Sitting on a Barbed-wire Fence

On August 14, 2001, the unit I am housed in exploded in a racial disturbance, which sent many inmates (and me) to the city and county hospitals.  After serving more than 10 years for armed robbery, I has lasted only seven months free before I was freshly back in the system.  (I knew) God saved my life when the doctor told me that if the steel object that struck had been one inch farther, I would have died on the spot.  After the riot I was compelled to review my life.  I had been straddling a barbed-wire fence.  I had accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior but refused to let the old man in me die.  I manipulated women and sold and used drugs.  I embraced greed, lust and revenge.  I even went to Christian services at our unit while selling drugs, saying to myself, I will do this just long enough to get my TV, gym shoes and enough to actually run an inmate store of my own.  Yet God still had mercy on my life.  So I’m at a crossroads:  live and die by the old way or surrender to God’s will.  This means seeking gainful employment, throwing out all pornography (which is a huge problem even among Christian prisoners), and no more using lonely women.   We can all sit on the knee of Jesus comfortable instead of straddling the barbed-wire fence.

                                                                        Yawatha W., Arizona