My Story

That smell. There is no mistaking its strange concoctions, the unique elixir of paint, blood, sweat, and tears. Its aroma is a familiar scent to convicts, cops, lawyers, and those soon to be amongst their ranks. It smacks full force as you step into the corridors of the neighborhood jailhouse, assaulting one's senses like a broken sewer pipe in the backyard. I inhale it for the umpteenth time in my mucked-up life. Shackled and fettered.

The hardest time you do for a crime is done in the little city or county jails—waiting to get to the "big house." You just sit and wait! You wait for court. You wait for mail. You wait for visits. You wait to get out of the claustrophobic den of thieves. It is a collection of all the wickedness in society, concentrated in a very small area. There is a lot to be said for the adage, "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."

Of course, a lot of first-time offenders don't know about prison's proximity of violence, the realization of ready rape, the brutality of isolation. Perhaps if they did, then they just might relinquish their crime-ridden thoughts. Unfortunately, it is impossible to grasp the fact that surviving your first sentence makes one impervious to the shock that is slammed into life at one's first step into the halls of justice. So I am writing this to forewarn all that there is no life in here. Prison is simply a game of survival, meted out daily with various forms of viciousness wrought out by users and abusers of our corrupt society.

Mine is the story of a petty thief crack-smoker turned bank robber. The ugliness replete throughout is told because I do not want to decorate my sins—I am through hiding from my past. I dare my Christian brethren to delve further into my story despite its harsh realities. Life is full of cursing, sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll; as was my past. The veracity of my story is needful, for without the unvarnished truth I could not hope to help others beginning my sorrowful adventure.

I have spent over 25 years battling addictions. I allowed them to corner me: sex, drugs, alcohol, pornography, and finally gambling. We all danced together in a ballroom of deception, where instructions for steps were checked at the door—especially that elusive 12 that so many of us addicts have tried "cutting a rug" to. Perhaps through my story, some of you might learn how to avoid the ballroom altogether.

I do desire to perhaps make you laugh. You may empathize, sympathize or demoralize. The sardonic ways you may see or read in your perspective are a product of my sense of humor, which has been my greatest friend throughout times of intense solitude.

My story is also a story of Jesus Christ revisited in a life that ran from Him. That sweet smelling savor is joy unspeakable. It is a story of the race I truly want to run, not the one that crippled me, strapping me to Satan's gurney and wheeling me about to do his bidding. It's a story living out what someone once said, "Sin always takes you farther than you want to go and keeps you longer than you want to stay." And it is a story of how God turned me around on the tail end of a bank-robbing spree that spanned four states.

My prison stay is still going on for a lot longer than I want, but I chose to give up a life that was death. I chose to quit running from God and turned myself in to dance to that music of courtroom cadences, judges' jingles, and prison blues. I am free now, even behind bars. That is priceless. I now count the cost of convincing others to not go the way of this addict; instead, I reach out to the only Way, the only Truth, the only Life, Jesus Christ.