Old Smelly Shorts

What a week! What a moment of revelation I just experienced this early on a Saturday morning.

This week was my second OSHA-30 instructional week (M-R 6:30am - 3:30pm) to oversee. I coordinated instruction, downloaded videos, created a student study guide, served as Uber-eats, played game show host, kept us on time, constantly swept up sand and salt being traipsed into the classroom, and accomplished whatever else was needed to ensure our CareerTech Career Readiness students met their discharge goals. It was equally exhausting and fulfilling. To round out what was sure to be an intense week I had a deep desire to participate in a "sweat" with the Native American community as well as to fast on Friday, dedicating that time to just being very mindful of how I have been so blessed, even while being unjustly warehoused by the State by being sequestered behind these concertina topped fences. And I am so blessed and fulfilled (read Day #4500). I am fulfilled in my job almost as much as I ever was on the outside. I am fulfilled in my ministry work (as much as can be expected inside prison) through my involvement in Celebrate Recovery® Inside®. I am so thankful to the Southern Hills Church CR, and prison ministry volunteers Steve Lewis and Rich Bartlett for their commitment to CRI® here at JDCC. I am very fulfilled in my friendships. The Lord has brought the right people (CMcD, CS, LM, SC) into my life at the right time to be my brothers and my most valued confidants: one of whom challenges me every day to continue to grow into the person I was always meant to be and to be the best version of myself as I can be everyday despite/in spite of the circumstances I find myself living in. Even though it had snowed heavily this week, I also worked out with the "crew" that allows me to be part of their intensely physical and vigorous team. By 5pm each day I am usually sweaty and exhausted, ready for a shower, and then to set down and read or watch TV. On Thursday evening I inadvertantly left my workout shorts hanging on a hook in the common restroom we all share. By the time I realized it, they had disappeared. I was momentarily distraught because of my lapse and also because I had had these shorts since my first days of incarceration (thank you Joyce Blackwell for having deposited money into my JPay account on that first day I finally landed at JCCC 12 years ago and for somehow knowing I'd need money to purchase items on day one). I was disappointed with myself for allowing my tiredness to not being situationally aware. However, these shorts were grey (read:old), hemmed to land mid-thigh, and had my name written on them in six different places. I said a prayer calling them back to myself and praying for self-conscious conviction upon the person who snatched them up. I resolved to "let it go" placing trust in the Lord that He'd eventually return them or replace them with a new pair. I also prayed for the person who took them to be blessed and not to sell them to get high. On Thursday night I began my 40-hour period of fasting to overlap with my time in the sweat lodge/prayer tent on Friday, as well with our 2025 Celebrate Recovery® kick off. My time in the prayer/sweat lodge was intense (and hot) and our CR kickoff had 25 new men show up! The new leadership team we trained on January 3rd was activated and the meeting was excellent, energizing, and invigorating. There was a Holy Spirit filled buzz in the room as the 5 newly trained step study leaders lead their group discussion time and handed out "The Journey Begins" Recovery® chips.

This morning at 5am I headed across the campus with my workout crew to breakfast, where I broke my fast a little earlier than I had planned because I was hungry, and the fried eggs actually had soft yolks (yum). On the way back across the yard CMcD asked how my fast was and what it meant to me (even though I was fasting I still walked to the chow hall each meal to receive my tray and then bless it to my work out crew/friends). I explained that in some small way fasting reminds me of Christ's sacrifice. Every time I got hungry (we eat better, more nutritiously, and more frequently inside of prison than many, many people do around the world or even in our state) or my stomach growled I would shoot up a prayer of thanks to the Lord for his continual blessings. I further explained that fasting reminds me to be grateful for all of my blessings, not just food/meals and that I need to keep the larger picture in mind. For some reason I also mentioned my missing/stolen workout shorts, commenting that someone must have needed them more than I did and that I was grateful to have them while I did (metaphorically representing my children and former life/wife?). I still had a second pair and that in the big picture their disappearance was not a big deal. Fasting reminds me that there is so much to be thankful for and when I combine it/overlap it with prayer tent/sweat lodge time it helps me focus on just how blessed I really am: and I am blessed. Our friend/work out crew member, CS, who discharges next Monday, then offered to leave me his shorts when he left. We returned to our dorm, and I started making my bed and to get ready to read my morning devotionals. As I was moving things around on my bunk, I went to fold my sleeping/day room shorts and realized I was actually holding up my workout shorts. While I was at breakfast, wrapping up my time of fasting, someone had brought them to my bunk and laid them on my mattress. Praise the Lord! As a non-incarcerate you may be thinking "what's the big deal". The big deal is that replacement shorts that would normally cost $6-7 at Walmart are $25 in here, have to be ordered online by someone on the outside, are taxed, have a shipping fee attached, and take months to get to you. I'm still waiting on shoes that were ordered and paid for on December 3rd. I just can't go to Target and throw a new pair of shorts in my basket while shopping for apples and toilet paper. I'm so glad the Holy Spirit kept me calm and at peace this week and especially when this very minor testing presented itself! What a poor witness for Christ I would have been had I lost my cool, complained, or allowed Satan, his demonic minions, or evil entities to steal my peace, especially while fasting and praying and celebrating my recovery. Thank you, Jesus, for the gentle ways you remind me of your sovereignty and remind me to stay focused on the One Thing: a lesson taught/learned at 5am on a cold Saturday morning through a 12-year-old pair of ripped, stained, and permanently odorous pair of grey running/workout shorts.

Leadership Traning and Graduation

What a great day! Miracles do still happen every day, even (maybe especially even) inside of these prison fences.

Back in September, about halfway through our first Celebrate Recovery® Inside® Step Study the Lord put it on my heart to create and host a Leadership Training Day and Graduation event. On the outside of these fences that would be no problem. We did that all of the time at Garnett and Park Plaza. While working as a nationwide presenter for GROUP® Publishing, as a Lead Teacher and Administrator for TPS, in Scouts, and in my role as Children's Minister I only had to send out a few texts or emails, make a quick trip to Sam's Club and the task was 90% accomplished. Inside these fences, as an orange clad incarcerate with little official standing, this task that the Lord had given me was going to be a bit more challenging. We are fortunate to have two great volunteer ministers from Tulsa, Steve Lewis from the Southern Hills Church CR and Rich Bartlett, whom were on board with the plan and also facilitated the purchase of lunch and graduation gifts. They arranged for Chic-fila to be delivered on site as well as provided each graduate with a Celebrate Recovery® Bible, journal, and recovery "chip". Additionally, they provided cookies, coffee, tea, and lemonade. That was the easy part. The more difficult part was receiving approvals from the Chaplain and Warden to block of the 7 hours we would need, ensure movements would happen despite what may "pop off" 4 months into the future, approve outside food being brought into the facility, coordinate late canteen draws for participants, and address all of the security issues involved. The most challenging aspect was to spend time coordinating the 12 mini presentations and the 9 presenters. I spent weeks "herding cats" as well as "planting and watering seeds" so that today's individual 15-minute segments would build on each other and present a comprehensive theme/plan. This would have all been easily accomplished with texts and emails, but I had to do this through continual personal interactions with men who live in four separate buildings. This means I had to get permissions to be on the various dorms at different times, which I loathe to do. One on one seed planting is also not in my natural skill set, so the Lord was already stretching me outside of my comfort zone. I also was making a conscious effort not to dictate content of their individual presentations while encouraging these presenters to give their efforts their own personality, all the while striving towards achieving the goal/theme I was trying to drive us all towards. In general, inmates hate to be told what to do, especially by other inmates. It's an "orange thing", so all conversations have to be innocuous, and you often have to make an idea or inspiration seem like it genuinely occurred to the conversant by slipping in innocuous suggestions through the backdoor.

I am blessed and fortunate to be a CareerTech facilitator. It allows me to have time to work on projects like this. I spent last year writing curriculum for our Career Readiness program. I recently restructured the OSHA 30 Hour four-day training program which included drafting emails to be sent to security, food service, canteen etc. to coordinate this important instruction. So, I was already familiar with the processes of how this yard worked when you had to coordinate through disparate departments. My boss also allowed me some flex time to coordinate and create some of the tools we would need to have a successful training event. When movement was called this morning for our participants and graduates to come to the chapel all of the pieces fell into place. The chapel orderlies were on top of room arrangements and had coffee brewing. The graduates, new leaders, worship team, and presenters were all excited and enthusiastic. At 9am my CRI co-leader (Seth Claybrook) stepped forward and opened the program. The worship team brought us into the Lord's presence. Our first presenter that I had invited to share his special insight with the group was Mr. Cheater. He is the "pastor" for the Native American community and spoke to the importance of Principle 8 by telling us a native parable about the Eagle feather and need for reserving a daily time for prayer, meditation, and contact with our Creator. Every 15 minutes a new presenter added richness to the day through thought provoking interactions and lots of movements (get in this group, walk to this number, turn and discuss, etc. lots of kinesthetic engagement). No one had to set still for longer than 15 minutes before it was time to do a new physical and /or interpersonal interaction. My job at this point was simply to act as emcee, keep everybody and everything running on time, and to just set a peaceful expectation. The Leadership Training portion of the day went almost exactly as the way the Lord had given me the vision last September and even better than I had hoped! Chic-fila delivered lunch on time, everybody was engaged, there was a lot of talking and laughing, and most importantly a lot of "ah-ha" moments as the presentations layered on top of each other and I could hear and see the pieces click into place as we debriefed each segment and several men expressed "what a coincidence it seemed that this relates to that and how it all traced back to the opening ice breaker activity (2 Truths and 1 Lie). At 1pm when we moved into our regular weekly meeting and graduation ceremony. We shared cookies and coffee with the yard and enjoyed some Skit Guys clips. As the graduates received their certificates, Bibles, journals, and recovery chips they each spoke of the change their sobriety was making in their lives... which is the whole goal of Celebrate Recovery® in the first place. After praying with my co-leader Seth for almost a year, when this CRI® session finally started in June 2024 it was just the two of us trying to hold this group together and usher these two virgin volunteers into a system that is hard to navigate. Six months later we now have 25 trained leaders, worship team members, and new accountability partners ready to begin a brand-new Step Study series. I am truly awed by how the Lord was able to work this all out. Yes, there were a few kinks, but they were easily managed. One of our volunteers, Steve Lewis (he is in his eighties) spent Thursday in the ER being treated for pneumonia, so he was unable to attend. He was one of our main presenters. Luckily, I had prepared two stand-by activities just in case something went askew, so I actually conducted one of the training sessions, which I was trying to avoid (I feel like I'm already "seen" too much, which can get annoying. Again, it's an "orange thing"). Our volunteers also forgot their Skit Guys DVD, but the chaplain was able to quickly come to the rescue and download a few videos.

I thrive on feedback, so we had the participants fill out and turn in an evaluation tool. Everyone seemed to not only enjoy the day but felt like they were part of something bigger than themselves. A couple of comments said that for a few hours they forgot they were incarcerated. I think I like those comments the best. But also, there were comments about how all of the presentations seemed to build on each other, as if we had set down and coordinated the lessons and themes, which we had not. To me that is just further evidence that the day was a "God thing" and that his Holy Spirit was the thread running through the day and throughout each of the presentations. A few men also noted how much they enjoyed hearing from outside of the "regular" chapel teachers/preachers that they hear from all the time and that the fringe communities, education department, and chapel volunteers were utilized. Thank you, Lord for the way you continue to look out for us even behind these fences. I'm already looking forward to our next Celebrate Recovery® Inside® Graduation and Leadership Training Day event in August when this new Step Study concludes.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! Today marks only 1699 days left....at most...of this unjust incarceration. These next 54 month will pass much, much more quickly than you could ever imagine! I will be living my life right alongside yours soon enough.....maybe sooner than you think.....I hope you are ready.....I am....! Bring on the Trump tariffs! The more expensive it is to warehouse, feed, transport, and see to the medical needs of its rapidly growing and aging chattle the more our Oklahoma State Legislature leans towards fast tracking sentencing reform, to include implementing ongoing sentence modifications, DOC policy and procedural changes, and granting early releases. Those 1699 days may be cut in half very soon. I currently have negative two security points, am assessed as a no risk candidate for release, and score at the lowest level for recidivism risk. At almost $30,000.00 per year to warehouse me, I am not worth the State's money, time, or attention. Bring on the tariffs! Now that a majority of Americans, a majority of Oklahomans, and a majority of "Christians" elected a twice impeached, self-admitted serial sex offender ("I can grab them by the pussy any time I want"), and multiple convicted felon as its President, they have sent an obvious message that the label "felon" no longer carries the negative connotations it once did. Living a "normal" life post incarceration no longer seems to be the challenge it once was. On top of that, 1 in 8 Oklahomans now has an OKDOC number, so I am in common company anymore. Even the President has a Department of Corrections number, so it is obviously no longer a big deal.  

2029 is just around the corner.....bring on the tariffs....let my release come even sooner.