacy. It’s ok to be to yourself, but it is not good (in theory) to be isolated for so long. In fact, many jails and prisons might even limit you on how long you are in the hole, for fear that the inmate might break down mentally.

Consider again…I was in the hole almost 17 months…..

But to me, this was fine. I needed the time to get a hold on myself, to figure out what my life was worth, what I was believing for, and how I would be able to survive this extremely difficult ordeal. Sometimes you need to have time to yourself to reflect, and think about things that you normally can’t do in the midst of other people, whether strangers or not.

There are a lot of benefits that most would not consider with being in isolation, if you set your mind in the proper perspective. One that was pretty obvious is safety. I mean, if you are in iso, the only person you have to worry about is….YOU.

Although there are exceptions. Sometimes YOU can be your greatest danger, in my case when I attempted suicide. And early in my incarceration I found that a bad officer can also be a danger to you, as I witnessed when a young juvenile was attacked by an officer while in his cell.

Outside of that, you don’t have any worries about somebody while you sleep. That creates an aura of calm, knowing that you can at least get rest. What I also discovered, as far as the county jail hole, is that your canteen is also safe…I mean, who’s gonna eat that honeybun…other than you?

In some prisons and jails, there is always the fear of having your belongings stolen, or bullied. Lots of inmates have their personal items stolen from them, or just taken. I can give you many sad stories about that, but I think you have heard of many anyway.

When I was in the hole, in county jail, I knew that whatever I ordered from canteen would be perfectly safe in my cell. When there is a security of your belongings, it is one less stress you have to carry. And the advantage about that is you can eat anytime you feel like it. Many times when my heart was heavy, I would intentionally skip meals out of depression, but if I really needed to, I could grab a snack and give myself a little energy.

It’s also come in handy a few times, because while in the hole, I shared with some other inmates, not because they TOLD me to, but because I wanted to. One of many examples was a juvenile that was put in a cell right beside me. I think he was 17, and I remember being depressed about my life when I heard him call down to a few other county juvies, to see if they had any canteen. He was willing to pay $5 for some canteen.

Hold up…let me try to paint this picture better…

Imagine if you were in a hallway, facing the cell doors. From your left end would be cell #6, then the next, cell #5 and so on, going left to right. Each cell door was a huge and heavy steel door, with a slim “trap door” much like a mail slot, but a little wider. Two cells are connected by a hole at the bottom of the shower, which lead out into a smaller room between the two for water drainage. So cell rooms 6 and 5 are partially connected only through that little square hole on the bottom. Cells 4 and 3 the same way and so on.

Now, let’s get back to that example….

The juvie was a federal inmate, and just wanted some snacks, and willing to pay for it. He was in cell #6, I was in #5. He was calling down to the other juvenile inmates trying to see if he could buy some canteen. I sat in my cell, not wanting to get involved in any of it, it wasn’t my concern.

The other boys promised to send him some canteen if he sent the money first, and as a guy that spent a LOT of time in that hole, I got to know a lot of inmates, including them…and knew they were broke. I felt that they didn’t have any canteen to barter for, and that was confirmed when I heard the guys in cells 4 and 3 conspire to take the money and not send him anything.

It was none of my concern…but something told me to do something.

Knowing this federal juvie was about to get cheated, I got up, grabbed some snacks and got in my shower stall, where that drainage hole was…

(Don’t get freaked out, it is surprisingly MUCH clearer than you think, because inmates clean their own rooms several times a week.)

I called to the fed juvie and told him to stick his hand in the hole. With the cell rooms being side by side, he would have to stick his hand in the hole and make a blind reach to the left. I would have to make a blind reach to the right, and if our arms are long enough, we could actually touch…or in this case, pass things.

I gave him a couple of snacks and he was thankful. He wanted to give me some money for it, but I refused. I didn’t give him the snacks as a barter, I gave it because he wanted it. It also cut off the scam those other boys were trying to do. I made a pretty good friend with him, that lasted for quite awhile in that jail.

So you can see that there are some benefits to being in the hole. Granted, most of it can be mental torture, and being in “a box”, but that does not affect every person. Some guys actually LIKE being in the hole.

Personally, I prefer isolation or single cell to dormitory living in prison, but I can see benefits to both. If I had spent most of my time in prison under seg conditions, I would not know nearly as much as I would have. It was by living around other inmates that you learn more about prison, not so much while you are in a single cell.

If you ever read my first couple of “Grades of Honor” books, you know how I made the best of my time in a double cell in Pasquotank Correctional. It just seemed so ironic that in the worst days of my life, I had so many good things happening for me while I had a cell. But the moment they “promoted” me to minimum custody, life got much more challenging. During those times I ended up in the hole once for a fight…another story to tell you one day.

I sat in that cell with a busted lip, wondering if it would ever stop bleeding. But in my frustration, there was a great peace about it. I mean, I was in a single cell, they let me keep my radio so I could listen to any games on the radio. I had a Bible and I did read a little, and overall there was a sense of peace that I could sleep anytime I wanted. In the midst of troubling times…I had great peace. I was ok with it.

The other time was when I got thrown in a state car and zipped from Sanford Correctional to Guilford Correctional and put in the hole for some REALLY trumphed up charges by the warden. I am not trying to imply to you that I was some angle being set up, but in this case, it is kinda close. By no means was I guilty of the charges the put on me, but it was clearly a case of retaliation.

So I was in the seg cell with a great possibility of being hit with a major charge, which, if found guilty, would have sent me down a security level at least. And just who is going to believe an INMATE over a warden, two lieutenants and a case manager?

I submit to you, it did not look good for me.

But even then, even upset at how these people were doing me, there was some level of calm in my cell. Sure I was really pissed at the false accusations, but it was much wiser for me to get my head together, and try to prepare a defense for myself. My disadvantages were many, including that the prison I was sent from never even told me my charge…that is against the DOC policy.

If a guy is detained or sent to the hole, the prison has to tell him what his charges are. I remember sitting in that room at Sanford, with shackles on my hands and feet, as the officers tried to talk to me about signing this or that…and I said to one of the officers, “I don’t even know what my charges are”. One officer said to me, “I think you do”.

What, am I supposed to read his mind???

They never told me what my charges was until days later while on the other camp, in the hole. How do you prepare a defense for yourself if you have no idea what the charges are? So you can see my situation. Yet even in this, there was a level of calm, because again, I had privacy, something I value. With that privacy came a level of calmness, and I will attribute that to the peace of God…because I would have clearly gone ballistic in that cell under such conditions.

That same peace allowed me to think, to pray and to stay calm under those very stressful situations. I won’t tell you more about that situation, that is for another time, and it would likely stretch out about 10 more pages anyway.

My point in these things though, is that sometimes an isolated cell can be quite intimidating to a lot of guys, but sometimes it can be your refuge, if your mind is in the right place.

I could rehash 100 stories of being in the hole, the people I got to know, the times of peace I had , the times of pure frustration and depression I had. A lot of things happen in the seg cells, we assume that once you put an inmate in there, nothing meaningful happens. That is not true at all.

And to me, I would rather do time in there than with population. It minimizes aggression and gives you some level of security of self and property. I didn’t say it was like staying at the Hilton, because there are drawbacks a plenty, but if you can give priority to peace of mind and privacy, then I think it can be helpful.

Some inmates do prefer to be in iso than population, but for most, that is a limited idea. Lots of people see such an idea as a “vacation”, to get away from population for a time. But most guys that get put in seg for such a “vacation” end up begging to get out, wanting to get back to population so they can mingle with other people again.

I would have rather spent my time in seg cells, but ironically many advantages came from me being in population. I managed to help a lot of guys in prison because I was in population, and I actually got kicked out of several prison because of it. And even now, the benefits of doing time in population are obvious…I am able to talk about prison because I lived it through population. There are numerous things I could not have told you about, if I had not gone through prison via communal living. I could still tell you about many things of prison from the eyes of an inmate in a seg cell, but it would be quite limited.

So oddly enough, my time in population, which I disliked, has allowed me to speak more about prison than when I was in a seg cell, which I actually preferred. Anyway, I don’t want you to think that inmates all love seg cells, most hate them, for many very obvious reasons. But for some guys, it may well be the best place to do their time, if they don’t want to be bothered. To be sure, I can agree with that.

Fighting Discouragement

Nolaw97 — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 03:57:00 GMT

Prison Talking: Fighting Discouragement

Discouragement: To dishearten, to cause to lose hope or confidence

Let’s talk about this for a bit folks.

This seemed like a good subject to pull up, since it is something everybody faces one time or another, whether you are free, incarcerated, rich or poor. But I am going to keep this only to a level for those with loved ones in prison. I want to relate this only to those who have done time, doing time, fear of doing time, or know somebody in those previous three elements.

And I am making this harder on myself in that at this moment, as I write this, I DO feel discouraged. Some things didn’t quite work out for me as I thought it might, so when I came home today I was kinda…discouraged.

I took a shower and kept asking, “why didn’t it work”. I was really believing for something to go my way, God in Heaven knows I have had a tough time getting my life together after getting out of prison in 2001.

And sometimes things look like it’s going to be ok, and you are smiling and full of hope, but there are also times where you crash and burn, and wonder where your faith is, or even where God is.

I’m going to try to talk you through this, as I fight this myself. To be sure, I don’t FEEL so encouraged at this very moment.

I say that not just because of some disappointments tonight, but it just seems that when you get one disappointment, all the others seem to pile up on you, as if one long string of failure. One can start to wonder, “when will things turn around for me”.

Some of you are in that position with a loved one in prison, and you just have not turned that corner, to be able to handle missing a loved one. Others, like me, have done time, but it seems like you have to be able to raise the dead and walk on water before society gives you half a chance to get your life back.

The purest form of any prison support site, or in my case, my blogs, is to support, or encourage, which as we all know, is the direct opposite of DIS courage. We know that if you encourage a person, you are GIVING them hope and confidence in a situation or matter. But to DIScourage is to do the exact opposite.

How can you fight this heavy weight on your heart and not give up altogether? I have to use myself as an example, because I kinda know me better than most people know me.

When I was in county jail for almost 17 months, there was a really severe battle in my heart and mind (and spirit) to believe that there was a higher power, that being God, that could help me, if I asked. I actually have been in church for awhile, and had been a Christian for awhile, but up until my senior year in college did I start believing that God was a God that could (and WOULD) hear and answer ALL your questions, if you chose to believe in Him.

It was during those months in that cell that I started to develop my faith that God was not some incredible entity that just watched over us, ready to smite us down with the Heavenly lightning bolt. It was during that time, the worst time of my life, that I began to read the Bible and see that God was not that kinda entity…in fact, the Bible says that He wants us to call Him…Father.

Why? Because according to the Bible, He loves us.

Now to a person in the midst of a real test, that sounds corny. I wondered how God could care about me, when I am sitting in a jail cell, certainly looking at doing prison time…and HARD time at that.

There was no hope for me, none that I could see. It explains why I tried to kill myself more than once, as some of you have read in my blogs.

At that time of my life, I was discouraged, I had no hope or confidence in a better day. And what was it based on? It was based on the natural facts that were right in front of my face. I was in jail, my lawyers told me that I was looking at some serious time, but there MIGHT be some hope that it won’t go so bad. I had this hang over me like a 40 pound weight around my neck. There was no sign of any hope for me at all. NONE.

I might as well be dead. There was no hope, or confidence in things getting better.

But if there was no hope, how then did I live to get through all that? What ENCOURAGED me to hang in there? It wasn’t any person, because I didn’t have a lot of visitors. The only thing I could attribute the change to was words…

Mere words…and yet I suppose it was more than that.

As much as I saw the natural circumstances, deep inside I kept saying to myself, “things have GOT to change for the better”. Somehow, some way, I had to believe that there was a chance for things to get better for me. And when you start to believe even just a spark of that, you have the ability to fight for some encouragement. And those words came through reading scriptures.

I am not going to sit here and tell you that I spent every day reading scriptures, but I spent a LOT of time doing that, and writing to prison ministries and any faith filled ministry I could get an address to. All those things started to add encouragement to my heart… and in doing so, there was hope building, a confidence that no matter how bad things look, it is subject to change.

Human nature ironically relies on the spiritual when all the human resources run out. Only when we have nowhere else to turn do we start to believe in a higher power to change things. But many times, it takes us “bottoming out” to see that. I suppose one of the reasons is because as long as we can rely on man, we don’t care about God.

In fact, there is a scripture I read on that very idea. There is a scripture that goes, “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards Him” 2 Chronicles 16:9. But I suggest to you, READ the entire 16^th chapter to get the full meaning. A king that God blessed feared an enemy, so that King too gold and silver from the temple of God to pay off an ally to fight for that King. The ally did win, but a prophet came to that king and told him that since they decided to trust in man, God would reject them. This was said because the prophet reminded that king how God saved that same king from an even larger enemy before, yet this king chose to put their trust and confidence in another MAN that GOD.

I believe if that ally had lost, only THEN would he have cried to God, because it is the last resort…when man fails utterly, all we have to hope for is God.

When we lose confidence and hope, we are discouraged, whether we’re talking about a mom who just had her only son sent to prison for life, or a wife with a husband doing 20 years, or an ex felon who did his time, but can’t get his life together. In any case, it can be very discouraging when you can’t see hope or confidence.

If you have a son in prison doing life, did anybody come to you and say, “don’t worry, he’ll get out in 25 years, he won’t be in there the full term”? If you have a loved one in prison, did anybody come to you and say, “don’t worry, nobody’s going to hurt your loved one while he is in prison, and when he gets out, he’ll get a great job making $100,000 a year.

Did anybody encourage you like that? No.

But what we do get in great abundance is negative news, which only discourages us. Each time I talked to my lawyer while I was in jail, it was never good. I must have had like 25 hearts, because each time I met with my lawyer, it got broken.

But when things get that bad, it was absolutely critical that I find hope, often where there was none, and the only place I could go was the Bible, to find a word from God that could keep me going, some word of hope.

Is there ANY words or scriptures in the Bible that we can use to apply to discouragement? Surely if God cares about you, there is something in your Bible that says what God can do for those who are discouraged, or troubled, right?

And this is where the fight lies folks, in that very idea. IF you don’t believe that God can do what that Bible says, then you have no hope or confidence in things getting better. Remember folks, discouragement is “to cause to LOSE hope or confidence”. You are looking for something to ENCOURAGE you, to GIVE you hope and confidence. In the midst of trouble, you must find something to stand on, to support you, to give you confidence that even though things are bad now, and EVEN if they get worse, there is a way to get through this and even triumph.

See, lots of people think that God won’t help those who get in trouble, or are in trouble, because that’s some crazy form of “tough love”. This is foolish thinking, because God is always looking for a reason to help those who call out for it. Now I grant you this, lots of times you’re not going to buy fully into that, take it from one that has been there numerous times. But that is because my discouragement was very low… kinda like when I got home awhile ago.

I felt very low on hope and confidence that things were ever going to get better for me, sometimes it just feels like I can blog 10,000 posts, and if I die tomorrow, nobody will care at all…in fact there maybe some people who might even be glad to see me leave this world. Sometimes it just does not pay to be a human being.

But at those times I have little hope, I have to hold on to what I have left. If you notice, that definition of “discouragement” did NOT say that you lose ALL hope or ALL confidence. It says you lose, but not all.

I can go to a casino with $100, and lose $25...does that mean I am broke? No. I can lose $50, or $75, or even $90, but it does not mean I am broke…(although pretty darn close).

But as long as there is some part of the original sum, I still have SOME. Same with hope and confidence. Discouragement robs you of SOME of your hope, and SOME of your confidence, but not all. It is from there you must try your best to hold on to. But when it gets that low, it is highly critical that you feed that hope or confidence something to keep it stable. This is where your faith comes in.

As I said before, often times when we hit the wall, with nowhere else to turn, usually we hope for something, a miracle, to change things. Well, where do you think miracles come from…(no jokes about Miracle Whip).

Miracles are situations that happen above what many could do himself, and Who is He that can do these things? God.

So why is it important for us to find a way to stay encouraged, to keep our confidence? Because in doing that, we create the venues for God to work through… that being faith. Scripture says “faith is the substance of things HOPED for, the evidence of things not yet seen”.

Some say that “faith” and “confidence” can almost be interchanged, because they mean almost the same thing…well, if that is true then consider again the definition of “discouragement” which is to lose hope and confidence. It seems to make some sense because we see in the Bible that if faith is the substance of hope, then those two cannot be interchanged; they are two separate items.

When you are discouraged, you are losing, or have lost some hope and confidence. When that happens, and you lose this, you are losing faith, and scriptures also say that “without faith it is impossible to please God”, in Hebrews 11:6.

When I felt discouraged in that jail cell, I was losing faith. I was losing hope that things could get better, and that confidence, or faith, was being lost as well. But when I worked on building faith, I was encouraging myself through scriptures.

Why was I able to do that?

Because I decided that it was all I had to count on now, even if my lawyers were good, and they were, I promised myself to rely on God, because a good lawyer can still lose, but trust in God never loses. It was a tough decision, but I decided to have hope and confidence in God…not man.

Now this does not mean I refused my lawyer and told them I didn’t care what they did, it just meant that whatever happens, I am trusting God to make things happen in my favor.

But how did I encourage myself to do that? I did it by trusting the words of the Bible. It had to become real that if people call that book the LIVING Bible, it means God’s word has not changed. The words written back with Moses, Abraham, Noah, Job, Jacob, David and anybody else, including Peter, Paul and Jesus, all those words are just as valid today as if God said it to the believer.

It has to be real to you for it to give you hope, and confidence…if not, then it won’t.

When you start to believe that God can…and WILL if you believe, then you begin to encourage yourself through that spiritual strength. And the thing is, this is a hard fight because naturally you want proof, you want to see how God is going to do it before you buy into it. Just as we see natural signs of negativity, we desire to see positive ones as well. But lots of times that just does not happen, forcing us to believe in things we cannot see…

I believe that is called faith.

And sometimes it can seem unfair. It’s like one person said to me in an email, it just seems sometimes that God sets the bar just out of your reach, and if you can’t get it, that is just too bad. Believe me, I know how that feels, and it can be so very frustrating. Sometimes it just feels like when you are trying your best to have faith, God raises the bar one inch above your reach, and if by any means you can manage to reach that bar, He jacks it up another 45 feet…

How many of you know what I am talking about?

It’s like the times you are trying your best to stay encouraged, something comes along to discourage you, and you fall down, losing hope and confidence. And this always comes from natural signs of negativity of fear. We as human beings need to see proof that God is on our side, not just what is written in some old book, right?

But I suppose if we got such proof, we would not believe any more than we already do, or it would fail at the first sign of bad news. I suppose this is why Proverbs 3:5-6 says “Trust in the Lord with all your HEART, and lean not unto your understandings. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path”.

Faith is not based on natural signs, it is the evidence of things we cannot see. It is the substance of your hope that God can help you, even in tough times. If you can believe that, if you can even find just a sliver of faith in that, then you are indeed fighting discouragement, and encouraging yourself.

I spent a lot of dark days in that cell, and there is absolutely NO way I could have lived unless I found a reason TO live. And to live, you had to have hope for something, a confidence in something. As terrible as I felt at times, I fought, sometimes in tears, to believe that somewhere there is a God that cared enough for me to help me out of a jam.

And the funny thing is that we think of God a million miles away, but scriptures say He is extremely close…even inside of us. John 14:23 says, “If a man love Me (Jesus), he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make our abode with him”.

When you think of it that way, it is quite possible to see that when you are in tough situations, you are not alone, but it is still important to encourage yourself that God can, and WILL, help you out.

Encourage yourself that He gives power to the faint, and to those that have no might He increases strength (Isaiah 40:29)

Encourage yourself that in God you can put your trust, what can man do to you (or your loved one)…(Psalm 56:11)

Encourage yourself that if you seek the Lord, He will hear you and deliver you from all your fears (Psalm 34:4)

Encourage yourself that if trust in God, no evil shall befall you, neither shall any plague come near your dwelling because He gives His angels charge over you to watch over you (Psalm 91-9-12)

Encourage yourself that you can do all things through Christ (Phil 4:13)

Encourage yourself that you have victory if you believe, because He that is in you (God, Christ) is greater than he that is in the world. (1 John 4:4)

Encourage yourself that with God nothing is impossible (Mark 10:27)

Encourage yourself that if you abide in Christ and He in you, then you can ask what you will and it shall be done unto you (John 15:7)

When you read and believe these things, you have to make a decision…can I truly believe that God will honor His word, or are the circumstances around me just too great to bear.

One answer will give you confidence…the other will steal it.

And again, this isn’t going to be easy for lots of you, it was a real fight for me in that jail cell, and many times since then. Even today I come back home feeling kinda broken, wondering when, if EVER, I was going to turn that corner. It’s very frustrating folks when you do the best you can to find a life, while spending a great deal of time trying to help others. I wrote on one of my blogs once that I would financially be better off flipping burgers for McDonalds than writing blogs. And it certainly takes a lot of heart to write what I have written over the last several years. Heck, even tonight I spent over an hour writing this.

So it can be discouraging when you try and try and try, but just when you think there is a change for the better, things don’t pan out. It steals your hope and confidence, which is exactly how I felt earlier. It was actually a bold move to even write this blog, because if I really spoke from feelings, this blog would not be so positive.

Yet as I begin to close, I see that in my stressed and depressed state, I took the time to share this with you, not to beat you up with negativity, but to ENCOURAGE you to hang in there. Trust me folks, I’ll be ok, maybe watching some Cartoon Network or Boomerang to get a few laughs will cheer me up, maybe playing a video game… or, maybe going back and reading God’s word.

I won’t lie to you, I don’t feel like throwing a party, but I think deep down, I am holding on to the hope and confidence I have…it must be true, otherwise I would have never written this much tonight. I keep thinking maybe sometime soon I’ll be able to look back at all this and laugh, maybe one day I’ll hit the Powerball like some guy did for 259 MILLION. That sure would buy me a few new pairs of pants.

But I believe that although I came home discouraged, I am not out of hope and faith. I still have some, and in writing this blog tonight, I managed to encourage myself a bit, I truly hope I did a little for you. I just kinda hoped to write through some feelings and get you to see what an ex felon goes through sometimes. Some days are indeed tougher than others, many of you can understand that. Some of you have a loved one in prison, and you might be ok for a few days, but some days come crashing in on you. Those are the days you feel discouraged, when you feel like you have lost hope.

Well, part of that IS true, you may well have lost hope but you did not lose ALL hope. Take confidence in that, because as long as you can believe, all things are possible. Don’t trade that in for a sad ending ok?

Anyway, I better go, it might be midnight by the time I post this on my blogs, but I feel a little better after talking it out. I hope you got some mileage out of it, and not give up. If you won’t give up on my blogs, I will do my very best to not give up on helping you. Hang in there ok?

Sharing thoughts about prison

Nolaw97 — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 15:31:00 GMT

Prison Talking: To Support, One Must Care

It is nearly midnight as I start this, but I think what I will do is blog a little now, rest and wake up tomorrow and finish it. Most times when I start a blog, I try to finish it, then post it, but I wanted to at least lay something down to get my thoughts in order before coming back to it.

This is written for, and response to, a person who was kind enough to comment on one of my recent blogs, “The Prison Cell Door Is Open”. If you missed that, jump back a few blogs and check it out. Basically it is just an open invitation to those who wanted me to talk about prison issues.

And I take great pleasure in getting emails or nice comments, because it gives me encouragement. I think for every one that responds, there may be 20 that read but don’t respond. It’s ok, because I realize not everybody can build up the nerve to email me, and to many, they might not feel comfortable talking about a loved one in prison.

I can understand that, it is equally uncomfortable talking about my time in prison. But I do it because I know that it is helping somebody. Whether I talk about my first day in prison, my last day in prison, my first day outside of prison or the past 12 months, there are a lot of things I share with the reader, to get to know me a little bit, and what a felon, or ex felon might go through.

It’s not easy I suppose, I mean, talking about my worst days in life is very embarrassing and depressing, but I sit here writing because although it was bad at the time, I sit from a position where I can say that I got through it.

And it is the theme I try to share, no matter how tough things get. In fact, I am going to share with you three (of numerous) points of discussion about prison that I have been asked. I’ll give you the question, the quick answer, then I will go through it in more detail for you:

1. What was the most stressful time during your incarceration?

(answer… the time spent in county jail)

2. Did you ever break down and cry while in prison?

(answer… yes)

3. Is life after prison as hard as some say, and if so, how can one succeed?

(answer…life CAN be harder, but if it is, there are ways you can make it with faith)

Those three questions actually cover the beginning, middle and post incarceration process of my life. I wanted to take some time to share that with you, and see if I can help you see not just the difficulties, but the solutions that one might be able to pull out of difficult situations.

Why is this important? Because people reading these blogs, or posts are looking for some sign of hope. We all know that for a person with a loved one in prison, this can be very stressful. I don’t care if you are a mother with a son in prison, a wife with a husband in prison, a girlfriend with a boyfriend in prison, or anybody with someone you love in prison, these are tough times. I will not try to rank who suffers more because to me that makes no sense. I am reminded of a comment a person said on a site for mothers with sons in prison that I do not agree with. She claims that although I have gone through prison and had tough times, NOBODY suffers like a mom.

No offense…but that is not true at all. EVERYBODY suffers when a loved one goes to prison…and that includes the guy that is IN prison.

When people try to say that their suffering is worse than anybody else, it implies that they glorify the suffering they are going through. There is no glory when you lose a loved one to prison. This is not the time to use such a depressing time to make rank. And when people do that, it strips away the info that ex felons can share that just might be able to help them get through it.

So I share what I can, knowing it is just a sliver of what can be said, but I share it because I want the reader to understand some of the things that inmates or ex inmates go through, so that they can see (hopefully) that difficult times does not always mean a bad end to a story. There are ways to get through it, and to find better days. I say that in faith.

So the first question asks what was the most stressful time in my incarceration, that answer is easy. The time I spent in county jail was the most stressful. It makes sense because it was the initial stages of my incarceration. And for a first time offender, never having been in any legal trouble before, and a recent college grad, this was a MOST stressful time.

It had to have been stressful for me to have attempted suicide a few times.

And you know, when some people hear about that, they reason to themselves, “why would you attempt suicide when you had so much to live for?” It’s easy to say nice and cheery things like that when YOUR life looks great, but when you see it from a person who sees no way out of their situation, and all looks grim, it is different.

The stress that was on me was so heavy and constant that I could wish it on not even my worst enemy. I spent close to 17 months in a single cell, struggling for any hope that I could survive this ordeal. It was during that time I spent a LOT of time in the Bible, trying to keep my hopes alive, and developing some faith. And to be sure, there were many days where I was full of faith, believing that somehow, someway, things were going to change.

But there were other times where I “bottomed out” and felt that maybe death was my best option.

I don’t expect many of you to comprehend that, some of you may not even accept that, and I agree. As long as there is life, there is always hope. But during these times, there was a spiritual warfare in my mind, heart and spirit that would take me 500 pages to write. I spent a lot of time in that cell, and many nights and days were pure hell.

But ironically, it was where I may have developed my faith. Stressful, yes, many days were quite that, but equally there were many days where I read scriptures and just felt that “hey, things are going to be ok if you hang in there”. I managed to meet many different inmates in my time there, with many different stories I could share. Not every day was so bad, and sometimes it just seemed when I was about to give up, Somebody, kept me from doing so. I don’t doubt I was watched over, because there is no way I could have lived through that without some help. So stressful…yeah, but apparently not impossible.

The second question was whether I cried while in prison…absolutely.

When I was in county jail, I cried a lot, because I had the privacy to. In a single cell there were times I felt so low, and cried. I am sure there are a lot of tears on the pages of the Bible I had in that cell. Sometimes when I was very heavy burdened, I would use the shower stall in my cell and cry, just in case I made any noise in my grief. With the water running, nobody would hear this fool cry, nor see any tears if an officer unlocked my door to check on me.

But in prison it was different because I had no privacy.

I had to choose my times carefully, not willing to break down in front of anybody. One of those times was when I took a shower. In one of the camps I was on, the shower stalls were single, not communal. Three walls and a iron barred gate that you could close. Most guys when they took their showers would drape a towel or clothes over that gate, blocking view of any “peeping toms”. I usually went to those showers fully clothes (t-shirt, pants, underwear, socks) and a face towel and body towel. I could use all that to block the gate, and pretty much have complete privacy in that shower.

It was there that I could break down and cry.

I actually wrote about that in my book, and I have written some posts of that a year or two ago on some sites, which actually had some members commenting how it made them cry. Maybe that was because they wondered if their loved ones ever did the same thing. I can’t speak for anybody else, because I would not have wanted any inmate to see me cry, but I share this with you because I know I did.

But take heart in what I shared, because it takes a man with a good heart to cry, a man with remorse to care enough to shed tears. Yeah, there is a lot of grief in it, and I remember quite clearly how heavy burdened I was when I broke down, but I have to believe that sometimes when a man does such, it opens up the hope that God will have mercy on that person. Lots of people do things wrong and don’t care about anybody but themselves. Certainly there are lots of guys in prison that feel that way, but not everybody. Heck, there are LOTS of people that have never set foot in a prison that don’t care about anybody they hurt.

I mentioned in an older blog somewhere that sometimes you HAVE to cry, to kinda get it out of your system. Stress is kinda like a poison that runs through you, and until you get it out, it will continue to weigh you down. I think that crying can release that pressure, that stress, or depression and buy you a chance to look for something more hopeful. It wasn’t like I cried every day in prison, because I didn’t. In fact, I might have cried in prison maybe 5 times or so. Most times after I did, I actually DID feel better, so maybe there is some therapy in that.

The third question was whether life after prison was as hard as some say, and if so, how can an ex felon succeed. Well, I think I am living proof that it can be hard…even harder than one can imagine. I didn’t say that every ex felon would have a hard life after prison, because that isn’t true at all. Many ex felons can go immediately and have a decent life, or a good life, or even a GREAT life. I’d love to think I could say that, but I can’t.

I’m just not there yet.

I’ve been blogging for years, and those of you who have been reading my posts or blogs know the things I have gone through. I think the best word for what I have been going through is persecution.

This is not to imply that I am walking on water, and have a halo around my head, hey, I am just as human as anybody else, and no better. But I have, in my personal life, tried to do good things, only to have it backfire in my face because of my past. Just recently I was reminded of that because with high school football starting, I am reminded of how I helped save a Christian radio station after their General Manager passed away, and how I instituted local high school sports for the station, and hired the staff. Shortly after the first season, I had my job stolen from me by the very man I hired, and the station I saved turned their backs on me.

Folks…can you see the irony?

I know how hard life can be when your desire is to do right, and help others, only to have it crash and burn in your face, while others laugh at you. And I guess I can accept that from many members of society because the don’t know how to forgive and give people a second chance. It’s kinda like Michael Vick, going through what he is going through.

The man did wrong, ok we know that. But the judicial system condemned him to do time, which he did. If the laws of our country are supposed to be fair, then he should have been given every right to try to get his life back AFTER he has served his debt to society. But if that is so true, why then are so many activists trying to prevent him from getting a life?

How long are you going to hold a man’s sin against him? Be careful in that, because God takes that pretty personal.

So I know what Michael Vick is going through in his persecution, and I suppose because he is a celebrity and a public figure, his persecution is indeed greater. But I could counter that by saying that he signed a 1.5 million dollar deal for 2 years…that buys me a lot of Double Quarter Pounder Cheeseburgers.

So, am I saying that life after prison WILL be harder…no, not at all. But I am saying that it CAN be hard…or harder. Well then, if that is true, how do you get through it?

I guess the same way I have since 2001...faith.

Folks, if I didn’t believe things would turn around, there is no way on Earth I could have written this long. Sometime in the midst of your trials you just have to believe that it has to change. That does not mean it will change immediately, because I wish it did, but you just have to believe that it will soon…for you.

My life since 2001 has not been all bad news, not at all. I have enjoyed being around family and friends, I have enjoyed playing video games, I have enjoyed the holidays, I have enjoyed the days when it snowed, I have enjoyed days when I read scriptures and build faith that God is watching over me, I have enjoyed watching cartoons and laughing, I have enjoyed writing blogs that help people, I have enjoyed getting emails from people that are thankful for what I share.

There are many, many things I am thankful for, far too much to list. And it is greater than the negatives I have had. In my troubles and in my trials, there has been low times, to be sure. But when they happen, I try to get a grip and find a foundation that says that things can get better…much better.

I believe that, not just because it is a fancy wish ,but because I believe that God is more than willing to do such a thing for a person who can believe in it. And since I am no better than anybody else, I can imagine it can happen for ANYBODY who chooses to believe.

I mean, think about it, we spend a lot of time believing that things are going to be hard, that they are going to be difficult…how about spending some time believing that things can change for the better. They can you know.

I admit right now I can’t afford that trip to Hawaii, or to get season tickets to a college football team, or NFL team. Heck, right now I need to buy some new pants, and my CD drive on my computer is broke. But I believe things have GOT to get better. Not because of “luck” or the changing of the wind, but because I have put my faith that God will do it for me. And in blessing me, I then can do more to help others…God knows I did it with nothing by writing thousands of pages of blogs…how much more will I be able to do with even greater blessings?

Things like that edge me on, and it gives me hope that if I keep trying to help as best I can, sooner or later my blessings will come. And notice folks, this has NOTHING to do with my past. Man will use that as a qualifier, because the flesh judges continually. We like to bring up the past and use it to condemn a person who has 10 times served the debt, even though he should have served it once. Even the most ironic of groups do this quite often. I would have never thought in my life that an ex felon who wants to write and help those with loved ones in prison could be rejected and spat on by prison support sites, but that has been very true. I would never have imagined that a inmate in prison could actually be kicked out of one prison, and sent to another, for writing grievances and helping other inmates…but that is true.

I would never have thought that Christians would turn self-righteous on a person who helped them, but I have seen this not once…but twice.

And I say this to not get you to think I am not without faults, as I said before, I am not perfect, but my only flaw in those situations was that I was an inmate. One person read a blog I wrote on this a year or so ago and tried to imply that maybe it was MY fault that I had these problems. Funny, she is a perfect example of how persecution works; she read my blog, and chose to take the side of somebody else ONLY because I am an ex felon, and that “Christians can never be wrong”.

Don’t fool yourselves folks.

Yet in all this, here I am, still writing. I could not have written this much unless my heart begged me to share this, in hopes to help somebody. You simply have to care to help, or support another person in their times of trouble.

So to that person who wrote to me, and spoke about how she appreciated my blogs, I am indeed very grateful. She mentioned some things that I certainly agreed with, one being the grievance procedure, which I agree with her as “being a joke”.

She also talked about how the prison often delivered her loved one’s mail to the wrong inmates, and how frustrating it can be. I read her comments and saw numerous things that I could blog on, that can give me a chance to share more. And this is exactly what is needed. Lots of times I sit here wondering what to write about, not because I am out of material, but because there is so much to talk about. But when I get a comment or email from a person, it really helps narrow down what to write, because I simply take that person’s cares and discuss it. It is my direction of what to write about, because if she believes that the grievance procedure is a joke (as do I) then maybe that can be the next blog for me to talk about, one that could easily be a 20 pager or a 5 part series, which would in turn help many others understand what it is about.

So many topics I can talk about, and willing to talk about, if it helps you understand just a little more about prison. I continue to say that I don’t know it all, but I am willing to share what I can if it helps you.

That folks, is true support. I know I am not the best at it, but at least I can try.

Cell Door is still open (new)

Nolaw97 — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:39:00 GMT

The Cell Door is STILL Open

Every now and then I have to pause between my blogs and take the time to remind people that I am still here to try to help, at least as best I can.

I recently have been answering emails from those either with a loved one in prison, or some that are in some difficulties and need to talk to somebody that has been through some of the fears of condemnation or prison.

It’s funny that sometimes when I feel down about myself, I am then required to help somebody else. Imagine the irony, trying to find the strength to help somebody else when I myself need it.

Today was one of those days, yet something odd happened the day before. Last night I was trying to think of a subject to talk about, while also trying to figure out how to get my blogs out there to more people. Even though I get emails and stuff, I can always do with more readers. When I first started blogging back about 2002 or so, many of the sites I blogged on had regular readers and comments. I had between 5-7 different blog sites, and most had many readers. That didn’t even include all the prison support sites I used to write for.

But because I have closed a few blogs and started over, it isn’t as easy as it was before, and to be sure, with enemies from many prison support sites, I won’t be endorsed by many people.

So late last night, about 1am I go to bed, and I try to spend a few minutes reading a few scriptures for faith. But sometimes I kinda get burdened and fail to read, but I always pray before I go to bed. Anyway, while I was in bed, something told me to read some scriptures. Ok, no problem, I can do that anyway. One of the things I read is a gold pamphlet I got while in prison called, “The Promises of God”. It’s filled with about 400 scriptures, each a promise of what God will do for those that believe in His Word. From Old Testament to New Testament, there are many scriptures that show what God will do for a believer.

And usually I read maybe 5-10 and maybe use one to go to the Bible and read the full chapter or context. Now understand here folks, there ain’t no halo around my head, and I am not perfect, but I do my best when I can.

But last night, something told me to read ALL of it, from beginning to end. I rarely have done that in one sitting, but I did last night. I think it was close to 2:30am when I finished, and went to bed.

The next day, (which is today) several things hit me and broke me down, in situations that are only reminders of my past, and how an ex felon just can’t get a break, long after he served his time. My heart sunk as I am reminded that society does not know how to forgive, nor do they want to unless it is THEM asking for it. But as difficult as the day was, I was reminded in my heart that the reason why I read ALL those scriptures, and built up faith, was possibly because God knew what was going to happen today. He knew my faith would be severely challenged, and if I was not prepared, it would have broken me down much, much worse than I could deal with. As bad as today started out, it wasn’t totally bad, and I had the strength to deal with it.

But as I was walking home, my mind kept racing back to the past, and why I was going through so much hell. It’s like the persecution of being an ex felon never stops. I am not trying to make myself an angel, I just want to get my life back and prosper, so I can help others. Not to make amends to those who will continually judge me, because I those kinda people will never be satisfied. But I want my life back, I want to enjoy life so I can turn around and help others by saying, “you can get through this because I did”.

In the warm summer day I was sweating and wiping sweat off my face, wondering why things are so tough, but in that same time, my heart was telling me not to give in to the fear, but to stand in faith. I am convinced that my reading those scriptures last night prepared me for today’s tough situations, and I believed I would get through. But when I got home, those same fears crept back, and kept creeping back.

It was a struggle to focus on faith rather than fear, and I decided to get that little book and read all those scriptures again, from front to back. I had to break this cycle of fear and condemnation, if I am going to get back on top of this. So while I was “watching” the Cubs game on tv, I softly read aloud each and every one of those scriptures. By the time I was finished, I felt better about things.

Now note, nothing has changed, I just feel more faithful that God will look out for me, so I can , in turn, help others. With that kinda faith, I figured I could write a blog today, which would indeed be a show of faith. Trust me, if I felt miserable, there would be NO blog here today.

So here I am, writing a blog to invite you to email me if you need me to talk about certain prison issues. I speak from experience of a person that has seen many different sides of faith and condemnation. I graduated from college near the top of my class, I spent time with some of the worst people in the state of North Carolina. I have praised God for miracles He has done for me but I have also given up on Him when I felt He did not honor His word. I have written FOR prison support groups, and I have been banned and spat on by many as well. I have done time, and even kicked out of some prisons for m writing.

All this, and I still write with hope, because I have to believe that God does want to help those of you that need it. Society says that God does not care about inmates or even the loved ones of inmates…I strongly disagree. But it requires some faith to get through these tough times. Most people reading these blogs either knows somebody that has been in prison, or know somebody IN prison, or know somebody GOING to prison. Some of you may have even been to prison yourselves, or may be in great fear of going. If it is possible that I went through these things for a reason, then the reason may well be to sit here and help YOU.

And don’t misunderstand me, I am not some great prophet coming down from the mountain to share saintly words…it’s just me, but what I share is from the heart of a person that desires to help if I can. If you are reading this and are worried sick about a general prison issue, let somebody help. I can’t help you when it comes to a particular prison in the US, unless you have been to the ones I have been in here in NC, but maybe I can talk to you about faith in prison, the chow hall, visitation, what goes through the heart of a first time felon, and numerous other things.

If you need a hand to walk through this, let me help. I do NOT claim to know it all, and I try to make that very clear in my blogs, but I am willing to do what I can to help you. I will write as much as my heart tells me if it will help you get through this. Some of you that read my blogs or have emailed me know I will do that.

The cell door to my blog is open, which makes sense because originally my blogs were called, “The Prison Cell” but now changed to “Prison Chains Broken”. It takes either a faithful and bold person to write this…or a complete fool. And I have been ridiculed for my writings, from people whining about it being too long, to some questioning whether I am as credible as another inmate, but I try to do my level best to give you hope.

Some of you are at the end of your rope, and have nowhere else to turn, and sometimes there just isn’t enough information form an ex felon’s point of view to help you get through this. I’ll admit that maybe for every ex felon that tries to share info and intel, there are probably 1000 that talk about prison issues but have never been incarcerated. And where there is a great need to hear from anyone who can contribute, it is always amazing how so many men and women have been through the incarceration process, but so few talk about it.

So today I am taking a step in faith, in light of a difficult day I have had, to believe that there are people that need a little uplifting in a situation regarding prison issues. If you don’t know where to go, I suggest first to pray about it. But if after that you need somebody to talk to or to talk about the situation, my cell door is open to any that need something positive to stand on.

If it means me writing 20 pages on what the first day of prison was like for me, I will do it, if it means 15 pages on why inmates need money, fine. If 10 pages on whether inmates can believe in miracles, cool. If 5 pages on prison relationships, I can do that. If one page on how you can endure and encourage your loved one, I will do that.

The ball is in your court, because I can only write what is in my heart, or what a person has emailed me about. I don’t put my reader’s specific info out there, because that is none of your business, but I share the general nature of the topic because I know that others may need to hear it too. So if Ms Jones (fictional name) emails me about how Joey (fictional name) is at Mynar Correctional (fictional name) and she is worried that she has not heard from him in a month, I will write a blog or email her back about the general subject, not the specifics that she gave.

In doing that, I will be able to reach many others, while answering (or attempting to answer) her question. My goal is to give you faith, to give you hope and strength, so you can endure this and even encourage your loved one in prison.

This is not about giving up folks, this is about supporting one another. I could not tell you these things unless I myself have lived through it. So for what it is worth, wherever you are reading this, my cell door is open. My most sincere desire is to help you, and with God’s grace and mercy, I believe I can.

Trust me folks, you can get through this.

Will be one year wiser on Labor Day

Reko36 — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:56:00 GMT

It has been awhile since I last wrote on this blog.Suffice it to say, things remain the same between me and my husband. The only thing though is that I am about to make some changes. As I become one year wiser this Labor Day(my birthday), I am setting in motion moving out of the state of VA, and settling myself back on familiar territory. I have experienced 9 years of stress, and almost 7 months of HELL, since my husband has been back. He is still rippin' and runnin' in the streets. The only difference about that now, is that I DON'T CARE. I am so sick of him that it makes me sick to my stomach. I have been going to church, reading and praying still. I haven't been to church the last couple of Sundays, but I plan to be there this Sunday. I have spent my entire summer off, driving him all over creation. That is NOT my idea for my vacation. We do nothing together, and I found out as of recently that he is someone that I cannot confide in. Of all the people I would think that he would be someone that I could do that with.We are starting to not get along at all because I have been having trouble with my irritability, and annoyance. He gets on my nerves and I wonder alot how I ended up in this predicament. I REFUSE to be unhappy all of my life. I am now looking to the Lord for my happiness and my peace. Because this person wishes to mess with my sanity or think that he can break me. It is NOT going to happen. They say that God put people in your life for a reason and I have YET to figure out what that purpose is with this man. He has done nothing but cause me heartache and grief. Something that I have not deserved. Like I said before, I will be one year wiser though soon. I am not getting any younger and my tolerance for nonsense has expired. I don't even care whether he moves with us or not when I get ready to move. I don't feel like having to deal with his back and forth from one state to the other, and staying up over there for long periods of time like he don't know where home is. I don't need that in my life. All I need is Jesus in my life, I seek my happiness through the Lord. I don't want to spend the rest of my life miserable because someone thinks that he is in control over me. It just isn't going to happen.I don't know what it is with my generation of people. No marriages stay together, or nothing. They get into them for all the WRONG reasons. A thought that has me thinking about the reasons that I got married to who I have married. Haven't come up with no halfway decent answer, but once upon a time I thought that I was in love. I am now seeing that LOVE has NOTHING to do with it. Because mine has been shattered, stepped on, taken for granted....etc. You name it. And I am truly TIRED........