FULL DISCLOSURE…THIS IS NOT A PHOTO OF KATIE!
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.
I know many of you enjoy getting updates from my pen-pal, Katie, incarcerated in Erie PA. Well, after us writing to each other for almost 2 years, I finally heard her voice! Yes, she put me on her call list and called me one morning. I knew it was going to happen, I did not know when. When I heard her voice, I almost cried! A voice is very hard to describe, but her voice sounded just like it should for a 33 year old woman. It was light, optimistic and pleasant. Why do I tell you all this? Because I think we ‘outside the fence’ have a stereotypical idea of what a ‘prisoner’ should sound like. Shatter that thought! Instead, think of the waitress at your favorite restaurant, or the teller at your bank, or even the young Mom in your church. She sounds like her. She IS her, except, she made ONE wrong choice. Unfortunately, that one, lead to many more. Suddenly, she is lost in a world she did not grow up in, she did not enter this world in high school, she just made one wrong choice after having children! It could happen to any one of us!
Well, now she has another opportunity to make a better choice. She must decide if this place she calls home right now, will be a ‘temporary stop, leading to permanent change’, or will this be her ‘return to- comfortable place’. She has over 12 more years to think about that. Twelve years to wait as the world continues without her sweet influence. Twelve years that her three children will grow into beautiful young women under someone else’s care. Twelve years to be separated from her Mom, siblings, Dad and many other family and friends. Twelve years to become bitter-or better!
I am sharing this with you not so you feel sorry for Katie, instead I want you to be aware of many others who may find themselves going down the path to destructive behavior. Maybe you know a young person and you can see them making some bad choices. Intervene. Maybe it will help, or maybe it won’t help, but it will be worth it either way. You may save someone from a difficult future, or you may have just freed yourself from the ‘if only I said something’ guilt.
I did not know Katie or her family when I began writing to her. Now, I have the privilege of knowing a lovely Christian family I never would have met. I have the joy of knowing my little effort writing to her, praying for her, and now talking to her, can produce lasting results in the life of a young woman.
My friend, Tom Dugan works in Prison Ministry. He gave me Katie’s address as she was interested in a pen-pal. It has been my blessing to get to know her. Not as a prisoner, but as a fellow human being! She is precious to me! I expect to see her on the ‘other side of the fence’, but not for a long time! She will be older, gray streaks in her hair, and her voice will probably sound different, but she is someone for whom Christ died, and it’s my responsibility to be her friend.
If you would like a pen-pal in prison, please reply to this blog. I will be sure that Tom gets your information.
Below is a poem Katie wrote on Christmas Eve. Please pray for those that are incarcerated!
Hello?
I just wanted you to see me,
but you told me to go change my shirt.
I guess you didn’t notice that shirt
had my heart dangling off it’s sleeve.
I tried to understand you when you told me
to walk a mile in your shoes.
You left me behind choking on your dust.
It’s hard to keep up when the shoes never even fit anyways.
I wanted to believe you when you said
that we were two halves of a whole.
But eventually we found out that we couldn’t shoot up with each other,
and run through each other’s veins.
Instead, we were left with
a
hole…..
Leave a Reply