Tuesday, January 21st, 2025
Don’t Steal a Police Car
Some years back, I was meeting with a young woman in a county jail whose life had fallen apart because of her addiction to methamphetamine. We’ll call her Cate, though that’s not her real name. She was in her mid-thirties and her addiction became so bad that child services took away her two children and placed them in a foster home. That’s the point where some people would have enough incentive to stop using and try to get their kids back. Instead, Cate upped her intake of meth until she became psychotic. Her psychosis developed into extreme paranoia, especially with anyone involved in law enforcement.
Early one morning, Cate left her apartment, still in her bedclothes, jumped in her car, and drove off to someplace that she could not recall when relating her story to me. A policemen in a squad car pulled her over for erratic driving. He demanded that she get out of her car. Because he felt she might jump back in her car and drive off, he stood between her and her car. At that point, she became terrified that he was about to kill her, and she had to escape as quickly as she could. Since she couldn’t get into her car, she only had one other option to escape—the police car behind her. She didn’t make it very far before another police car in the vicinity stopped her, pulled her out, and hauled her off to jail.
Once in the jail, she was certain the guards were going to kill her. After two weeks of having no access to meth, her paranoia diminished to the point that she came to realize what a pickle she was in. That’s when she asked to see a chaplain, and that’s when I first met Cate.
As was my usual protocol, I asked what her relationship was to God. She had gone to church as a child and young adult but hadn’t had anything to do with religion or God in several years. I asked her why she wanted to see a chaplain then, and she said, “I ain’t got any other good options left.” I met with her once a week for at least a half hour per visit to explain to her who Jesus was, that He had come to earth to save us from our sinful nature, and how she could be saved. She was always a bit glum when she came to meet with me in a small room with big windows. Why wouldn’t she be? She was heading to prison and had lost everything she had, including her two kids.
After I felt she had enough information to make a decision for Christ—or not—I showed her a series of drawings I always used to explain to her how she could be born again and become a child of God. I gave her the drawings and a Bible so she could look up specific passages in the Gospel of John before we met in a week. I didn’t feel she was ready to make a decision that day, and I didn’t want to force her into a “deathbed confession” of faith.
The next week, Cate came almost skipping into the meeting room and had a smile on her face that I’d never seen before. The glumness was gone; a spirit of joy replaced it. I suspected what had happened and asked her in high anticipation, “Who are you Cate?”
She answered with one foot in the room and one foot in heaven, “I am a child of God.”
To be continued next week.