Me and my dad (written June, 2009)
Alright, I know this has been a long time coming, and I know many of you have been waiting for the full report on meeting my Dad this summer. There has been a lot for me to process, but finally your wait is over! Part 2, following this post, will be a raw look into my journal; just hours after meeting my biological father for the very first time! This post is for those of you who don't know the full story:
My dad went to prison the year I was born, in 1985. He was convicted of murder charges, among other things, and was sentenced to life without parole.
Growing up I didn't know much about him, except for a few letters here and there. As I got older though, and began asking my mom more questions, the toll of not only having an absent father, but one who was incarcerated for a brutal crime, became an even heavier weight on my shoulders. The more I learned about the kind of man he was, and the things he had done before going to prison, the more I feared him.
The letters he sent came in variations. Some were friendly, some incredibly boring (to a teenager!), and then there were some filled with cruel words and manipulation that, even though it was coming from him, still crushed my spirit so much!
Finally, there came a time in my life where I surrendered the heart he had broken to Jesus Christ, and he mended it! God revealed himself to me as my heavenly Father, who was with me all along, and had never left my side!
With my new heart, and God as my strength, I started responding to my dad's letters again, but this time with an anointing to speak truth into his life with boldness, and faith that it would make a difference.
Though my feet were now on steady ground with Christ, there was still fear ruling in my heart toward him; fears of never wanting to meet him, of what would happen if he ever somehow got out of prison, and fears of letting him get too close to my heart again. After all, he is my father. He is my father, but after all, he is a murderer!
One day while in a prayer meeting, in the year of 2006, I received a word from the Holy Spirit that my dad was going to give his life to Christ. It knocked me to the floor in tears and in praise!
Still, I had no desire to go and see him. Then, this past February 2009, God woke me up in the middle of the night asking me to go! It took me another month of wrestling, but the Lord was insistent, so finally I surrendered my fear and decided to trust and obey.
A couple of months later I received a letter from him, telling me of how in the middle of the night…in February, he poured out his heart in prayer to Jesus Christ from his prison cell and accepted Him as his Lord and Savior! He had been attending a church ministry in his sector for the last several months.
It was all the confirmation I needed to show me that God is so amazing, and that He had a much greater purpose in this than I realized! I made my plans, set a date, and recruited a few close friends to go with me.
Part Two
Journal Entry: June 18, 2009
Today I took one of the biggest steps of faith in my life, and went to see my dad face to face for the first time.
There was a battle going on in my heart; I felt great peace in knowing I was doing what God had asked me to do, but there was also great fear of what I was about to do. I still didn’t understand why I was going, or what to expect to find when I got there.
I packed my bags, jumped in the truck with my wonderful friends, and off we went. The drive was pleasant; full of delightful conversation, laughter, and beautiful scenery. It was everything I needed and more to stay uplifted and optimistic.
Then we approached the outskirts of Salem, and immediately my nerves rose up within me. As we began looking for our exit it seemed like the closer we got, the more my stomach sank and the harder my heart pounded with anxiety. My breath grew shallow and tense, and my hands went cold and stiff around the steering wheel.
The anxiety I was feeling was so intense that I could no longer stay engaged with my friends in the passenger seats as they carried on in conversation.
“Jennifer, are you ok?” Katie asked from the back seat.
“Yes, I just know we’re getting closer!” I said.
After a few times of them having to repeat entire sentences to me, seeing as how I was now in my own world, we switched the atmosphere in the truck from small talk to prayer. We prayer for God’s peace and comfort to settle my nerves and my emotions, for God’s strength to cover my weakness, for courage and boldness to replace my fear, and for Jesus to give me a heart of compassion, grace and mercy instead of anger, resentment, or bitterness.
When we got to the parking lot we gathered in a circle to pray. My heart was pounding hard by that time, and my nerves were practically shooting out through my fingers, but I knew I was supposed to be there! I felt the anointing of the Holy Spirit cover me like a cloak as my dear friends prayed over me. It felt as if each prayer was being fastened to me like a piece of armor, and as I walked toward the front door there was a sense that I was walking down a path that the Spirit of the Lord had already been down and prepared before hand! I was filled with joy, strength and anticipation with each step.
I find it so interesting that the same level of anxiety your body goes through when experiencing great fear, such as that when you’re life is being threatened, or such as having a fear of heights or small enclosed spaces, feels very much the same as being on the flip side when you are experiencing the thrill and excitement of doing something new and crazy. Doing something bold, daring, and outside your comfort zone, though it is good, gives you the same adrenaline rush as if someone were to hold a loaded gun to your head!
The Prison
The Sergeant at the front desk was incredibly kind and encouraging. He assured me that everything they did was for my complete safety through the whole process. He even phoned ahead to the police chiefs in the visiting area to tell them it was my first time visiting in a prison.
I was allowed to go in with another family. Going through the series of locked gates and corridors was a little overwhelming. We had to keep strictly to the right along the wall so that the chiefs could keep a clear view down each hall at all times, and no gate was opened until the previous gate was closed and locked behind us. The whole system stirred my fears up all over again. At this point, there was quite literally no going back!
“Are you Jennifer? We’ve been expecting you!” is the greeting I received from two large and stocky police chiefs as I entered the room. They sat me down at a visiting station; two chairs facing each other, separated by a small coffee table, right in front of the chief’s station. This had been arranged in advance as a result of the phone call the Sergeant at the front desk had made when I first came in.
The chairs were all color-coded in neat rows; red on one side for the visitors, and blue on the other for the inmates. The room was packed with inmates and their families. It was such a strange place. Here I was in a room with all these big tough men, in prison for various reasons, and all that mattered to them right then and there was their time with those they loved. I watched as they reached across the tables for the hand of their wives or girlfriends, and traded their points in so that they could hold their children for just a few minutes. Next to their families, none of these men really looked like criminals.
I spent another 45 minutes waiting for my dad. The waiting was the hardest part of it all. The longer I waited, the more nervous I became.
“What will he look like?” I thought. My mind was reeling with questions and senerios, and even though I’d never met him, and had nothing to prove to him, I still caught myself thinking, “will he like me?” or, “will he think I’m pretty?” For the first time in my life, I realized I was about to experience in person what it is like to be a father’s daughter! All the thoughts and feelings I’d missed out on and wondered about growing up, in the absence of my father, came flooding into my heart all at once. Suddenly I felt like a little girl again, and I was also suddenly feeling extremely vulnerable!
I was so nervous that my whole body felt cold and tingly. I felt as though I was about to pass out, and then I finally became aware that I’d been holding my breath without realizing it! I was so amazed at how much physical stress my body was going through all on its own, just from my emotional anxieties!
The Visit
Finally, my dad enters the room. It felt like a clip from a movie, (in comes Marvin Sherman, play dramatic music). What was so amazing to me was that as soon as he walked in, all my anxieties went away. We made eye contact, and as he acknowledged me with a smile, my fears were immediately chased away and replaced with grace and compassion toward him.
We were allowed one brief hug at the beginning of our session, a hug at the end, and to have our photo taken. I stood to greet him, and then I hugged my dad for the first time! The crazy thing about it was that as soon as we hugged, there was something in me that was telling me this hug felt familiar. Not only that, but that after all this time, after so much pain, and after so much fear, there was still a little girl in me that wanted that hug to last a whole lot longer!
That really surprised me! I originally had no intentions of getting too close to him, but once I got there, saw his face, and looked into an older pair of eyes that were just like mine, everything changed!
The man that I saw sitting in front of me wasn’t a big scary criminal convicted of murder. He was just a man; a lowly, timid, broken man, who was burdened with such a heavy weight of guilt, shame, and regret. His embrace as we hugged was tight, but full of trembling, and it was then I realized that he was feeling just as fragile and vulnerable as I was!
I also realized that God was putting me in a powerful position over him, where I had the freedom to choose whether I was going to take advantage of his vulnerable state and possibly crush him, or to show him the incredible Grace of God that was and is continually shown to me. It was like God was saying, “look at what I am holding, and see how tenderly he is cradled in my hands…please, don’t break him!”
We made small talk at first, and the entire time he kept averting his eyes away from looking at me directly. The longest he would maintain eye-contact with me was no more than two or three seconds at a time. His demeanor was more like that of a child, rather than an adult, only this “child” was full of shame, and automatically took a self-assuming position of inferiority to me.
I just wanted to listen at first, so I waited patiently for him to find the words he was trying to say. He pointed out that I had his eyes, and spoke of how the last time he saw my I was only a tiny little baby. I asked about the rest of the family, and then our conversation took a huge shift.
He began to ask about why he was so bad, and what he had done that no one wanted to have anything to do with him anymore. He started delving into the things of the past, but before he could go any further I stopped him and said, “that’s not why I came!”
He looked at me slightly puzzled and responded with, “well then why did you come?”
“I came just because I wanted to meet you!” I replied, looking him square in the eyes.
Then, like a shy little child, his face lit up and he smiled at me, almost as if to say, “really?”
At that moment I felt a flood of great compassion for him rushing in and welling up inside me. It was more compassion than I can recall ever feeling in my whole life for anyone, and it was all coming straight from heaven! It was as if the Holy Spirit had been hovering over me the whole time, and then at that very moment fell upon me and took over from there.
We started talking about God and the Bible, and he shared with me about the Bible studies he’d been attending every week. I was actually amazed at how much scripture he not only knew, but understood! Then I was able to speak life into him from everything that God had taught me.
Apparently, some people were telling him that he could not be fully saved until he was baptized, and that he couldn’t be baptized until he got out of prison. My heart sank with sadness when he told me that. He was obviously greatly troubled by it, and with good reason! My dad was sentenced to life without parole, which means these people were basically telling him he could never really be saved!
Oh, but that’s just the open door God was giving me, complete with flashing lights and confetti (at least that’s how it felt!), to tell him the glorious truth about Jesus Christ! I assured him that since he confessed his sins and invited Jesus to be the Lord over his life, that he was indeed 100% saved and redeemed.
“You could baptize your-self with a cup of water in your cell if you have to!” I said with a smile. “Baptism is about a matter of your heart, not the physical act itself. The Bible says that all who call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved. Baptism is just a symbol of you crucifying your old sinful self with Christ on the cross, and rising again, through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, as a new person.”
I was simply quoting scripture, but each time I went over it with him I saw new hope in his eyes, like I could literally see him being revived in his heart right there in front of me. What a beautiful sight it was indeed!
He then told me that he felt lighter, like a huge weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. If that in itself is not enough evidence of the real and mighty hand of God at work, I don’t know what is!
He proceeded to tell me that since he’d started believing in God he was happier, and life in prison even seemed a little easier than it was before. God had suddenly been answering all his prayers…all but one.
“The last prayer I was waiting on was you!” He said.
We talked a little while longer, and then as we said good bye we stood and hugged again. When we turned to part ways, I watched as he took the picture we’d just taken together, and tucked it gently into his front pocket, right next to his heart!
