Nothing could separate him

I hadn’t seen Tommy in years. We were childhood friends that had lost each other when his parents divorced and he moved away. Tommy was the pudgy kid that got teased and desperately wanted to fit in. He was fun to be around and he was a gentle soul. But he had a daddy that had a belt and knew how to use it. Tommy saw his dad as cool, and smooth. In his own way he tried to be like his father as he grew up and into his teen years Tom began to get into trouble.

Trouble became all he knew and he was lying, stealing, and doing drugs all the time. He found a bunch of rowdy friends to hang with and learned new tricks with them. I remember seeing him once when I was around 17. I was in a March of Dimes walk-a-thon. It was the only thing like it in those days. You signed up and got as many people as possible to sponsor you. They could sponsor a nickel a mile or a quarter a mile or even a whole dollar! The day of the walk you showed up with your sponsor sheet, paid the entry fee, and then got a map of the twenty mile route. Following the route meant safety as there were crowds who did it each year and people would set up water tables to hand out cups to the walkers as we went passed by their homes. It was a day of fun and making money for a good cause. Along the route that year, I saw Tom. He was with a bunch of guys and I thought they were walkers too. They did walk along with the groups but after a short time I realized they were high and laughing at the walkers.

I was sad for Tommy. Sad for the broken homes he had passed through as his dad divorced and re-married four times during his growing years. Sad for the abuse he had received. Sad for the path he had chosen so early in life. Sad knowing that it didn’t look like he was heading anyway worth going in the future.

If I had only known how true those assumptions would turn out to be I would have made an effort to become his friend again. I had no way of knowing that , so on the day on the walk a thon, I got away as fast as I could. It was obvious that the guys he was with were up to no good and looking for trouble. I didn’t intend to be an invitation for it, so I hurried my friends on.

As adulthood pushed its way into my life I married and settled into the life of being a mommy and a homemaker. I didn’t think often of Tommy. But I remember reading the news and seeing that he had been accused of murder and was going to trial. I don’t remember hearing it specifically, but somehow I had learned that he had been convicted and sentence for life. Years went by and no word or contact with my childhood friend . Then one day, in my late twenties, four children and grounded deeply in my faith finally, I saw a letter at my mother’s house.

“What’s this?”

“Oh, it’s a letter from Tommy.

Can you believe the nerve of that guy? That kind of crime and he’s looking for our friendship now? I don’t know what to do with that.” My mom was not an unkind person; neither was she usually very judgmental. But Tommy had killed a man while robbing his home just to shut the guy up. Skilled police work had caught up with Tom and in the end he received justice for his crime. She had never had a murderer reach out for her friendship before.

I took the letter and read it. I heard a sincere longing of someone who was sorry. Sorry for the bad choices, all of them, not just the one that landed him in prison. He wasn’t even seeking friendship or forgiveness. He was just saying he was repentant if there was anything he had done to hurt us along the way and that we had been one of the few good and stable families he had known in life. Tom went on to say that he remembered so many sad and terrible things from childhood, but all of his memories that included us were sweet remembrances.

I saw in Tommy’s letter something that seemed different, changed about him. So I wrote down the address and took it home. I began to correspond with him almost weekly and included my husband and children in writing him. Tommy had been introduced to Jesus by a Mennonite pastor that worked in the prison and Tom had received the Lord. Even through written words, there was a sweet spirit about him. We made an appointment to visit him.

I had never been to state penitentiary before and there was a heaviness of spirit in the parking lot of that place. The long, tall fences, decorated with barbed wire across the top were only a taste of the oppressive weight that hung like lead in the air. Signing in, being checked for contraband, seeing not one smiling face along the way, was enough to scare me to death. We were escorted into the visitation room and told to sit on the “this side” of the table with no contact with the inmate. We did exactly as we were told.

I sat there wondering who I would see when they brought Tom in. I had not seen him except for the once as a teen since I was around 12, maybe younger. The guards called several names, opened the door and in walked the inmates. Tommy walked over with this huge grin and I wanted to jump up and hug him. That was against the rules and you did not break the rules here. He sat down across the table and we all began to chat a little uncomfortably at first and then more and more like the old friends we had been.

Sitting there and looking at him I was completely struck at the difference between the badge on his uniform and his real face. The picture on the badge was a scary hardened criminal whom I would have feared if I had met him. Then I remembered seeing him as a teen and already that was what I saw in him and his friends that day. The guy in the badge picture was staring, unsmiling at the photographer, and the look said, “Back off, you do NOT want to mess with me.” The guy sitting across the table though was a teddy bear, not the Kodiak Grizzly in the pic. It was not just because he was happy. It was not because he had made a mean face in the picture. It was the spirit of joy I saw in him now and the spirit of hate, oppression, and self-loathing I saw in him in the photo.

I knew Jesus had made me a new creature. I knew that he had washed the sin of my old life and my bad choices away and given me a heart of flesh for a heart of stone. I knew the theology and even the reality of my experience. I had seen it in my husband and others as Jesus changed them. Tommy’s picture moved me to a fresh sense of the depth of difference. The total change of heart and spirit was so completely evident and he carried the badge to prove it. It was an amazing and beautiful sight to behold.

As I walked through the several gates, past the guards, through the barbed wired electric fencing, I felt more grateful for the freedom my Lord and Savior had bought for me. That gratefulness came from a deeper understanding having seen it on the face of an inmate who carried that freedom in his heart every day behind the gates and fencing. There were no bars, no wires, no guards that could separate him from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. And the truth of that promise had just impressed itself indelibly on my heart of flesh. I would never forget that day when the truth of the amazing grace of God’s love taught me anew in the face of a lifer sitting across a visitation table in a state penitentiary.