Wednesday, October 16th, 2019
I met with Elaine on one of my chaplain days at the Wright County Jail. She told me she was a born-again believer who had a few scrapes with the law eleven years ago in Minnesota and had a warrant out for her arrest on a charge of felony contraband possession of a controlled substance. She moved to Las Vegas to escape the warrant, but in her own words, “I just wasted away.”
The warrant wasn’t vigorously pursued and Elaine plodded along from job to job and boyfriend to boyfriend, a life of no meaning and suppressed hopelessness.
Then her mother called with a dying last wish for her. “Get it together, honey.” A week later she passed on.
Elaine came back to Minnesota and turned herself in. Her hearing was in three days, and her public defender told her she’d mostly likely be released from jail but with a lengthy probation. So I had one shot with her.
It’s mind-boggling for me how God works in the lives of his children. Elaine was a born-again believer, but she had left Jesus in Minnesota when she went down to Nevada. I would have never seen her that day except that two other inmates I was scheduled to meet with weren’t able to meet with me.
“I can’t escape my problems, Chaplain. I just can’t.”
I drew the two hearts on the board and explained it to her. She stopped me before I could finish.
“That’s it. That’s my problem. If I follow Jesus instead of asking Him to follow me, I’ll be okay.”
“Before you do that, you need to repent of leaving Jesus behind in Minnesota and living a life of many sins.”
“I’ve told God I’m sorry for all that.”
“You need more than being sorry. That’s remorse. You need to repent. That means to confess to God your many sins and tell Him you’re done with your old life.”
“I did that two days ago sitting in my cell.”
I didn’t need to explain anything more. In fact, when I did, she just sat there looking at the two heart on the whiteboard.
“Thanks for showing me what I been doing wrong. I can’t believe it. It’s really simple to see.” We finished up the time talking about how she could stay near Jesus – things like reading scripture daily and praying continually. All the time she kept looking at the drawing as if it were a magnet pulling her to it.
I believe Elaine has now fulfilled her mother’s wish of “getting it together.”