jail

February 13, 2018

Love Lessons From Jail

“First Corinthians 13…”

I’m opening a small Bible that I brought to give to one of the inmates.

“Where is that?” Jessica asks.

“It’s right here.” I push the Bible towards her, keeping my finger on the page.

Kara glares at her from across the table. It’s her Bible after all. I just gave it to her. Jessica grabs my pen and starts to mark the page.

“Do you mind if I make a little mark here? Just so I can find it?” Jessica doesn’t even look up.

Kara leans forward, starts to say something but stops. She looks exhausted, her hair is a matted mess like she’s been sleeping in the woods, but I catch a little fire in her eyes, then she sits back, shaking her head. She’s too tired to care. “No, it’s alright,” she says softly even though Jessica has already underlined the chapter number, a small mark that she won’t ever look for.

I want to check my watch but I don’t want them to think, no, to know that I am tired too. I stand and walk back over to the whiteboard.

Love is patient…

The topic is Love tonight at the jail. I picked it – it’s February after all. I realized scrolling through past lessons that I had picked Love last February too, but I can’t remember how it went. Better than this, I bet. It’s an off night. Only three came out, for reasons I can never understand, and sometimes that works for the best. A small group is less intimidating, the girls can open up more and God will help me. But tonight it’s two new girls and Gail, an older woman who I swear lives here. Her sentence stretches out past the horizon, due to frequent trips to the hole. Someone told me she lived on the streets with “her man.” But it’s been a while.

Love is kind…

I draw two big hearts side by side and write WORLD over one and GOD over the other.

“Tell me what kind of love the world gives,” and I watch their faces twist up in confusion so I reset it. “Ok, what kind of love does God give us?”

“Unconditional,” the girl with the matted hair says flatly.

“Good!” I write it inside the God heart, then write Conditional in big letters in the other heart. Now they get the game. The God heart fills up with Freedom and Forgiveness and the World heart fills with selfishness and shame. I feel like this is too easy so I throw in some Greek.

Eros. Phileo. Agape.

“Agape sounds Indian,” Gail says.

“No it’s Greek,” I correct her, feeling the foolishness of this conversation. I can see her bumming money at the bus station. Hey do you want to hear some Greek? As soon as I tell them that Eros means sensual or sexual love they completely regress to somewhere around fourth or fifth grade. I sit back down, feeling defeated and a tad disgusted.

Love never demands it’s own way.

I’m praying under my breath as I try to rustle the last shreds of my lesson together. Gail senses my despondency.

“I can be mean sometimes,” she says.

“Well, I know you can be sweet sometimes too Gail. ” I’m touched by her honesty. “And I can be mean too.” My words settle like pretty snowflakes.

Then Gail says, “I wish a was a bird. A big bird.” I wonder where she’s going but I want to think of David writing a psalm about flying away.

Jessica starts to laugh at her. “So you can escape?”

“No, so I can poop on everyone who’s pooped on me.” By now Jessica is sputtering and turning red, and falling into Gail.

Love bears all things…

“Then you want to be a horse!” as she demonstrates the size of horse manure with her hands. Kara is silent, her face expressionless and it occurs to me she may be withdrawing form something. Or very medicated.

“Ok guys, back to love.” They stop laughing and look up. I feel like the kind of teacher I couldn’t stand. Dull. A droning voice. Even my notes wonder what I’m doing.

Jesus made a point of showing us over and over that what we thought we had was beside the point. Five fish. Two mites. Or should we just call down fire and toast them all? I remember one time when my husband and I were pastoring that I confessed to my mother that I felt like telling everyone to go to hell. She thought that was terrific. But it wasn’t – it was a screaming indication that I was spiritually bankrupt. I was sitting at the piano smiling every Sunday, embracing women I considered faithless and teaching their little demons about Jesus in the cold basement. Apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:5) Oh yeah, I forgot. Again.

An exasperated Jesus asks his disciples, “Are you being willfully stupid?” (Matthew 15:16, MSG) They weren’t getting it. Neither was I, trying to love what i thought was worth it, with a small love that I manufactured for my own benefit. And here I was again; a teacher trying to teach something that I understood but didn’t really know. I forgot AGAIN.

Love hopes all things..

“Do you want to know why I’m here?” They are silent. “I’m here because I love you.” The words come out soft and I am as surprised as they are. Yes, that’s it.

“I’m here because Jesus loves me. I don’t deserve it, but He does and He’s put His love in me. That’s why I’m here. Because I love you. And Jesus loves you.”

Kara looks up from the table, her eyes searching. Jessica and Gail are looking straight at me, and I know I saw just a small flash of hope, like a shooting star.

Love rejoices in the truth.

As I drove home that night I prayed for Kara and Jessica and Gail. I knew that despite my dumb lesson in Greek, that the Holy Spirit was able to take my notes and breathe upon them – to feed 5,000 with two loves of bread, to feed three women with the feeble prayers of another woman who knows what it’s like to be held captive, without hope, then set really free. And He is still able to teach an old teacher a new lesson in Love – even when I’m willfully stupid. It just takes a spark, a small spark of humility and a flash of hope. That’s all He really needs.

Love never fails.

*** All names have been changed, except Jesus.

(All Love scripture from 1 Corinthians 13, NKJV)

July 29, 2017

Temporarily A Monster

Confession: I was going to just put a big Temporarily Out of Business sign on this blog. I am in the final steps of completing a book I have been working on forever, and my focus has shifted. The book calls me constantly– when I’m cooking, driving, working, even sleeping– or trying to. Last night I got up after flipping around like a fish on a deck for an hour and reached for a scrap of paper and pen, hoping my scrawl would make sense in the morning. It did, to me only. It’s consuming, especially now that I can see the finish line, I can see an actual book with a cover and pages inside.

So there is some truth to that. Blogging has been edged out of my field of vision, for now. But the bigger truth is the book turns me into a Monster and I’m afraid to come out, to let people see me. Of course, my husband gets to see the Monster. You can ask him, but I’m sure he doesn’t see it as a privilege. I scare myself, then I’m on my knees asking God, “What is wrong with me?”

In Mary Carr’s book, The Art of Memoir, she notes,

“In some ways, writing memoir is like knocking yourself out with your own fist.” Yep, in a lot of ways. Then you wake up on the floor and have to climb back to your feet, back to the past that calls you.

“I’m not done with you yet!”

It’s made me think a lot about reconciliation, or how I can be friends with my own ghosts.

I go down to the county jail every week and sit around a table with a group of women in colored jumpsuits and we talk about this often. They are literally wearing their past mistakes, at least one of them, so it’s an easy subject to approach. So is a sleeping monster. As I sit there with my Bible in hand, I realize I often wear a colored jumpsuit too. I am captive to my past.

Forgive. I say it a lot. It’s a prickly subject to tackle with a group of people who have experienced immeasurable pain at the hands of people they should’ve been able to trust. Or the girl whose brother died in her arms from a gunshot wound. Forgive. If we don’t, we are chained to the past, a short, thick chain. I have experienced the phenomenal freedom and healing that comes from this simple act of obedience. I forgave my father, I forgave my son’s murderers. Why can’t I forgive myself for good and slay the Monster that keeps arising from the smoking ashes of my past?

For the accuser of our brothers and sisters

has been thrown down to earth—

the one who accuses them

before our God day and night. Revelation 12:10 NLT

This Enemy is activated every time a soul says Yes to Jesus. Sure, non-Christians wrestle with the past too. But the Enemy knows we are forgiven and that our pardon is forever. His job is to keep us from realizing we are free, that the door has been unlocked all along.

“God’s most powerful revelation is of His grace.”

I found this quote in the midst of my son, Spencer’s papers. It was just like him to jot down thoughts, often profound ones, in the midst of lists of things to do. Prayer lists in between “oil change” and “taxes.” This statement was easy to pass by, but it caught me, like God was saying Pay attention here!

Grace. The word all on its own brings a sense of freedom and relief, like you want to breathe it. Inhale Grace, exhale Redemption. Maybe it’s that simple. Powerfully and profoundly simple.

It takes guts to look back and be honest. It takes the mercy of God to not let it kill you. And it takes the boundless grace of God to turn it into something beautiful. But the Beautiful is His – His righteousness, His glory along with all of the praise. I still have to look in the mirror every day and say, “You again.” I don’t see beauty or honor, but maybe I can at least see a woman who is free. I don’t have to befriend the ghosts – I can leave them where they are, behind me – with the colored jumpsuit. And then I can show the same grace to others.

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have laid hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize of God’s heavenly calling in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13-14

…and finish the book.

May 16, 2017

The Good Dirt

Behind the house, within the backyard, is another yard enclosed in a chain link fence. When I first saw it, I thought the other yard was an odd cutout of the neighbors yard. Why else would you run a chain link fence through a nice looking yard? But the fence had been there for some time. Now I figure the previous owners, the only other owners, had put it up to protect their garden, probably when deer roamed through.

That garden had vanished when we moved in. Old Mr. and Mrs. Drew had also. He built the house in 1951, just in time to start a family, grow some more kids, bump out the attic for room sake and tack on a sunroom and a shed in the back. He could walk to work, to the Steamship Authority, where he ran the parking lot like it was his own front yard. Then he retired. The wife taught swimming I heard and raised the best tomatoes around. They grew old together, following each other closely into nursing homes and then the grave. In the linen closet upstairs I left the peeling masking tape that the woman’s diligent hands had taped to the pine shelves. “Twin sheets”, “washcloths”. I like to think of her hanging out diapers between the two thick posts in the back, then checking the tomatoes.

“One plants, one waters but God gives the increase.” 1 Corinthians 3:6

I try to remember this when I do anything for Jesus. When I sit in a little classroom at the county jail with 12 poker face women, when I play “Amazing Grace” for the hundredth time, when I ask a dying man if he knows where he’s going. Chances are, others have gone before me and I’m not sure if I’m carrying a spade or a watering can. Or maybe I’m dropping a tiny seed into the darkness. It doesn’t matter though. Only God makes it grow, makes a tomato turn red, makes anything break through the sandy crust of my herb garden

Last week I caught my husband leaning over the chain link fence, staring into the garden. We dug it up three years ago, the ground still rich and dark from the Drews. Living on a sand bar, you appreciate real dirt and we laughed and hollered like we had struck gold. But C.B. knew it could be even better, so we trucked in dirt from a lost farm outside of Bridgewater State Hospital, an ancient manure pile that only insiders knew of, and the dirt, when my husband had finished screening it, looked like Italian espresso. I knew he was looking at the dirt.

When I look at the garden, I see tomatoes, little gold ones and fat red ones, and cucumbers twisting off vines, and I see some squash and jalapeños. So he lets me plant after he prepares. Right beside the garden is a small patch of rocky sand that I call my herb garden. The Dirt Man doesn’t notice it, on purpose, and it becomes a wild tangle of basil with a thyme bush that grows ever larger each year, choking out the oregano and wrestling with the mint. It’s a study in adversity for me because I have no patience for preparing or weeding or even moving rocks. No sissy herbs in my garden.

So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters , but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. 1 Corinthians 3:7 NKJV

The Dirt Man gets ready, and I dream a lot. God made us for each other I think because you need both just to hope. And sometimes you can hope and pray with all your might and you’re still left with just dirt.

“And each one will receive his own reward according to his labor.”

Not how big your tomatoes are or how many peppers you pick, but how hard you work – digging, sweating and praying for rain. This gives me peace when I have a hard night at the jail. Sometimes they just stare at me like I just climbed down a ladder from my spaceship.

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” I asked last week, just so I could stop talking.

They laughed, but it was a sweet laugh, like they were grateful to me just for that.

“Good crazy,” one of them said. And that was enough.

Way in the back, behind the old shed, where the dark forest is overtaking the outer edge of the Drew’s boundary markers, stands a tree. I keep meaning to look it up, but it’s a pretty tree and I know he planted it there, years ago when there was no forest and it was just a sapling. Now no one ever sees that tree, not even the neighbors and even I forget it’s there until I happen upon it when I’m dumping leaves in the compost heap or moving one of the fourteen garbage cans around that my husband thinks we will need someday.

Right now, that tree will take your breath away, like you walked into another world. It’s covered in soft white blossoms, each with a whisper of pink around the center—majestic and lovely like it’s Queen of the forest. No one sees it except for squirrels and angels but it’s no less pretty for them than me.

I think that’s how God’s kingdom works. We plant, then water, then wait. We might wait a long time. Maybe I will follow the Dirt Man into a nursing home and a young woman with a bushel of babies will run her fingers over the old masking tape in the linen closet and smile. Maybe her husband likes dirt. Seasons change.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. Hebrews 11:39

Sometimes when I am having a sad day, when I just want to go home, my husband will smile and say,

One day closer to glory! The reward.

But until then, he will get the dirt ready and I will dream and God will send the rain. There is joy in the going, there is rest in the labors of all who have gone before us and there is a God who loves to plant hidden treasure along the way, a taste of glory here on earth — maybe when you play Amazing Grace 101 times or maybe right in your very own back yard.