Wait Without Fret

Jail day #1300

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Today Marks 1300 days that I have been falsely convicted and incarcerated innocent victim of the lies of my own prodigal Absalom.

Today also marks 3 years, 1096 days, since I last saw my daughter and parents.

In one more month this entire saga will be 7 years long (4-22-09) since Brandon’s initial deception and using his grandmother to excuse his behavior and millennial entitlement issues.

This is Passion week.  Despite the false teaching, ignorance, and pagan traditions I was raised with, it was on Wednesday, not “Good Friday” of Passion Week, that Christ’s love for me held him fast to the cross as a final atoning sacrifice for me (and for my children).

The Bible clearly shows that Christ was also falsely accused, convicted, and then unjustly executed for crimes that He did not commit, In order to fulfill the prophesy of the sign of Jonah, being entombed for 3 nights and 3 days, prior to being vomited back into existence.

These past 1300 days (3y6m23d) make me appreciate more and more that I have placed my trust, my hope, and my faith in a Savior and Lore who knows the white hot coronal pain, heartache, and suffering that I have experienced these past 185 weeks.  My Lord knows the same excruciating ache of being rejected, abandoned, and left all alone, by you.  I find it much easier to relate to Him, to honor Him, and to worship Him because he bore this same woundedness and suffering (Heb. 4:15).  

It’s been one year (3-20-15) since my Federal Appeal has been filed.  I continue to wonder at times why God has decided to choose to allow the lies and liars to go unchecked and unchallenged for such a long time.  However, I trust in His plan; not only for me but for my children.  I know that somehow he is preparing us for some ministry to some unjust sufferers at some particular time in the future.

The wait, however, causes duress that at times overwhelms me.  The wait (Ps. 37:1, 7-8) causes me to fret on occasion, contributes to my anxiety, and indulges my stress eating.  I still frequently fast to loosen the painful wait, and to lose the weight of emotional spiritual, and physical burdens that accompany incarceration.

Lately, this prison experience has had the added complex stressors of racial and gang affiliated rhetoric tension, and violence.  It seems that each time that presidential candidate Trump ups the ante in our national political conversation, the ugly attitudes he vomits is reflected on the yard.  This particular tension is new in this 1300 day stretch.  It wasn’t there before, or at least not at the point where I was aware of it.  

I can’t imagine how rough a “real” prison yard must be, compared to this special place the Lord has arranged/commonly called a cupcake yard).  Beyond the complications of relationships and affiliations on this yard between inmate groups, staff and inmates, staff and staff, and the compounding collapses of funding and leadership from our state capitol there is a lot of unspoken tension that is just below the surface of everything that happens, or doesn’t happen, here.

The tensions, the stressors, the wait, the impatience, the long three years without communication, the seven years since Brandon’s prodigal deceit, the five hundred days since my divorce, the two weeks without my blood pressure medication (3/17-3/31) and my recent severe cold with fever (3/22-3/27) all make me appreciate with even greater passion the love that Christ has for me: so much so that He willingly took on, took into himself, my shortcomings (my son’s lies, my daughter’s apathy, my wife rejection, my parents abandonment all the while knowing that God, His own father, would have to turn on him, shun him, reject him, and leave him abandoned for a time as well.

My appreciation for the feelings and emotions of Passion Week are all the more heightened after waiting these past 1300 days.  While Jesus never suffered physical imprisonment he did endure a false conviction by the courts and suffered execution by the Roman Department of Corrections.  He was victimized by the lack of civility in the society he grew up in and was a part of.  Only Oklahoma could serve up a worse or more painful experience.

Dostoyesky said that, “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering it’s prisons.”  That doesn’t reflect very well on Oklahoma.  The Treatment of inmates by the D.O.C. is abhorrent and draconian.  

There is no shared centralized data base to track time served, behavior, health issues, etc. All files are just literally that:  files-a millennial old system of stacks of loosely bound parchments.  

There is absolutely no attempt to be proactive in health care.  

I’ve been denied a Kenalloge allergy shot 3 years in a row, and even today am suffering from a severe cold with headache, ear infection, chills, and fever.  This virus has circulated for weeks now.  I have been denied my Lisinopril for high blood pressure due to the inefficiencies of the medical staff for almost 2 weeks (3/17-3/31).  

There are not enough sundries to provide even basic underwear, socks, t-shirts, or towels to inmates (they are even reissuing used and worn sheets, ripped and mended blankets and previously stained boxer shorts to new arrivals).  You are restricted to a single one-ply roll of toilet paper a week.  There is little nutritional value to our meals to even mention.

Oklahoma is in a self inflicted funding crisis which is leading to the shut down of classrooms, clinics, family services, and mental health interventions which will continue the never ending cycle o incarceration as the most needy among us continue to be perpetually underserved, undervalued, and misunderstood.

The citizen tax payers of this declining state; those religious pew sitters who are all too comfortable with a throw-away-the-key adjudication of their esteemed morality, have no clue how their decades long republican led response to criminalization and mass incarceration with extremely long sentences have crippled this state – or maybe now they are beginning to if they are paying attention.

Oklahoma’s Governor and Legislators, and their treatment of those people who break its’ 100 of  moral codex's, make our state a national embarrassment and a global laughing stock.

My prayer is that this 3 ½ year season of incarceration is almost over.  As this saga drags into its 7th year (4-22-09) I pray that the Lord will help me continue to wait while He exposes all the lies and liars, reveals the truth, and ensures justice will prevail.  

I find hope in the love story of this passion week.  I know that God is building me, reconstructing me, preparing me to be used to advocate for true and lasting change in this state’s broken down archaic system of warehousing inmates; restoring civility to Oklahoma’s’ treatment of those who fall short, are mentally unstable, struggle with addiction, or fail to meet the expectations of those who set in legislative and executive positions of power.