by Roger Bruner
“Going for a little walk,” I said. “You want some company?”
I hated to turn him down, but I needed some me-time. “Dad, I’d love for you to come, but I … well, I need to do some praying.”
“We can pray together,” he said. Oh, did he want to come with me! I felt twice as bad as before. “We can prayer-walk Red Cedar Lane if you like.”
Great idea. Although I’d heard about prayer-walking, I’d never tried it. But now wasn’t the time to start. Not with a partner, anyhow.
“Tomorrow evening, okay?” How could I make things
clear without hurting his feelings? “I need some private prayer time now.”
I felt like I’d just kicked a gaping hole in some little kid’s intricate sand castle, but Dad pretended to understand. I hugged him again.
“Great idea about Red Cedar Lane, though. That should be a safer place to walk at night than that dark, twisty two-lane road we took to get here.”
He smiled.
“Besides, if I’m not back by the time to go, you can pick me up along the way.”
“You have a flashlight?” Rob said as he walked into the room. He must have caught the tail end of my talk with Dad.
“Some strange old man e-mailed us and told us to bring flashlights or else,” I said with a cackle. “I didn’t have the courage to face the ‘or else.’”
“Tell him the truth, Kim,” Dad goaded me playfully. “I made sure we had everything that was on Rob’s list. All you would have packed was jewelry and makeup.”
He winked at me, and I zipped and snapped my jacket as loudly as I could in protest. But when I giggled once and then chuckled, he gave me a curious look.
“Haven’t you ever wondered what I’d look like fat?” I asked. “I have.”
Dad, Rob, and Aleesha were still laughing their heads off when I stepped outside and turned on my flashlight.
The temperature had already dropped—I could see my breath—but my jacket felt wonderful. After looking both ways—I’d bet no cars had passed that way in hours—I crossed the highway and looked down the long, dark, lonely looking prison road. Red Cedar Lane sounded too elegant to be the entranceway to a prison complex.
As I commenced my walk—actually more of a casual
stroll—I started thinking about Jo, Aleesha, Graham, and the prison ministry and wondering why our small team had so many relational problems. I’d once taken a short, introductory sociology class as an elective, and I still remembered the basics of an activity that involved drawing solid lines connecting individuals to the members of the group they felt the most comfortable with. And dotted lines for less desirable relationships.
I’d try something like that in my head. My version wouldn’t be very scientific, though. Done correctly, the information should come from careful, unbiased observations made over a number of months. I’d have to base mine on limited—and not necessarily objective—observations.
That, and woman’s intuition—and mine hadn’t finished maturing yet.
A solid line would link me to Dad, Aleesha, and Rob since our relationships were excellent, but my line to Jo … That link wasn’t as strong as it could be. My link to Graham didn’t even merit a line, no matter how I hoped that would change.
Dad seemed to link equally well to Rob, Aleesha, and me. I couldn’t tell how he related to Jo. I hadn’t seen him make any effort to speak to Graham.
Rob related well to everyone but Jo. He related to Graham better than anyone else did. And Graham related only to Rob.
Or was that entirely accurate? If Graham had asked for Jo’s help when he wouldn’t say boo to the rest of us girls, maybe they at least had a dotted-line relationship.
Jo seemed to have a dotted line with both Aleesha and me. A limited comfort level with Aleesha made sense, but I couldn’t understand why Jo and I hadn’t been closer on this trip. I thought we’d reestablished a good relationship before coming, but something had changed.
And even before Rob lectured her earlier, she seemed
unable or unwilling to get close to him. Did she even have a dotted-line relationship with him? I doubted it.
My analysis was driving me nuts and getting me nowhere. Besides that, I’d told Dad I wanted to pray, and that’s what I needed to do. I’d probably walked halfway from the two-lane road to the prison buildings by now, but I still had time. So I started praying.
Aloud. Talking as if another human being was listening helped me experience a greater sense of God’s presence. After all, Jesus was both God and human.
“Lord, thank You for this crisp, cool night and all the stars I can see without being able to count them. The lights back home are so bright I can’t see them this clearly. Thanks for the reminder that it’s Your world, Your universe, and You made it perfect, even if mankind messed it up by sinning. Somebody eventually puts a ding in the new car, but Adam and Eve totaled it before it even left the dealership.
“This mission trip is Yours, too. You called us here to complete the Welcoming Arms Hostel, but I believe You expect more from us than that. I don’t have to tell You that our team isn’t pulling together the way it should. I don’t know what the problem is.
“You know, though.
“Maybe I’m not supposed to know. Or even to try to figure it out. Am I supposed to just do my part and leave the rest to You? I’d love to do that, but I need Your help to quit fretting about our problems. I can’t do that on my own.
“And why do I have such an unsettled feeling about Jo? I was thrilled she could come, and her enthusiasm seemed genuine at the time. Yet now that she’s away from home, she’s a different person. I don’t get it. She isn’t homesick, is she, Lord? Is it something that simple?
“I don’t recall her ever being away from home very often—not without her parents, that is—and that was only for local mission trips. Like to the beach. Come to think of it, she was on the phone with her mother every time I turned around. I’ve seen her get out her cell phone here, but I haven’t heard her talking on it.
“Lord, hold on a second …” I pulled my phone from my purse and powered it on. “Whoopsy doodle! No bars. My phone can’t find a network to connect to. Is that part of Your plan for these beautiful mountains of Yours—no cell phone coverage? If Jo’s homesick and can’t call home … is that why she’s acting so strange? Do You want me to talk with her about that?
“You also know that Graham O’Reilly is another of my concerns. I know, I’ve been unfairly critical of him. Mostly because I can’t figure him out. The reason doesn’t matter, though. I’m just sorry about it, and I ask Your forgiveness. I’d ask his forgiveness, too, if he knew how I’ve felt. I guess he has problems, too, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to talk with him.
“Ha! How right You are, Lord. I don’t know if he’ll ever be willing and able to talk with me, either. About anything. But if he does, please open my heart. Let me be receptive, and please keep me from being judgmental.”
I stopped walking and leaned against the split-rail wooden fence that ran parallel to Red Cedar Lane.
“Speaking of having an open heart and not being judgmental—You know what I want to talk to You about next, don’t You, Lord? Please strengthen me and soften my heart and spirit as we do this service tonight. You know how terrified I’ve been today. Off and on. Part of it’s my fear of the unknown. I experienced some of that before leaving for Mexico, but You’re the only one I ever told about it.
“This fear is different, though. These insiders are men.
They probably haven’t been near a woman in years. And some of them may not be petty thieves or white-collar criminals. They may be guilty of violent crimes, and some of them may be lifers.
“You know the figures Rob told me this afternoon. The insiders are almost evenly divided between black and white, with a much smaller number of Latinos, Asians, and American Indians. He didn’t think the warden would permit anyone from death row to participate in our services, but he wasn’t sur
e.
“Lord, I’m not telling You anything You don’t already know. You know every person in that prison—the staff as well as the insiders. You know their offenses. You know their hearts. You know who already has a right relationship with You and who doesn’t. You know who’s sincere in professing Christianity and who’s just pretending.
“And You know what’s going to happen tonight. You know who’ll attend the service and how each person will respond. You know our apprehensions … okay, my apprehensions. You know whether we’ll be safe here or whether Dad and I will join Mom in heaven tonight.
“Please fill my tank with high-octane calm. Or should I say low-octane? Remind me that I’m obeying You, just like I tried to do in Santa María. Maybe the problem is I don’t feel worthy to be part of this. Not after what I did to Mom. I feel like I belong in there … well, in a women’s prison, anyhow. I really need Your help dealing with that.
“I feel like I’m slip-sliding on those pebbles again, and I don’t know if I’m going to prance or fall. Lord, I’m trying to trust You. I want to be victorious. I’m trying to leave things in Your hands, but it’s not easy …”
I resumed my walk along Red Cedar Drive and continued praying aloud. It helped. A lot. Maybe I prayed about the same
concerns over and over, but at least I ended up with a positive attitude about tonight’s prison ministry.
Just then, a voice spoke to me from the darkness—somewhere to my right. Not more than seven or eight feet away, and I could barely steady my hands to focus my flashlight in that direction.
Or would I need to use it as a weapon?
chapter twenty-nine
Lord? That’s not You, is it? I don’t see a burning bush. “You okay. Me here.” “Graham? You scared me to death.” The way my heart was pounding, I felt like an atomic bomb had exploded inside my chest.
“Alongside. Whole walk. Keep watch.”
It took me a few seconds to interpret what he’d said. “Rob didn’t send you?”
“No.” He lowered his volume a few more notches from shy-quiet to a reverent near-whisper. “God.”
I hadn’t expected an answer like that. “Thank you, Graham.”
“Thank God.” He obviously meant it.
Although those two simple words made me feel like crying, the still-trembling part of me wanted to lash out and say, “But did you have to scare me to death like that? You could have guarded me just as well without letting me know you’d ever been nearby. “
But God had something to say to me about my ingratitude. “Kim—or shall I call you Kimmy to remind you who’s still in charge?—you asked Me to open your heart to Graham. Did you mean it or not? Here’s your chance. I’m not promising you a second one. “
You know how to make a girl feel bad, don’t You, Lord? I sighed.
“Graham, God may have asked you to come, but you didn’t have to obey Him. By doing it, though, you’ve set a good example for me in my efforts to mature as a Christian.”
I paused. No matter how sincere I’d been, my words probably sounded corny. Did I dare to try again? If this was the only chance God was giving me, I needed to. “I hope we get to know one another better while I’m here. I’m friends with everyone on the team but you, and I’d like to change that.”
The only detectable response was the sound of muffled sniffling. If my words had somehow touched that strange old man, I could only pray that this evening’s contact would be the first one, not the only one.
Before I could say anything else, though, he was gone. As the van pulled up beside me, Rob lowered the window.
“Where did he go?” I said. “Did you see him? He was right here.”
“If you were talking to someone,” he said, “he must have been a ghost. I could see you from a hundred yards away, and you were all by your lonesome.”
I was too dumbfounded to explain. Maybe this was one of those things to keep in my heart and reflect on. The way Mary thought about Jesus’ childhood words of wisdom after she and Joseph found Him in the temple.
“Get in, Kimmy. Let’s go for a ride.”
Rob drove another twenty or thirty yards up Red Cedar Lane and pulled into a visitor spot in the main parking lot. We followed him into a well-lit building that looked far too attractive to be part of a prison.
Racial stereotypes weren’t the only kind.
“I learned something a few minutes ago when I called the warden—”
“You get cell phone coverage here?” Jo asked, her voice more chipper than it had been right after supper. Ah. Maybe I was right.
Although Rob chuckled a time or two, his response was gentle. “Afraid not, Jo. That’s why I brought the satellite phone
on this project. Works anywhere in the world.”
He must have seen the hungry—no, the starving—look on Jo’s face. I couldn’t think of a better word to describe it. “No free minutes on that thing, though, but I wouldn’t mind letting you call home a time or two if you hold it down to five or ten minutes.”
I forgot to breathe for a minute when Jo threw her arms around Rob and kissed him on the cheek. Not once, but three or four times.
Well done, Lord. You’ve already answered part of my prayer. I winked toward the sky as I drew a solid line between Rob and Jo on my imaginary relationship chart. I wondered if this would also make the line between Jo and me solid.
“Mr. Rob,” Aleesha said. As uncharacteristically quiet as she’d been the last few minutes, I’d almost forgotten she was there. “What about in here?”
Rob looked at her as if she’d just announced she was a space alien.
“They have phones inside the prison …”
“Right!” The now-why-didn’t-I-think-of-that look on Rob’s face made me giggle. “Why don’t we check with the warden? The office may have an 800-line he’d let you use in the privacy of somebody’s office. I think he could rationalize a call home as facility-related.”
Jo’s transformation was nothing short of miraculous. She caught Rob off balance when she hugged him again, almost knocking him down.
“Kimmy,” Rob said, “I know you’ve been worried about tonight”—Rob, the word is petrified, but my prayer time has helped a lot—”but I have some news that ought to please you. Some of what I told you earlier was wrong.”
I searched his face for clues as I waited for him to continue. My heart rate had already begun accelerating, but
more with hope this time than anxiety.
“The Red Cedar facility is a medium-security prison. Now, that is. It was maximum security when it first opened.”
Come on, Rob. Spit it out. How is this supposed to make me feel better?
“Kimmy, we’ll be leading worship with relatively minor offenders.”
“Minor?” Had I heard him correctly? I could hardly believe how quickly God had answered that part of my prayer, too.
“Some of them are serving lengthy sentences, but you won’t see any murderers, rapists, or animal abusers in the crowd. No one you should feel frightened of.”
I was speechless.
“One other thing.”
I raised my eyebrows in expectation.
“Warden Jenkins pointed out that the insiders have a great respect for women of all ages. They wouldn’t be any more disrespectful of you, Jo, or Aleesha than of their own mothers.”
I started squealing with relief. Before I knew what was happening, Aleesha was shaking me and talking excitedly. “You see, girl? You were worried over nothing. You should have spent that time and energy praying.”
I smiled. I could hardly wait to tell her I had prayed. And to rave about what phenomenal answers God had already provided.
chapter thirty
Warden Jenkins met us at the visitors’ desk of the administration building. As we introduced ourselves, he welcomed us by name. He would undoubtedly be able to address each of us by name for the duration of our visit to Red Cedar. I envied people who could remember names easily when I struggled so
hard at times to remember my own. “Do you know the insiders individually?” I asked. God does, but you’re not God. I don’t know why that thought ran through my head. Maybe because the warden held the fate of so many men in his hands day in and day out.
“Kimmy”—oh, no, you’ve already caught it from Rob!—”I know most of them by name. Although my job requires a certain amount of that, I’ve gotten to know many of the men better than I have to. Family problems. Personal needs. Things like that. Allows me to live out my Christian witness on the job. I know the troublemakers and the most troubled far better than I do anyone else, though.”
“Like in school,” I said. “One of my favorite teachers used to say she could remember every exceptional student she’d ever taught—both the best and the worst.”
“Same principle.” He shook his head as if wishing it weren’t true.
“Well, team,” Rob said, “visiting with this fine Christian brother is good, but that’s not what we’re here for. He’s already saved, even if he does belong to a different denomination than mine.”
Aleesha howled with laughter, and that set off a chain
reaction among everyone within hearing distance. If only Mom could have known Aleesha. She loved to laugh. But I put an end to that.
Once we calmed down, Warden Jenkins took the floor again. “You all have your Form 106 Visitor Questionnaires? And a photo ID?” We three girls handed him our papers. Jo and I gave him drivers’ licenses, but Aleesha handed him a passport.
I glanced at it. The picture showed the innocent-angel-look that had tickled me several times in Santa María. I couldn’t keep from giggling. Aleesha grinned at me. She knew why I was laughing.
“Hmm,” the warden said as he glanced over the paperwork and verified that we were who we claimed to be, “everyone is eighteen or older. No arrests or convictions. No points on your licenses, either. Good for you, girls.”
Aleesha leaned over to me and whispered, “And why do you think I used my passport instead of my license?” We both giggled.
“Everything appears to be in order. I need to make a copy of your IDs—just a little extra protection for you. And for me, too. I had to get special permission to let you visit here on such short notice.” I smiled at his modesty about the hoops he’d had to jump through. “Oh, I don’t suppose you just happened to bring fingerprint sheets with you?”
