To Fail Better: Prison To Promise 43445r

To Fail Better

Prison to Promise

Anmy Tran

Copyright © 2020 Anmy Tran All rights reserved First Edition PAGE PUBLISHING, INC. Conneaut Lake, PA First originally published by Page Publishing 2020 ISBN 978-1-6624-1807-5 (pbk) ISBN 978-1-6624-1808-2 (digital) Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

The Alarm The Verdict Road to Perdition The Dreamer Savor the Dark Personal Legacy At the Break of Dawn Disappointment to Appointment Going Deep in Present Bewilderment of Light Dry Bones and Instincts Human Experiences The View Living Gift Derangement Syndrome and the Lizard Brain Voyages Common Prick of Pain War

Time What Next Math-ster of the Mind DNA Whisperers: 3andMe and Power of Three Story Behind—Art of the View De Facto Family To Fail Better—Cheers to the Fall Friends, Thorns, “Guacamole,” Future Find Me Here The Escape Artist A Tomb with a View The Accidental “I Am”

To my beloved husband and two daughters. Your kneeling in prayer lives forever, as do your prayers. To Christie Ford, Kendra Webb, Alderson chaplains, and Alderson men and women volunteer ministers. Your humanity, kindness, and love for God’s children build lives in prison, as do your ministries. To Allie, Kim, Ebony, “Sweet” McConnell, Stacie, Michelle, Mrs. Akgabor, Sheryl, Erica, and the rest of my Alderson friends. The memory of you standing in prayers on the mountain is evermore alive, as are your prayers.

What you are about to read is presented in the form of a story, but the characters and what is contained within the story is real.

Chapter One

The Alarm

August the second of 2011…

The woman’s name was Dr. Jade Temple. The morning was moving hastily as the woman dropped her two daughters off at school and was running late to her office. The patients must be anxious and upset for waiting, she thought worriedly. She called her office while driving and cutting lanes to beat the traffic to work. She saw that all her staff at the office were so uncharacteristically unresponsive that no one came to the phone as she dialed and redialed the office’s numbers continuously. Suddenly… Ring! Ring! Her husband, Josh, called from work. “Honey, can you come home? The house alarm went off, and the ADT company called, notifying there’s a break-in at our home. I am in the middle of an important meeting and can’t get out,” he asked worriedly. “Okay! Can you call the police and tell them I am on my way home for a possible house robbery? It’s too dangerous for me to face off the robbers alone,” she replied and immediately made a U-turn home. Still, there was no answer from the office as she spent the entire drive tapping the Redial touch screen on her iPhone… She arrived home. She turned the Honda Odyssey minivan to the end of the culde-sac in her subdivision, pulled up to the driveway, and she immediately

noticed three big, professional-looking Caucasian men in nice street clothes (not uniforms) standing at the driveway. She thought they must be the law enforcement officers whom her husband called for assistance for the possible house robbery; they looked intimidating and stoic. It was a quiet morning in the neighborhood. Looking around, she could see everybody was probably at work, and what an ideal time to break in someone’s house at this hour. She got out of the Odyssey. As she walked up to one of the tall, big men, she began introducing herself and asking who he was, but before her first sentence was completed, the big man no. 1, Mr. Don’t Care, immediately placed the handcuffs on her wrists without explanation except a stoic look and said in a stern voice, “Good morning. Are you Dr. Temple? We are agents for the DEA (Drug Enforcement istration) office.” “Yes,” Dr. Temple replied. “What’s happening?” “We broke into your house. There’s an investigation. We don’t know exactly what’s going on, but the FBI and the OIG agents are on their way and will be here in a couple hours to explain everything to you.” As soon as Mr. Don’t Care handcuffed her, he escorted her inside the house and sat her down at the breakfast nook table. She was nervous and confused, not understanding what was going on as she’d never been in trouble with the law before. She noticed that there were about three other Caucasian men and one African American woman inside the house searching the kitchen, the basement, and the upstairs bedrooms. It was as if they were searching for drugs. Befuddled and trembling, Jade asked, “What are you looking for? Why did you break into my house?” “Sorry, ma’am, we can’t say anything until the FBI and the OIG agents get here to explain everything to you,” responded Mr. Don’t Care politely. Ring! Ring! Ring! The woman’s husband called her cell phone constantly. She attempted to answer her husband’s call; she was reaching for the middle of the table. “That is my husband calling. He’s worried that someone breaking in the house could hurt me. Can I answer his call?” Jade insisted. Multiple times she requested, and it was the same reply each time from Mr.

Don’t Care—that she couldn’t answer the call or talk to anyone until the OIG and the FBI agents got there. “I know you have a nice family and two beautiful young daughters. I don’t want your husband to get upset when he talks to you. We must wait until the OIG and the FBI agents get here, then they can explain everything to you and your husband. I will call your husband and let him know you are with us and doing fine,” explained Mr. Don’t Care. It was still overwhelming, confusing, and scary for the woman to be facing the federal government, and trying to cooperate, she believed everything would be cleared up once the OIG and the FBI arrived. It was just a misunderstanding, she thought. Approximately three hours later… The OIG and the FBI agents arrived. “I apologize for taking so long to get here and that you’re handcuffed like this,” stated the OIG agent, Mr. Entrapment, while he unhandcuffed the woman. “You have a nice family.” He looked around at different family portraits hanging on the walls in the hallway and the great room. “I know you are a nice person and have a good family. Do you mind that we move to your den and I ask you few questions?” “Sure.” Mr. Entrapment, along with the FBI agent (ex-Blue Cross Blue Shield agent), his assistant, and the woman walked into the office den in a more casual manner. She sat at the desk facing two federal government agents sitting at her left side with their backs against the bookshelves. She was trying to be helpful and not get on their bad side. Mr. Entrapment conducted the interview questions, while the FBI agent wrote them down on the notepapers. The OIG asked questions, and she answered (for about forty minutes) until Mr. Don’t Care walked in, handing the woman her cellphone. “There’s an attorney on the line for you, called by your husband,” stated Mr. Don’t Care. Mr. Entrapment immediately stopped the interview and said he had finished. “Please sign this paper here regarding our interview today that you speak true to the best of your knowledge.” He handed her the paper to sign as Mr. Entrapment appeared hurrying.

The woman signed the paper without reading, without hesitation. She trusted the government. The OIG and FBI agents took off. And now it was only then she learned through the attorney on the phone represent her that she had been investigated and indicted for a very serious federal crime and that she did not and should not have to speak to any federal government agent until she had her lawyer with her. A few hours later, she was taken in a black 4 × 4 SUV to the Southeastern District Court of Michigan for fingerprint and arraignment in front of the Magistrate then returned home with a ten-thousand-dollar bond. The woman and her family battled her legal battle for two years, contemplating whether or not she should go to trial or accept the government’s plea deal for a lesser sentence. It doesn’t matter, she said to herself. I know other people do it all the time, saying anything for a shorter sentence because the federal prosecutor threatens to go after their loved ones with longer years of sentence if they should take it to trial. But in her heart, she knew that it did matter. And she knew that her God, like a traveling master, always found a place where there was someone who could plant the seed of faith, not bury the seed. This was the time and place for her to plant that seed of faith. The woman prepared to go to trial without accepting the plea deal to go along with the federal prosecutors saying just anything for a shorter sentence.

*****

We need to trust God is the One who will part the water for us when we go to trial, the woman told her husband one early sunrise morning in his reading room as they were praying, asking if she should go to trial or accept the federal’s offer, the plea deal. “How do we experience ‘God part the water’ when we’re too scared to cross the Red Sea and accept the government’s plea deal, whereas I don’t really know any

information about other defendants in the case to give the government? This is our opportunity to walk by faith, not by sight.” The woman sounded convincing, and her husband asked God at five o’clock every morning for the answer until the sixth month came. So the husband dropped on his knees on the floor of the bedroom and took up the Book of Life, reading the book of John about the Shepherd and His sheep. “I don’t know what ‘My sheep hear my voice’ is about, but I have my peace to go forward with your trial,” said the sheep’s voice behind him on a Saturday morning bed breakfast with the woman during his quiet time in their reading room. The woman was surprised at her husband’s decision. Maybe the church, with the sycamore growing from within, had been planted. It had caused him to have the same dream with her, and it was causing him to feel encouraged toward his life companion. He drank a bit from the wine that remained from his dinner of the night before, and he gathered his wife closer to his body. He knew that a few months from now, with the sun at its zenith of the trial against the “Goliath” (federal prosecutors), the heat could be so great that he might not be able to lead his family across the “Red Sea.” It was the time of life when all your harvest slept during the summer and there’s no spring season. The heat lasted until nightfall, and all that time, he had to carry his family. But when the woman thought to complain about the burden of its weight, she ed that because they had the Shepherd, they would withstand the cold of the dawn, the sun of the noon day, and the wind of the storm. “We have to prepare for the worst if you should lose at trial,” her husband reminded her pessimistically, but she was optimistic for the Shepherd’s protection and victory. The Shepherd had a purpose, and so did her trial. Her purpose in life was to travel the journey, and after the years of crossing the “Red Sea” terrain, she would know all the enemies and promises of the wilderness. The woman and her husband were preparing, on this journey, to explain to their daughters, at least to their twelve-year-old one, that her mother possibly had to go away for a long time; that due to a simple lack of knowledge, you could perish; and that if her mother lost at trial and was convicted with a felony, she would have to go to prison.

The horizon was tinged with red, but the sun never appeared.

Chapter Two

The Verdict

Summer 2013…

“Guilty.” The woman’s “guilty” verdict and a five-year sentence to federal prison for conspiracy to health care fraud at age forty-two was a devastating blow. “Why?” she asked the Lord. “Why take the woman who loves you and dedicates her life to serve you in the church and on her short-term mission, who is in the prime of life, whose impact on Vietnamese people for Jesus is in progress, and whose two precious daughters, eleven and five, need their mother bloodily? Why do you have me going to trial only to be delivered to prison, crossing the Red Sea only to go to Egypt, not the Promised Land? By faith, we crossed the Red Sea, but you did not part the water and deliver us as your word promised. Contrarily, you delivered me to prison.” In the midst of grief, she had a million whys. Not one of them was answered. Instead, through the woman’s anguished, frozen emotions, on her knees in the closet before dawn, she could not utter prayers to God. There crept still a strange promise suring all understanding. Through and around prison will flow discovery and newness as you had never before experienced it, the instinct told her. The Word promised her this hope. It was as if someone who knew her better than herself would wrap her round and round with his infinite care, protection, and plan that she looked forward to experiencing, which no eyes had seen, no ears had heard, no heart of man could humanly possibly perceive. She didn’t know why she felt such an instinct. Many nights of spring during the time she was awaiting surrender to Alderson Federal Prison Camp, waiting after Josh, her husband, and the children were in bed, she sat in a rocking patio chair in the backyard, dazzled at the starry sky of

the dark night, and bewildered at what was happening with a few glasses of cabernet sauvignon. She had done wrong but nothing to deserve such a harsh punishment. At least, that was what she believed then. She understood no more than before the reason for the “guilty” verdict and the grave sentence; she only knew that in some way that transcended reason, it was deeply and eternally all right. She looked toward the starry sky and encouraged herself, This is the race I must run. This is the fight. I must fight a good fight of faith. Without faith, I will fall so badly that I’ll never be able to get up. It was these words based on the Scriptures that the woman had learned about and read about throughout the New Testament written by the apostle Paul, and now it certainly began to sink deep, and only by these words, she had a faint light at the end of the tunnel. Now no chastening seems to be useful for the present, but it is painful, nevertheless; afterward, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore it strengthens the hands which hang down and the feeble knees (Hebrews 12:11–12). She didn’t fully understand, experience, or rejoice in these Scriptures. Rather, it was the contrary. But somehow, she knew she needed to hold on to what the Scriptures promised to keep moving…

Chapter Three

Road to Perdition

You may not know your vision until there’s no going back. —Unknown

Summer of 2014…

May 14, 2014, unleashed a torrent of the breeze changing and an abnormal whirlwind of post-conviction since summer 2013. A cold front out of the woman’s heart then descended like a swirly wind that roared down the intestine and deadened the soul to that of a dead human walking. She was driving with two church friends a day in advance on a road to perdition—Michigan to Alderson Woman Federal Prison Camp, West Virginia—self-surrender. “Goodbye, Mom, come home to us as soon as you can. We love you.” They hugged and kissed each other goodbye without water exiting the occipital orbits. She dropped off her daughters at school while her husband was already at work as they tried to keep the day as normal as possible for the children. The woman recalled her daughter’s last words as she was driving and felt moisture at the corner of her eyes. She found herself perplexed to be where she was the next morning, May 15, 2014. Looking out over a greenery-covered hilly backyard at Days Inn Hotel in Lewisburg where she stayed the previous night (about twenty minutes away from Alderson Federal Prison Camp), she heard new noises in a strange town. She stood there, staring into the steady traffic surrounded by the quiet, distant mountains of West Virginia, and took a deep breath as she absorbed the last

moment of freedom. “Soon!” she screamed, screamed silently into the darkening day. First day of Alderson finally begins soon, she thought to herself. The beginning of a journey where death would have been better, and there is no turning back, no rebirth. This I will learn. This is the lesson of life. Perhaps I should have seen it coming. But I was too busy in the world, she sighed regrettably.

*****

During the interminable driving and arriving Alderson Camp the next day, and sitting in the R&D (Receiving and Discharge), she thought about her dead days lying ahead. She only knew at the time her confused heart was condemned to uncertainty forever. The world became eternally sad. The whole structure of Alderson Camp seemed to occupy its own space, one of solitude and oblivion, protected by the vices of bureaucracy and secrecy of federal government. The guards in the R&D seemed emotionless and intimidating with robotic structural and political correct communications that left her a chill like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Few hours into waiting for ission process to finish, she sat there staring into the air thinking, Look at the state I’m in. How are the children and Josh going to be? How’s he going to handle all of these by himself for five years? She sat there with an absorbed look, holding a black leather-covered Bible written in her native language, Vietnamese, in her hand the whole time, contemplating her children until her eyes became moist, and she dried them with the back of her hand, exhaling a deep sigh of helplessness. But in the depth of her soul, she still had hope that a longed-for miracle would manifest from the black leather-covered book to save her from the grave dream. A couple of hours ed; she was discharged and sent up the “Halleluiah Hill” to A3 unit, the A & O (ission and Orientation) dormitory. The woman

immediately noticed the chapel at the top of the hill on her right as if it were waiting for her ascending to the hill of the Lord. At that moment, it came clear to her, a distinctive voice, “Are you ready to ascend to my hill? Who may ascend to the hill of the Lord but he who has clean hands and a pure heart? You are brought here for cleansing and learning to ascend the hill, not to be buried or condemned. Do you believe?” She knew it was the old king’s voice because the voice came from the scriptures in the book of Psalm 24:4, and if it had been her voice, it would have been filled with disgust, bitterness, and blaming of the federal government for her own stupidity and crazy heroic criminal behavior. “You will be all right and be afraid not,” the old king told her. The woman believed this. She wanted to please the old king, but she wished it did not have to be this way. Surrounded by the impenetrable mountain chain, white and powdery in the silent morning light of the next day, Alderson Prison world was so new to her that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them, it was necessary for her to point. The red phone, the horseshoe, the snitch, contraband, etc. Learning these and their meaning in prison was like learning ESL all over again as the day she first arrived in America twenty-eight years ago. The woman couldn’t get out of her perplexity when she walked around the compound and saw a crowd of women wandering in despair who complained of the same pains. The pain of leaving behind children, husbands, grandchildren, grandparents, and loved ones. Although prison might be her foreseeable event, the circumstances were not. “Time will put things in their place,” she sighed while biting back secret tears.

Chapter Four

The Dreamer

I will give you the treasure of darkness and hidden riches of secret places. —Isaiah 45:3

It was her first six months in Alderson Women Federal Prison Camp. The woman was not prepared at age forty-two, when the daughters were only twelve and five, for Josh, her husband, to be a single parent for five years. She was never prepared for a time in prison, for all the shame and mockery of being a convicted felon, much less to have an unbridled purpose in such a pandemonium as the Women Federal Prison. There had been no training for any of these. “Are you ready for change? Or have you only counted the losses? Are there not certain areas of your life where rigidity is creeping in? The rough and tumble of your family life is my antidote to complacence,” said the old king. “But, Lord, you said it’s not good for a man to live alone, and my daughters are too young to be Mama-less,” she reasoned. “I can understand if you’re taking a wife and mother away for one year, even two or three years, but five years? How can it be? And we have no relative in Michigan in case of emergency.” The woman was at her wit’s end. She saw that all Alderson women entered through the ruined gate and then told herself that she would have to start reading and finish her black leather book in its entirety, Old Testament to New Testament, to let time quickly. She swept her mind with books and the black leather book and took pictures of her vision with pencils and paper. She told herself that she would have to start

writing more: time ed quicker and made the place more interesting to journey. It was still dark when she awoke, and looking around, she could hear the buzz of the flying insects and listen to the beating of the woman’s heart in the cube next door through the filmy light of the woman warehouse. I should sleep a little longer, she thought. But she had had the same argument with the creator that night as a week earlier, and once again, she had awakened before it started. What good could possibly come out of a confused, desolate, bureaucratic, and deceiving place like federal prison camp, God?

*****

Walking up the Halleluiah Hill by the chapel, from breakfast in the Central Dining Room (CDR) in the early morning, to the highest point of the upper compound facing eastward toward the gate and the mountain, the woman sat down on a bench. Yeah, she wept internally with dry tears when she ed her Jerusalem. The horizon was tinged with red, and suddenly the sun appeared. She thought back to that conversation with the old king and felt eternally sad. “What good could possibly come out of a confused, desolate, bureaucratic, and deceiving place like federal prison camp, God?” the woman asked the same question from the beginning of her prison term in tears. She had already heard the prevailing rumor that the BOP (Bureau of Prison) was “closing” the camp, accepting only prisoners who were going to the RDAP (Residential Drug Abuse Program) or who were already doing time in other facilities such as FCI and were now qualified for an upgraded minimum security camp status, and that many prisoners might get early release. But the place continued rushing with new faces and only a modest few a week leaving to go to the halfway house. She dreamed that she was one of the few leaving the gate as she scanned the mountain and the horizon. “What is your dream?”

“Dream?” “Yes.” “I have no dream. The last dream I had was that you would part the water for my Red Sea when I went to trial. But that dream is dead. Now I only have reality, prison. Not one year. Not two years. Not three years. But five. That’s right. Five years of my life will be wasted in this place. You can call that my dream.” “What’s your dream today? If you can be anything and successful, what would you be? A dream is always a dream. I dreamed about parting the water of the Red Sea, and it only brought me prison. Should I still dream?” “Yes. Dreams are the language of God.” “Oh.” Suddenly, the woman realized that things had quieted down a bit internally and that this unusual revelation was being stirred. Not all clashes in life were sporting events, but for her to be in the mix was the mystery of discovery. If God is the purposeful Father and never makes a mistake, then Alderson for me will not be a misfortune but a purposeful opportunity for something afterward, she thought. “If dreams are the language of God, then you must have brought me here to tell me of the dream to discover. Something that I would never know or could ever know until I come here. It’s only you who can know it.” “Tell me about your dream.” “Am I going to know you in this place like it is written, ‘No eyes have seen no ears have heard or any man’s hearts have perceived’?” “Tell me more about your dream.” “You know all about me, God. I’d love to tell the world about you, but you know I am scared to speak in public, and I stammer. People will laugh at me when I

speak. How can I tell the world who you are when I don’t have a dream of becoming a pastor, and I don’t have a calling to be a long-term missionary?” “Who said you could only tell the world about me through the lips?” “What do you mean?” She paused for a moment to see if she knew what the voice inside her said. She said nothing. She was silent for some time. Then she picked up the book inside her tote, the book with a black leather cover that she had brought with her to the camp. Leafing through the pages, she came to the stories of solitude, Abraham and Jacob having to leave their hometown and finding their dreams in the foreign land in the middle of nowhere. The woman began to start jotting down her journey, but she was not able to concentrate. She was tense and fearful because she knew that the old king was right. There’s no shortcut to a great dream. There’s always a price. Everything in life has a price. The bigger the dream, the bigger the price. Jacob went through what he had gone through for his prize. To know where he was, in the middle of nowhere to the “God of Now Here,” Jacob had to flee from his brother, Esau, for his life. In the middle of nowhere, God came to Jacob through a dream and revealed his covenant to him, a promise that God is with him and would allow him to prosper in the foreign land and bring him back home in abundance. Surely after all the hardships and cheating he got from his uncle, Laban, God would bless Jacob with plenty. He only had his staff when he crossed the Jordan, but the day he returned, he had two groups of people and flocks and herds and camels (Genesis 27:41–32:12). Abraham went through a total separation anxiety, separating from everything he is familiar to go to a strange place for his prize: “Jehovah Jireh—God always provides” (Genesis 22:8). She would have to go through this journey for her dream. Regardless of her crazy thinking and criminal behavior that brought her to prison, God would turn it into a prize, but there was no shortcut that was less than five years. There was something mysterious about sitting in the dark. In the dark, the only thing you can see is light. Sitting alone in Alderson, the tomb soon brought her to make sense of the scripture: “Unless a grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (John 12:24).

She was the seed that must die. She held a puzzle piece in her hand and began to envision a big picture from the puzzle a little better. There, in front of her, where the clouds had been the day before, was an endless chain of mountains, surrounding all around the entire Camp. “To follow me, you must be born again. To be born again, you must first die. The seed is planted in the ground where there is only darkness and no sunlight. And the seed dies, transformed to a tree. The tree bears fruit—law of produce,” the old king reminded her. “But…if it is only me alone, I won’t be so insistent that you deliver me out of Alderson soon. There are husband and children factors, Lord,” she reasoned with her Father on how she was not ready for the extreme obedience just yet. But in her heart, she sensed there was bigger picture he wanted her to see and deeper work he needed to work in her. She was afraid of the brand “Failure: Alderson Prison” forever marking her life, her daughters growing without a mother, and her Job kinds of friends, critics. God chastised her, and she was not so righteous after all. But most important, she knew if God granted her request, she would plunge directly back into her same old self of being quick to speak and slow to listen, a heroic people pleaser with a turbulent marriage. Alderson was just a piece of a puzzle in her life picture. “Tell me about your dream,” the old king said these words slowly and gently so she would think about it. “There’s a saying, ‘See it to seize it.’” “How can you seize something you do not see?” The woman continued to stay silent for some time. Then she again took the conversation and thought for a moment. “I’m not going to dream anything now,” she said. “But I will find the purpose of me being here, if you help me find it.” The old king laughed out mysteriously. “Well, the purpose in your life is not yours but mine. The purpose of your life isn’t for you to choose but to discover. There’s always hidden treasure in darkness, riches of secret places.” “First, swear to me. Swear that you will help me find it worth in exchange for my next five years, and I am going to tell the world about you, as real as it gets.”

The old king swore that he would. The woman asked him to swear again while looking at the image of the clouds, transforming from cotton candy to an angry face to an elephant to an angelic cherub. “It’s a dream in the Language of the Universe,” she reasoned, “and a promise from the Soul of the Universe. I’d love to write, though writing is unthinkable to me. English is not my native language. That’s why I feel that I deserve what I find. It’s your purpose to bring me here, not mine. And if you are with me, surely writing will not be impossible.” The woman was surprisingly hopeful about the process and outcome of her incarceration wouldn’t be as bad as she was afraid. The old king had revealed to her moments in solitude with him from watching the horizon and the mountain caps while reading the scriptures. She didn’t need to waste this time because she was incarcerated. Everyone was destined for a purpose, and hers was to write of her promise, of His story. “My heart is flowing with a good theme. I recite my composition concerning the king. My tongue is the pen of a ready writer” (Psalm 45:1).

Stone Rolled Away (Inspired and adapted from a poem by Keith Green)

A foolish dreamer I was Tried to be a hero Rescued anyone coming my way, Built a highway and a road Of blessings so the unclean could over it. God, they may know then,

Yet it was not the highway of holiness. Pride crept in somehow like the clouds That hung like curtains on my eyes. I’ve been blinded all these years, When I thought I was so wise But until you took me by surprise To Alderson prison, Came tumbling down, my fortress of high fort walls. Throughout life, I have feared For what the world calls failure Now alone in Alderson—the tomb, You brought me low so I could know The way to reach the sky To forsake “self” and all my rights With each one I laid down, A jewel you place in my crown. Awake from a longest, scariest dream How real it seemed until you heard my praise started With one command you rolled away The stone that held my heart. You brought me here where things are clear

Tomb turned to your holy habitation, And trials turned to gold. Make free—my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.

Chapter Five

Savor the Dark

Savor the dark because there’s no time like the present. Because someday, my vision will finally take shape. The woman thought of her first Christmas in the dark after six months of staying at Alderson and the first time ever she had been away from Josh and two daughters during holiday season. By now, more than three years had ed from the day she was indicted. Josh thought it was important to tell only the eldest daughter, twelve years old, that the woman would have to go to prison and what had happened. They decided instead to tell their five-year-old daughter that Mother had to work far away, and when God was willing, Mother would come home soon, a tactic they described as less traumatizing. The reactions were pretty consistent. Star would not cry uproariously then have to be persuaded by the truth, then be horrified and worried about her mom not returning home anytime soon. Despite her incredible certainty that everything under the sun had been written by one hand only, she felt the sun began its departure as well. Her motherhood in prison was revered but also complicated by separation anxiety, guilt, and shame. To her eyes, the Alderson world was so new that many things lacked names. She was lying there at the “bus stop” (the common public area in the range with beds holding newly itted inmates before they could be assigned to their shared cube with a bunkie) and listening in the dark.

First Day in Alderson

that white, powdery, distant morning?

May 15, 2014, The birth of death finally arrived. The world, eternally sad, it came. I, a fugitive, from all curses That had ever lashed mankind. A dead woman walking through A universe of grief, Bars of sorrows, despair, unbelief—I try to escape. First night at the “bus stop,” there lying Alderson, a world so recent. Many things lacked names to her. In the dark, listening To another inmate’s breathing, The buzz of the flying insects. The beating of the woman’s heart in the cube next door Yielded an overwhelming mournful moan That left a frozen echo inside her groan. That night, during the frightful time of lying awake, In an incipient aloneness, immense solitude expands, Whispering private images everywhere, her daughters’ Young faces that drooped with innocence and purity.

That imminent promise inspired a serene courage inside. It was simply a matter of waking up the soul. Beyond the genius of nature, it is always unbridled faith, And even beyond miracles and magic, she held on. , Faith of the making possible of the things seen Which were made not from the things that visible But from that were not, That night, weeping in consternation, The comfort of His presence became real, Wrapped around her through songs of misery.

The woman watched the deserted human warehouse for some time, until it exposed the silent pandemonium of the BOP bureaucracy—such a harsh, corrupt, and hypocrisy environment. One would find it was a delicate walk to balance between the prison’s demands and one’s own sense of humanity. Oftentimes during a visit with Josh and two daughters, the woman was not overwhelmed but reserved joy for the soon overwhelming sadness. “Time to say goodbye.” It killed the woman one time to catch Grace, her twelve year-old daughter, exiting the visiting building at the end of the visiting hour, smiling and hugging and comforting the five-year-old baby sister, Star, as if everything were fine and Mom would soon come home, but suddenly Grace quietly and quickly slipped behind Josh and Star and turned her back toward them so they could not see her tears. A twelve-year-old child already had to learn to hide her secret tears. Having her family visit was a precious privilege, but at the same time, overwhelming sadness about her life at the moment was inevitable. Could Josh and their daughters weather this sanity? Could her marriage survive? Josh had been a faithful husband and a sacrificial father to his daughters especially during

those three years waiting for her trial date, then prison; now that she was here and it would be five years, their real test whether they could make it through. Different women had different ways of dealing with prison’s impact on their lives. On a lazy “nothing to do” weekend afternoon she sat by the river in the lower compound near the railroad tracks. The woman ed her Jerusalem. She had been a witness to God in anywhere but her household. She worked and worked, built and built. One ministry after another, one money transaction after another. Her private practice, Tran-Lee Foot and Ankle, was a blessing success that seemed untouchable. Her success became her Jericho, where behind the thick wall of job and financial security, she thought she was safe and immune from trouble as long as she remained faithfully serving the Lord at her church and the community. What she had built was now sinking irrevocably into the quick sand of forgetfulness. The cruelty of Alderson caused her voice to be broken by uncertainty, and her hands seemed to doubt the existence of things, yet it was evident that everyone must came from “I was.” At the prime of her success, 2003 to 2011, her Jericho, “Moon City,” a city of medical communities and church ministries and Vietnam veteran charities, became a city built on a river of life that ran along the nature of the businesses, just as Jericho was built on a bank of the dirtiest river, Jordan, with water that ran along a bed of unpolished stones. Unaware that she’d been blinded all these years, pride crept in somehow like the clouds that hung like the curtains on her eyes which brought her guilt of health care fraud conspiracy. For many years, she worked hard to build her Jericho, the intellectual city, with her intention of making the “Moon City” emit light as far as, and to as many, communities and people as possible. Her husband, an honest man, warned her, “It won’t work like that. Life isn’t a movie and don’t be a dreamer.” But she, at the time, did not believe in the honesty of the man, so she traded her time, her money, her energy, her might, and her name for the “Moon City” without much relying on the true light source, the Word, only herself. Her relationship with God and her marriage suffered.

*****

And now it was only six months into her sixty months before she would be back in the same house. She sat under the dark sky and watched the moonlit night by the softball field in the lower compound. It came clear that the moon does not shine with its own light but merely reflects the light from the sun. “Things have a life of their own. It’s simply a matter of waking up the souls,” she once proclaimed confidently, now a realization of just being caught in the world. She saw that those who couldn’t come to with God had a very difficult time with their imprisonment and, in turn, had a very difficult time with staff and other prisoners. They were in constant rebellion against the BOP system because they couldn’t reconcile themselves with the creator. She saw young women continuing to run wild in prison, railing against anything they didn’t like, and older white-collar crime women who were dismayed to find themselves living among people they thought beneath them. Many women still believed in a life of their own and that it’s simply a matter of waking up the souls without realizing where the source of the souls come from in order to emit light. She thought they were all unnecessarily stressed. She hated the pettiness the prison controlled over her life, but the only way to fight it was in her own walk with the old king. And she knew she wasn’t better than any other woman locked up in there, even the ones she didn’t like. On the other hand, some people were way too callous in prison. They seemed to have forgotten the world that we live in exists. They tried to master the rules of the prison to break them yet remained complaining, the hypocrites, rule-breaking BOP every single day. Living a productive life in prison was not easy to do. The truth was, the prison and its residents were filled with bureaucracy and the system of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which seemed to reward thieves and lawlessness better than those who respected the rules of law, and it was hard to what it was like to live in respect and be respected, even after a few short months. The life of the institution was dominated by power and control, rewarding the rebellious and the troublemakers for sucking up to the BOP, snitching, and playing along with the manipulative BOP system. This was one of the awful truths of incarceration, the fact that the horror and the struggle and the interest of their immediate prison life drove them into the very same system they decried. People spent a lot of time thinking about how awful prison was rather than envisioning their purpose through it. So she became obsessed with the solitude in mountain gazing and a host of Christian opportunities in the chapel, Saturday and Sunday services (usually delivered by the powerful prison ministry volunteers), a once-a-month Monday

worship, and sometimes a Thursday bible study led by nondenominational volunteers armed with prophetic words and Holy Spirit filled prayers. The most awaited anticipation, though, was the “Tuesday” (usually every second Tuesday of the month) service held in the evening in the main chapel, where oftentimes people would skip their dinner in the CDR to get to the chapel early enough to grab a seat before it was all packed with women all the way to the exit door to the hallway. The worship service was filled with the rain of Holy Spirit and the wind of hope amidst the contrite hearts of women despite of the corrupt, harsh, and hypocritical environment that even driest souls would have fruit of repentance popping out among their gears of the hard shells of their stony hearts. The air in the chapel of the anticipating Tuesday evening was so damp with the spirit of worship that hungry fish, the people, had come in through the doors and swum out the windows, floating through the atmosphere. She stood there in the sanctuary, absorbed in solitude; she was just able to see a horseman of her old self who was leaving her, gallop off in a mute cloud of dust, leaving only the old king to enthrone and an invisible hand stretching out and holding her shattering heart of the bottomless pain. Then she emptied herself in an unleashed flow, feeling that something swollen and painful had burst inside her. “Loving a man is a lonely love. Love is a disease, the way I used to be,” she confessed. No longer torn by dead loves nor undertaking the reckless adventure, the pure, humble life in prison brought her to the decisive period of her existence—she sought it out. In the Sunday service, the woman felt a glow of clairvoyance when she heard, “Welcome to the chapel and not to prison,” an announcement each Sunday as Mrs. Encouragement, the religious assistant, and the thundery congregation together declared to welcome new issions, despite the despair of Alderson. Somehow the woman knew that in some inexplicable way, there was a purpose for her to be here, to see what the house of worship was like, how to be the house of prayer for all, and how God gathered the remnant of His people—the peculiar and outcasts. She found the religious prostrations of saber-rattling quoting scriptures tedious. The true faithful had a distinct aspect of grace, patiently walking their proclamation as they were praying on number of topics. Truthfully, she thought that she could thank the Lord more with less coarse cassock of church activities and perhaps with less self-congratulation testimony. People worshipping loudly yet still acting pretty lousy, a common trait running around the compound as well as in the church in the outside world. There were no religious activities or programs in Alderson that could change

women’s life except the Cross and its relationship with her own cross she carried. She was confronted with her own at dawn, in the morning, and at night and could only ask, “What’s the world’s greatest lie?” It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we have no control of what’s happening to us, and our lives are controlled by our circumstance and environment. That’s the world’s greatest lie. That’s never happened to me, the woman promised herself. They wanted Alderson to be the end of my life, but I decided it is the beginning—a life of authorship. She was surprised to learn that she and many Alderson women shared a common prick of faith through the brokenness and only in bottomless brokenness such resilient strength was birth. She noticed that Paul’s writing in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “For my power is made perfect in weakness,” was no longer a theology but a reality as real as it gets. In the dark, the only thing you can see is light. Scriptures pointed her to the road travel to fail better, which was not unusual in those parts. Prison was hundreds of miles from home; she had to cross the rough, winding journey by Scriptures or she would fail even worse. People often appeared at the pretty spot on top of the hill in the upper compound, horizon gazing and chanting their prayers in brokenness several times a day. Where am I going after this? the woman pondered. So what is my post-Alderson destiny like? She had no clue yet. But she knew that penmanship was destined for her in prison. If it were not, she wouldn’t already have gotten into the poetry class just two months after arriving. Almost everyone expecting acceptance to any extra activity classes would present the out date well within eighteen months. Those who weren’t expecting to go home within eighteen months would plant their names in the registration anyway and observed they were listed toward the bottom of the waiting list. She came to write almost every day, and she lived for those revelations. The more she wrote, the more she became aware of her own nakedness. It was not the fear of the dark that drove her to be up but an urge to write in the night and at dawn each time she traveled the scriptures and the mystery they revealed. It was her “Savor the dark.”

Chapter Six

Personal Legacy

Life has meaning only in the struggle. —Stevie Wonder

Summer 2013…one year before Alderson…

“I’m a criminal,” the woman said. “Why would a convicted felon be talking with people about God?” she asked, awed, and embarrassed. “For several reasons. But let’s say that the most important reason is that you have succeeded in discovering your personal legacy,” whispered the old king. The woman didn’t know what her personal legacy was. At the time, she only understood her husband’s faith on how she should cooperate with the federal government and take the plea deal for a shorter sentence and avoid trial court, which meant she had to give up what she wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, doesn’t know what their personal legacy is. At that point in their lives, everything is simple and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream and to go for everything they would like to see happen in their lives. But as a storm comes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to not realize their personal legacy and have a life of overcoming. It’s a force that appears to be negative but actually leads them to discover their personal legacy. It prepares their heart and their spirit. Whoever you are or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it is

because that desire originated in the Soul of the Universe, according to Paulo Coelho in The Alchemist. And when you want something, the entire universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. All the woman wanted through this whole ordeal was to discover her personal legacy. Fighting the legal battle against the federal government would be like David fighting the Goliath. The woman could almost always give her husband a reason to be convinced that she should go to trial to defend her belief of truth facing off the federal government’s false charges in accordance with the scriptures. How do we know God would part the water if we are too afraid to cross the Red Sea? The woman recalled the time she reasoned with her husband that they should take her case to trial. So when trial came, and it was a “Guilty” verdict, a giant blow and a grave dream finally arrived. The woman prayed through it, yet there was no victory and no “parting of the water.” The Tran-Lee medical office suite was on the verge of being repossessed by the city of Warren for auction because of owed property tax due to the insurmountable amount of legal fees she had to pay, and her family might have to lose their residence to pay for the remaining medical building loan. Nothing about it seemed to make sense, but burden after burden overwhelmed her and her family, and her husband was far from experienced in asking and experiencing God’s guidance. The woman and her husband were different in the timing of their Christian walk. For them, it was a complete senseless tragedy. In helpless frustration, the husband stood there and watched the life and success of the woman he loved crumbling down. Never had she envisioned such trials and tests they must go through. It precipitated a crisis of their faith. “How could God allow this happen?” her husband said to her disappointedly. “I’ve always tried to be a good Christian, a good husband, and a good father. Though I know I’m still a work in progress, I tried. This only confirms my reason for being a Doubting Thomas.” It was a self-righteous rebellious plea. She was silent! Her husband had come to conclude since then that God has a way of chastising those He loves but shows mercy to the wicked. So he was mad at her for convincing him that God would make a way and He didn’t. What really happened was that he was mad at God.

They were both silent for some time, observing the home soon to be without a mother, with two young innocent minor daughters. It was the husband who broke the silence. “Why do you keep planting the church amidst all this?” “I believe in reaping and sowing. I like to reap a harvest one day,” she said, undeterred in her response. The husband pointed to her practice partner, now living in Afghanistan, having abandoned the business and its debt on the woman alone. “When you were practicing, your friend wanted to be a missionary too. But she decided to buy the medical suite with you and didn’t put some money aside. Now she became a missionary living in Afghanistan. She never realized that the bank is capable at any time to go after me and our home. Your friend should have considered carefully.” “Well, she thought about that, the woman said. But missionary is more important work than podiatry or money. Missionaries sleep out in the open, while doctors have homes. But God will reward those who are willing to take up their own cross for the gospel.” Silence. There was more Jesus wanted Josh to see, she thought but she didn’t explain. She couldn’t and shouldn’t. What should I say when I am the one going to prison soon and bringing this burden and suffering upon my family. She felt a pang in her heart, thinking about her husband and daughters. In the long run, what people think about felons and missionaries cannot become more important for them than their own personal legacy, the woman continued in her thoughts while leafing through her Bible, and fell to reading a page. “Why are you bringing me through all this?” she asked the old king. “Everyone has his own personal legacy. You ought to find yours. You are about to be brought to a place where you’re going to discover it. Don’t give it up,” answered the old king. “People learn early in their lives the reason for their being is just because, and therefore, maybe that’s why they give up on it so early.” The woman was reminded of a quote by Stevie Wonder and said, “You’re right.

Life has meaning only in the struggle.” “It’s called burden to blessing. If you want to find your treasure, you will have to be willing to face the burden. For every blessing, there’s a burden,” said the old king. “What about the burden of house arrest and not allow practicing for five years?” asked the woman. The old king replied disappointedly, “If you start out with a lesser burden, you’ll lose your desire to work toward getting it.” The woman told him that she had already promised to devote more quality time to the Word, prayers, and her family and would give more of her life to kingdom’s work if God saved her from prison. “Human nature is expert at getting people to do that, promising what you don’t even have yet and losing your desire to work at keeping the promise once you got it. In any case, it’s good that you learn everything in life has its price.” The woman closed her Bible and turned to her husband. “In a couple of months at this time, I won’t be here with you and our daughters for a while. I will bring to God all that I am during these five years. And I hope you will find God so personal to you to help you through this with our daughters. He will help us find our personal legacy. He’ll be with us.” “Be careful when you are in Alderson,” her husband reminded her. “Don’t trust anyone. what brought you here at the first place. It’s getting late. Let’s go to bed.” And the woman and her husband vanished up the two-way staircases toward the master suite.

*****

Alderson…the hillside was silent. The woman began to read her husband’s e-

mail, but she was no longer able to concentrate. She was tense and feeling a heart full of disappointment, reading Josh’s pessimistic and downcast words complaining how she did not listen to him but rather trusted and pleased others and now he and the children were suffering, but she knew in her heart that in some way, he was right. She left the e-mail room and strolled to the softball field by the lower pavilion, where she sat down on the bench gazing at the mountain meadow and thought about whether or not she should tell her husband what Alderson life was like. Sometimes it’s better to leave things as they are, she thought to herself, and decided to stay silent as the hillside. If she were to say anything, her husband would spend days thinking about all the worst, even though he had gotten used to the way things were. The woman could certainly resist causing that kind of anxiety for her husband. So she took out her black leather book from her gray jacket’s pocket and began to stroll through the scriptures, line after line, and found herself longing for a miracle. Ring! Ring! Ring! “Red phone for Jade Temple, A2-46058039.” “Hello! This is the istration. Pack all your stuff and report to R&D. You got an immediate release.” The miracle never came. But her poetry had precipitated.

*****

Early dawn the next morning… She became used to waking early here at Alderson and watching the sunrise just as she did when she was younger, traveling for short-term medical missions. These were the times she would write her poems. Before the little pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place and before the weight of the unanswered prayer began to press heavily on her, silence became her strength, and words were her poetry. She would write, and something within the cloud and the dawn and the stillness gave birth to the gate of penmanship.

Standing in the stillness of the vast solitude by the rock at the pretty spot, the immediate reality of West Virginian Mountains, the woman had ed the old king asking her what was her dream and was convinced she should spend this time to write. Unashamed, her voice carried far across the valley of humility. Her plea was that if Alderson had to be hers for five years, the old king would show himself so intimately and practically and not in a theological way, that he would help her to write, telling the world of whom he was, as real as it got. Because there was one problem: she was not quite literary. I have a tongue of a foreigner and theology of a child. How am I to tell people of you through a pen? she puzzled at the impossible. “My secret is not as hidden as you think, my child,” said the old king. “There was a certain widow who had only a jar of oil, and she would have to sell her only two sons to pay her debt. A prophet came and told her to pour out her oil in the jar to the empty vessels, and she did. She never ran out of oil, did she?” “You’re right!” Without hesitation, she had already signed up for poetry class in the first three weeks upon arriving in Alderson in the hope that she could learn about writing: how to write prose and poems from modest poetry bags, how to keep writing every day, how to create a camera out of pen and paper. She explored all the pastures and venues of Alderson for writing. And she knew what the fair price was for every one of the story. She decided to walk Alderson journey by the longer route each day. As she walked around the track in the lower compound past the chapel’s backyard by the e-mail room up the back hill path, she interrupted her return and climbed the dirt ramp that led to the top seer seating, facing the softball field and the back mountain of Alderson. From there, she could see the picture in the distance. Someone had once told her that it was from there that the women had prayed to receive the miracle. She could envision the entire city of light on the hill from where she sat, including the Macomb residence where she had conversed with her husband. Curse the moment she told him of the vision, she thought. She had come to him only to find someone who could her dream. Her husband was not at all impressed by the fact that she wanted to write. He was a solitary individual who no longer believed in things and didn’t understand that sheep

need to be attached to their shepherd. The shepherd knew everything about each member of his flock: he knew which ones were to give birth and in how long, which ones were weak, and which were the laziest. He knew how to tend his sheep and how to slaughter them. He knew if his sheep ever decided to leave him, they would suffer because wolf would try to eat them. The wind began to blow. She knew that wind: people called it the spirit because in it, the voice had spoken from one’s desire that originated in the Soul of the Universe. The wind increased in intensity. Here she was, between her incarceration and finding her treasure, to fail better, she thought. She had to choose between hating what she could never become accustomed to and what she wanted to find. There was also the reality of treasure: treasure is uncovered by the force of flowing water, and it is buried by the same currents, and it was as important as her freedom, because it depended on her personal legacy. She was sure that it made a difference to how she saw each day: for her, every day couldn’t be the same, and when each day was the same as the next, it was because people failed to recognize treasure is uncovered by the force of flowing water and it is buried by the same currents. The good things that happen in people’s lives every day when the sun rises are often outlasted by the burden of the moment. From where she sat, she could see that the callout list: Temple-46058039, Education Main, Creative Writing, July 16, 2014, at eleven o’clock in the morning, was just a coincidence that the education department chose to kick off a new direction by taking new issions or there weren’t many people interested in creative writing/poetry class. Conviction took off, and she had just touched down serving her sentence, but she was entering the gate of penning in an unprecedented record time. There were still at least four years before she could exit the gate. Experienced and established prisoners continued giving her words of wisdom not to waste time g up for any classes when her out date was so far away, at least another four years—this would be like trying to catch a home run ball. She had been praying for the impossible, but she doubted when it came. No matter what the reason might be, the more she learned about God, the fewer coincidences she saw. There, on the bench next to her, a young couple hurried to steal a kiss before the yard guard drove by. Even then, that was no coincidence to her but an omen to discern. Woman… she said to herself, without completing the thought. The vision was

still getting stronger, and she felt its force on her heart. Crimes had brought the people here, yes, but it had also brought the smell of the mountain and of broken women. It had brought with it the sweat and dreams of the self who had once left to chase for the unwarranted known: drugs, money, and pleasure adventures. The zephyr was getting stronger, and she felt its writing on her face. The woman felt jealous of the freedom of the wind and saw that she could have the same freedom. There was nothing to hold her back except herself. No husband, no children, no domestic responsibility. The prison, the solitude, and the fields of pain were only steps to the way to find her personal legacy. Another factor in her spiritual incline was that she was brought here to do selfinventory. On the mountain, she would learn to make a tablet out of her stony heart and write down for her daughters and the next generation what she learned directly from God with her own blood at the cross she carried. No one else’s cross. No one else to blame. All things could be stripped away in a moment, but with faith like the currency, people would be able to get anything God put in their heart and more. Faith that makes the impossible possible. The more no’s she received from others, including her husband who knew her best, out of concern, she set herself up for disappointment when authorship seemed to be a dream beyond her resources. But God told her otherwise. Do not worry if the world says “no”—as long as you have a “yes” from God, that is all you need, the woman thought to herself. That’s the way it always is. It’s called God’s economy. She ed the food miracle in the Judean wilderness where a crowd of five thousand was fed with two fish and five loaves of bread from a nameless boy, whereas Andrew vocalized what other disciples probably screamed in their head, “No way! How far will they go among so many?” When people start to do the math, it doesn’t add up. Five plus two equals seven, but if they add Jesus in the center of the equation, five plus two is not seven but five thousand and twelve remaining. Why is that? Because there is a force that wants people to realize their personal legacy; it whets their appetite with a taste for success, but it depends on how much the desire originates in the Soul of the Universe, not in logic and human

understanding. The woman began to reinspect the facts in “Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand” story (Luke 9:10–17) in her black leather book, and she saw that logic would scream foul play; faith would whisper the Way. Faith is willing to look foolish, and faith and prayer work interchangeably. Out of faith, one prays, and out of prayer, one increases faith. Prayer is not manipulation but is patience with mystery. The woman knew resource isn’t the most important, since from that boy’s heart, two fish and five loaves of bread are the only things he brings to Jesus. Jesus gives thanks for the food and feeds the five thousand before the miracle happened and produced more than enough food. And there’s a story to tell from generation to generation. “How do I find the treasure?” she asked the old king. “In order to find the treasure, you will have to follow the omens and be willing to look foolish. You cannot build God’s Name if you aren’t willing to risk yours. The story you tell depends on how much you trust. The nameless lad trusts Jesus with all he has, thus there’s the food miracle story. God has prepared a path for everyone to follow. You have to read the omens that I left for you,” said the old king. Before the woman could jot down the conversation, a white yard guard truck appeared and circled the lower compound by the softball field, signaling everyone to leave the lower compound as the sun was going down. The woman was pondering upon the conversation with the old king on the mountains and encouraged by the mystery he revealed amidst the darkest moment of her life. In the dark, the only thing one can see is light. That was her kind of logic to find her personal legacy.

The Poet

My heart is overflowing with a good theme. You answered before utterance reaches my lips.

You knew me and ordained me the prophetic poet, Though I am like a girl who lost in the rain. One denial after another, My prayer remains the same. “My tongue be the pen of a ready writer.” Doesn’t matter if the world says “No,” One “Yes” from you, all I need. Thousand naysayers chased behind, people’s creed Here’s how it is measured: As long as You give me one “Yes,” The more “zeroes” followed, the better. “Zeroes” make millions and trillions, The mysterious principle Of God’s economy In the beginning, God said, “Let there be…” It is!

*****

At the highest point in Alderson, there were benches by an old black almond tree in front of the chapel. From atop the upper compound, one could catch a glimpse of freedom of the outside world. Many Alderson women, the broken souls, sat

on the highest spot in the afternoon and felt the breeze blowing in their face. The woman fidgeted nearby, uneasy with her new flock and befuddled by so much change. All she wanted was home. Alderson turned to be more than an immediate reality, more than life; it became an art of living to many women. Many women in the camp were professional con artists, poorly educated and educated alike, and came from culture where the mainstream principle was to make quick money while having the opportunity: the narcotics trade, bank and stock fraud, health care fraud, mortgage fraud, identity theft, credit card scams, and kickback and bribery provided the lavish living. Avarice seemed to be the motive and not poverty. One flamboyant, highly intelligent thirtyish AfricanAmerican was in for bank fraud (she liked to educate the woman about unwritten prison rules as well as to keep the woman up to speed on her rejection of the Way and how much social injustice there was in Jesus’s teachings in the Bible). A former bank underwriter had defrauded the bank by falsifying the records to loan millions of dollars to unqualified borrowers and receiving kickbacks and bribery in return to her lavish living. Another smoothtalking illiterate self-proclaimed author with, her former postmaster friend, had defrauded various individuals for bridge loans on claims of an “on the verge of great wealth” book deal. It was The Struggle of Love with Tyler Perry, and of course, there was no such book deal with Tyler Perry. And a proud, talented choir director, a Christian woman, was doing sixty months for stealing hundreds of thousands from her employer, wire fraud, and filing a false tax return. The woman watched Alderson women who were maneuvering their ways into “prison living ahead” amid the bureaucracy, corrupt, and contradictory environment of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). She would never again see justice, just as justice had never seen the reason for overincarceration. That was man’s work. She looked to the skies, feeling a bit hopeless, and said, “I know it’s the vanity of vanities, as you said, my God. But a woman has to take some pride in herself.”

*****

How strange Alderson is, thought the woman. She was sitting on a stainless-steel bench in front of the recreation center (REC) very much like the other benches she had seen along the state parks on the outside. Some women were making out with their boos, those who became “gay for the stay.” In just a few minutes, she had seen women walking hand in hand, their unsettling eyes staring toward one another. Those crazy brown eyes were powerfully expressive, and she couldn’t tell what on earth it was they were telegraphing. Women with sudden ionate declaration for another woman, the “gay for the stay,” felt the need for “commissary” , while the other felt the need for love. A practice of infidels, she said to herself. As a woman not having grown up in church until later in her adulthood, she had always looked at the image of woman with another woman, their exchanging conversation and figures, as the loneliness in the river of life. The woman felt sad and terribly alone. Women had the lost look about them when they didn’t realize their personal legacy. In the bewilderment in the world of federal prison, inmates should not have desires beyond, because they didn’t have a personal legacy. But the woman hoped desperately that she would be successful in finding her personal legacy on the mountain. It is the prize for her freedom and free indeed. It’s too bad that people are quickly going to forget this place and the life here, she thought. God would have repeated it for them. Then when they speak about him, they would say that he is Jesus, the Way. Empty-handed but not emptiness and never a dull life in the camp. The woman learned to find joy in a world of simple realities, in basic domestic affairs, in the A2 dormitory microwave cooking, staff dining cooking, and writing. Besides these, in the rush of her travel on the prison journey, she had forgotten a detail, just one detail, which could keep her from her treasure for a long time: only the Language of the Universe was heard in this broken heart; only light was seen in the darkness. The prisoners of the camp approached her, and they pointed to the ways that had been taught well by those who were supposedly more experienced and had lived in the camp longer. It turned out to be a bitter tea. The woman preferred wine. She quickly learned that even in prison, rules were made to be broken by staff

and prisoners alike. But she didn’t need to worry about that right now. What she had to be concerned about was her treasure and how she was going to go about getting it. She understood that in money there was magic; whoever has money is never really alone. But in Alderson Women Federal Prison Camp, five dollars, twenty-five cents basic income a month, and the relationship, enforced by the BOP, between prisoner and prison guard, was that one person’s word meant everything and the other’s meant almost nothing; one person could command the other to do just about anything. The woman saw to it that in faith, there is magic, and whoever has faith is never really empty. Faith was her currency. The woman had also made a circle of friends and heard about signs and omens on this compound, and as she was crossing the extreme inequality of the daily relationship between prisoners and prison staff, she had thought about omens. Yes, her friends had known what they were talking about. During the time the woman had spent in the fields of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, she had become used to learning which path she should take by observing the unspoken prison rules erected between prisoners and between other prisoners and their jailers. She had learned that the presence of a certain bird meant that a snake was nearby and that a certain tree was a sign that there was water in the area. Alderson had taught her that. If God provides the birds in the field so well, he will also provide a man, she thought, and that made her feel hopeful. The camp seemed less bitter. “Do you want to pray and moonbathe?” she heard a voice ask her in hesitance. It was Allie, her Bible study friend with the gift of prayer like Hannah from the Bible. The woman was relieved. She was thinking about omens, and her friend had appeared. “Where can we pray and moonbathe?” she asked. Her circle of friends, Allie, Kim, Ebony, were young women in early thirties, but the color of their skin suggested they were in their twenties. They were all younger and like baby sisters to the woman. “Almost everyone went back to the unit. We can have this place to ourselves to

pray. We have only about an hour before count time.” “Let’s hurry up run inside the unit and grab a blanket and make a cup of hot cocoa or apple cider to keep us warm,” Allie said to the group. “And I’ll make popcorn for us.” “I’ll try to find us a sheet to place on the grass to lie down and moon bathe,” young Ebony said. “I thought we’re not allowed to lie down on the grass?” the woman asked. “That’s what the Alderson handbook said, but no one enforced this petty rule anyway,” Ebony explained to the group. “We just need to keep low key and be watchful. If the guard asks us to leave, then we will just leave.” The woman told three friends then that it was time for her to call her family then she would them. She almost began to tell them her fear of getting in trouble with praying outside the chapel but decided not to do so. If she did, it was possible that they would miss a dazzling experience of the night. Lying on the grass in the upper compound, moonbathing, and being dazzled by the course of the stars marinating the sky, the four friends did the Jericho prayer, “I am home soon,” and they declared the blessing of Abraham into existence upon themselves like a small army charging into battle. “I declare there is power in the name of Jesus. We’ll pray for our deliverance, and you are our guide. Break every chain, break every chain, break every chain…eh…eh…” Kim chorused. “There’s an army ri! There’s an army ri!” Ebony harmonized. “To break every chain, break every chain, break every chain,” everyone chorused together. The woman and three friends lay on the grass in a circle. With heads toward the center and their eyes closed, they continued in synchronization, chanting praises and prayers nonstop… Suddenly… “Ah…ah…ah…!” the four friends yelped in full consternation and excitement altogether.

The woman noticed that something suddenly prompted their eyes to open, and they observed a shooting star flying across the night sky. “It must be the confirmation that God has heard our praise and prayer,” exclaimed Allie. “Do you have any idea how I’ve never seen a shooting star in my life except when watching the cartoon Dora the Explorer with my baby daughter?” asked Ebony. Listening attentively to each other’s prayer and conversation, the woman felt easy in her friends’ presence. She had found a system and didn’t want to miss out on an opportunity. “We have to travel our prison journey to know this: When we really want something, the universe always conspires in our favor,” said the woman. “And to get what we really want, we need currency, spiritual currency. I need to know whether you, ladies, have enough faith.” The friends seemed puzzled at the strange question. But they trusted the woman, who had believed that when you really want something, the universe always conspires in your favor. The four friends reached into the popcorn bag Allie held and munched innocently. The white yard truck slowly came over and looked as well. The two yard guards exchanged some words, and they seemed irritated at the four friends lying on the grass moon bathing. This was supposed to be prison, not a retreat center. “Let’s get out of here,” said Kim. “They want us to leave.” Grabbed their blankets, the four friends got up and walked straight to the A2 unit where they resided without looking at the guards.

*****

Although prison was a devastating blow, in the meantime, the woman was relieved that her life in prison was no longer her own to command. Losing all her rights stirred her to secret communication of her God in so many ways, trivially. Alderson was the time to do self-inventory. Her frivolous and even slightly infantile character seemed to be responsible for her serious white-collar crime, and it did not seem up to any serious penning, but in the midst of all that confusion, she saw the most beautiful two words she had ever seen: prophetic writer. The woman promised herself that when she returned home from Alderson, she would be a different person, one whose unforeseen vision and discovery journey would give her innovative penning and the air of a prophet and a poet. “You should the prison book club to find out how to self-publish a book and how much self-publication costs.” The woman was reminded of an advice from a random friend who had read some of her writing one time when she came to her for prayers and the Word.” The woman had been discouraged for a few moments, looking at the traditional publications. Her heart pounced, as if her tan khaki uniform shirt suddenly danced. She was afraid to look further because she thought what she would find. She continued to stare at her writings that made plain the vision and bared her nakedness, until she summoned the courage to keep moving one day at a time. All around her was the all-female society with a handful of egomaniac men, with crazy concentrations of people inspiring crazy behavior, prisoners and prison staffs alike except a few, shouting and snitching, and the aroma of strange rendezvous…but nowhere could she find her companion. Penning was her companion. She could just now step back to appreciate its visceral solitude with ink, pen, paper, Bible, and books. The woman believed that her husband and daughters had simply become separated from her not by accident. She decided to find an island in Alderson and surrounded herself with the things that mattered most. She stayed right there at her first prison job in the garage and read and wrote every day at work and back in her cube while awaiting her return home. As she waited, staff dining position in the Central Dining Room (CDR) unexpectedly landed in front of her one day when Mr. Canterbury, head officer of the garage, was suddenly taken off the compound for investigation for illegal with the prisoners, and all garage workers were mysteriously transferred to the CDR forcing their job change. Everyone knew the CDR job was the “bottom of the food chain” prison

job with the bare BOP minimum paid, starting at five dollars twenty-five a month, and beyond the bare minimum freedom where no reading, no writing, no crossword puzzles, and no card games were allowed. Absolutely nothing was allowed to be brought to the CDR for CDR workers, which lead to them either doing nothing or gossiping during the down time from one to three o’clock in the afternoon every day. In addition, there was a constant dance between the prisoners and CDR staff around the rules. CDR staff didn’t care enough to enforce most rules. The only thing they did appear to care about was bureaucracy and hierarchy (as demonstrated to prisoners by the name plate fiasco and the promotion to whomever knew how to play along with their rules and games the most). And the istrative office didn’t give a dead rat about anything to do in the camp, much less in the CDR. It was hard to believe that anyone would get a staff dining position, a “red tile” job (a grade one level job usually required a minimum of six months to a year in the camp with history of good work ethic and no stealing) that could earn up to one hundred dollars a month, including a bonus in less than six months residing in the Camp. Every garage worker ran away from that job because it had to deal with prison staff. The woman felt a sting of shame, a doctor to a cook serving people on the other side of the gate. At the same time, she was ready to let the chip fall where it might. Then like “a table prepared before me in the presence of my enemy,” staff dining dismantled her ego wall and fear of basic domestic affairs. She took up the challenge and was propelled to the art of living in prison through culinary. Instead of shame or fear, it grew into anticipation of the unexpected. An omen was told to her through the trivial and ordinary things of her everyday living in Alderson. A tremor of keenness shot through her but nervousness at the same time. She took a position in staff dining, and she discovered later this was preparing the way for her penning journey. It was full of unexpected surprise of its own kind, each working day from seven in the morning to three in the afternoon. The woman watched it through the day’s trajectory for some time until it was no longer hidden behind the coincidence surrounding life. She recalled that when the planned menu completely changed the last minute many mornings, she was on another mission, still a chef with limited or few spices and looking for missing spice, which was taken by one of the CDR officers for the mainline meal. She was still looking forward to preparing a full-course gourmet menu with a full salad bar, two

appetizers, two side dishes, soup, two main dishes, and dessert. She was chasing after one of the CDR officers, knocking at their office, and waiting at the door for twenty minutes, like a dog waiting for its master spitting sympathy on it, to get replacement for the missing spice so that the staff’s menu for the day by 9:45 could be completed and ready. Or there were other days last minute announcement of extra forty guests from Howard University unexpectedly expected to dine at staff dining. The preparation ahead or the planned menu often was set up for disappointment one way or another. Those mornings she had not known everything that was going to happen to her as she walked through the unfamiliar field. But now, as the prison life began to set, she was in a different territory, a stranger in a strange land, where she couldn’t speak the language. She was no longer a doctor, and she had nothing, not even a self to return or to start everything over. But the limited ingredients and unforeseen missing spices birthed unconventional culinary, which paved the way to her poetry. All this happened between sunrise and sunset, the woman thought. She was feeling sorry for herself and lamenting the fact that her life had changed so suddenly and so drastically. She was so ashamed that she wanted to cry. She had never even wept in front of her daughters. But on the island, Alderson, she was, and far from home, so she wept. She wept because God was unfair and because this was the way God repaid those who believed in Him yet had more mercy on the rebellion rejecting Him. When I had my family, I was happy, and I made those around me happy. People saw me coming and welcomed me, her mind said to her. But now I am sad and alone. I’m going to become skeptical and distrustful of people because Mr. Patel, the pharmacy owner, whom I helped, betrayed me, and the crooked government overzealously criminalized me. I’m going to hate those who have found their personal legacy because I never found mine. And I’m going to hold on to what little I have because it’s too late for me to conquer the world. Limited spices turned into a six-course gourmet menu; a humble poetry bag turned into a prophetic poet. This was her daily battle of the mind She opened her black and gray mesh tote bag to see what was left of her possessions; maybe there was a bit left of hope in the letter her appellate attorney, Mr. Kriger, had filed to the sixth circuit court for an appeal for a retrial or at least resentence for lesser time. But all she found was the black leather

book, her gray jacket, and a folder of papers filled with her writings on what the volunteer ministers had spoken about in the chapel. As she looked at the writings, she felt relieved for some reason. The more she thought of Alderson, the more she was convinced that Alderson was necessary for her penning, a life she would never have known or discovered until she came to prison. She had no doubt that staff dining and poetry class was God’s “preparing the way” for a penning journey. Is it a coincidence to work in staff dining and take poetry class in just over a month at the camp? she wondered. Of course not! Prison, staff dining, and poetry writing were the commas in her professional career and the roads to teach her how to fail better, to develop her into a prophetic writer. She could never put a period where God had a comma. She could not put a comma when God had a period. She learned God’s grammar in prison. There were many days she was frustrated while prepping staff dining menu for the next day, and there weren’t enough spices and ingredients she needed for the meal, then came the whispering to her heart, “Maybe your concern for details and the conventional way is hindering the Spirit and blocking the innovation.” All her plans, logic, and details bore a weight on her. She had asked God show her how to write but had forgotten the whereabouts of her calling until she had exchanged the known for the unknowns that had been given from above. Now she understood why the owner of the universe had been so upset: he was trying to tell her not to trust the sight. I’m like everyone else—I see the world in of what I know, not what I actually do, the woman thought. I’ll be smarter letting my ordinary daily activity and living be absorbed in the Word until it is aglow in my stories. I am to write the story, the vision, and make it plain. She kept up writing daily; even her poetry bag was humble. She ran her fingers slowly over the black leather book and her writings, sensing their breathing and feeling their surfaces. They were her treasure. Just handling them made her feel better. They reminded her of a story thousands of years ago when God commanded Moses to go up Mount Sinai and carve out two stones with his own sweat and blood, and there he was commanded to write down what

he heard from God then come down from the mountain to give to the Israelites (Exodus 34:1–5). Here she’d like to tell the reader a few of the secrets to prayer she’d gotten in prison, but she should let the reader know something first: she is not the kind of gal who thinks God heals her diseases every time she asks or speaks to her so audibly in a deep father voice. But she does know that if there’s desperation enough, there’s prayer harder. And the transcript of one’s prayer will become the script of one’s life. The script of her prayer in Alderson became the script of “To Fail Better.” “When you want something, the entire universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

Culinary and Poetry

Culinary and poetry meet. A table prepared before your enemy. Five loaves and two fish, Limited spices so quickly despised. Don’t worry, just give what’s in your hand. Fine entrée, full-course menu orchestrated, Decorated music of the heart Rollaway the sound of silence In Alderson prison. Culinary and poetry touch,

Modest poetry bag, Innovative poet, Sizzling the soul in ion, Harmonizing the mind in peace. Culinary and poetry kiss, How sweet the taste and wine to the heart. Culinary and poetry, the living art. Savoring imagination, marinating spirit. Culinary and poetry flourish. Diffuse love fragrance everlasting As bread to the body and manna to the soul, Cooking to a home, and poetry to the lovers!

Chapter Seven

At the Break of Dawn

God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her at the break of dawn. —Psalm 45:6

December 15, 2014. Her husband was trying to understand the truth of what the Word had said. There he was in their quiet home alone with two daughters, without fault to his name and with not a good report to sleep through the night. Despite being exhausted as a single parent from five-thirty in the morning to ten at night between care for his twelve- and five-year-old daughters to work to basic domestic affairs that she used to do, his eyes were still wide open as he lay awake watching the children sleep like angels. They were the reason to keep him going and standing strong. But all the problems were proof that he needed a savior—a savior who knew of his past, present, and future. “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” He recalled his wife’s reminding him of this scripture often. The husband put those words in his mind and decided to do an experiment. God wants his children when praying to ask for a specific prayer and not to be vague about what they want him to do for them. Her husband asked if God’s promise was still with him because he desperately needed to sell her medical suite by December 31, 2014, or the city of Warren would repossess the building for auction. The woman and her husband had been praying for the successful sale of her medical suite over a year, but nothing seemed to be moving. There were many interested buyers because they were able to push for much below market price

because the medical world in Michigan was small and everyone seemed to know of her being in prison. The bank wouldn’t sign the sell-purchase agreement unless her family could pay the remaining loan balance in full. Her building situation was dire. Her husband was reasonably skeptical. It seemed like for so long, God had not answered the woman’s prayers concerning her ordeal, trial, conviction, sentence, and appeal. “Am I going to find a miracle this time?” he asked the woman during their daily eight-minute evening phone time. “Do you believe Jesus is God and shall do what He says He will do?” she pressed on. It was the last question in the world he’d expected. He’d supposed she’d have something to say about God’s signs or dreams revealing to her that the medical suite will be sold. But she’d put the question to him, so he considered it. He was a Christian, certainly, in the sense that he attended church with his family regularly and sent their children to Sunday school. Still, he was not a blind faith Christian, he was a “fact-checked” Christian, like Doubting Thomas, who said, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” The fact was, he had never come to grip with this very question. Is Jesus of Nazareth, in fact, my God? Is He my Savior? And now, when he tried, there were mountains of logic that halted him. He started to map them. Now in Alderson, instead of an immediate response bombarding scriptures on him, she was silent. The husband was having coffee in his office at work the next morning after another sleepless night. “You’ve got mail” popped up on his computer screen. It was the woman’s e-mail:

Honey, you’re trying to approach Christianity through the mind. It simply does not work that way. It’s one of the peculiarities of Christianity that we cannot come to it through intellect. We have to be willing to obey it first, to do something we don’t understand—and then oddly enough, understanding often follows. And it’s just that which I’m hoping for you and me today as we’re going through this together, although we are apart and I’m in Alderson, that without

understanding God’s plan we believe and see.

He took a sip of hot coffee and felt around the base of the coffee mug while he reread the e-mail. As he did so, both courage and strength pushed through his heart, at least for a moment. All right, I believe that Jesus will do what he said he’ll do and the building will be sold, he declared to himself.

*****

December 21, 2014. Josh was shaken into wakefulness by the fact that there were only ten days left of the year and there was still no sign of any movement from the bank nor the broker on the sell-purchase agreement’s progress. He had decided to take the children to Seattle to see his mother as usual, the family Christmas tradition every year, and life in Michigan minus the woman to resumed as normal as possible for the children’s sake. “I will take the children to Seattle tomorrow afternoon,” he said to the woman at their eight o’clock family phone time. “There are only ten days left this year. Time is running out for us. I have done everything humanly possible. I gave everything I got regarding your legal battle, but nothing seemed to work out— your trial, and now your medical building. I don’t really know what else I can do. I surrendered. Only God can help us now. Maybe your God will come through and sell your building on December 31. But I want you to be prepared that if by the time I get back to Michigan and the building is not sold, the city will auction your building, we may lose our house, and I probably will have to look for an apartment to move with our daughters for the bank will most likely sue to take our home to pay for the remaining balance of your building owed.” He sarcastically informed the woman of the news yet also in a surrendering tone with relief that at least the building headache was going to come to an end one way or another. Silence…

“Please send Mark, our broker, an e-mail to let him know you will be out of town until after the New Year, will you?” insisted the woman to her husband. “And please ask him to the bank one more time before Christmas to see if they would agree to sign the sell-purchase agreement even though I know you said you’d already ed Mark numerous time and that the bank absolutely ignored Mark’s numerous voice messages and e-mails.” “I think it’s only a waste of time, but okay, I always end up doing what you ask anyway,” the husband reluctantly agreed. “Only with a miracle can your building be sold at this time of year. No one wants to work during Christmas through New Year.” It was a cold-blooded laying down of his sense of what was logical, quite without emotional conviction. And with it went something essentially “self.” It was amazing how much there was a real kind of death involved. But when it was dead and still, finally, he sensed a kind of unleashing as he blurted out his simple statement of belief. There was room in him for something new and all together mysterious. Learn to recognize omens and follow them, the woman reminded herself. Don’t trust your sight. Trust your faith. An omen. The woman smiled to herself. She picked up the black leather book from her pouch and turned to Psalm 45:6 for comfort. She didn’t consider how her building was going to be sold being that it was only two days before Christmas Eve. God could come through any time he wanted. She had learned that there were certain things one shouldn’t ask about so as to discover one’s own personal legacy. Her husband had sent an e-mail to Mark and told her that he was helpless unless God was still with him, and that made her feel more confident of the omen that God would surely get them out of this “building” mess. God is the God of the empty ones, and once one is completely empty of self, then God can completely take over. She looked around at the empty hearts in Alderson again, feeling less desperate than before. This wasn’t a strange place; it was a new one—to discover one’s personal legacy. After all, what she had always wanted was just that: to find her personal legacy that would from generation to generation, as real as it got like Abraham,

David, Rahab, and most of all, the lost “woman at the well.” Even if she never got the building sold, she had already traveled farther in faith than she would ever know. Oh, if her husband only knew how different things were in prison just a few hours by faith from where she was, she thought. Although her new world at the moment was just a pandemonium of a female warehouse, she had already seen it was also teeming with Jesus culture, and she would never forget it. She ed her family. It hurt her deep in the soul to think about them, and she had never experienced one like this before. As she mused about these things, she realized that she had to choose between thinking of herself as the poor victim of the federal government or as a traveler in quest of her treasure, her personal legacy. I’m a traveler, looking for treasure, she reminded herself. On the evening before Christmas Eve, the woman received an e-mail from Josh telling her that Mark, the broker, had called and the bank had agreed to sign the sell-purchase agreement. Her husband had just received the bank signed document in his e-mail. But there was still one more reason for her husband to be skeptical. Although the sale could move forward, the buyer, an orthopedist, was at the time out of town for Christmas vacation until after the New Year. But instead of being worried, she was reminded of recognizing the omens: impossible is where God starts, and He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion, said Philippians 1:6. She didn’t have to seek out the A to Z solution and the answer to why to every problem.; she, rather, searched for her treasure. She had not an answer in her “perfect storm” prayer book, but she had faith. She had decided the day of her incarceration that she would be as much a traveler of faith as the ones she ired in the Bible to fail better, and from there, she’d find her personal legacy. She walked down the hill slowly to the e-mail room the next late afternoon. The line was assembling from inside the e-mail room to outside along the walkway to about one hundred feet toward the education building, and the woman helped extend the line. She had a smile on her face after fifteen minutes’ wait and sat in front of the computer, staring at the words from her husband’s e-mail:

I got a text from Mark today stating that he was able to Dr. Hayes, the buyer, and the doctor will cut his vacation short to be back in Michigan by the

twenty-seventh instead of the third of New Year. He has an emergency operation on his patient scheduled for December 28. After the surgery, Doctor Hayes is scheduled to meet Mark at the Title/Escrow Company on the thirtieth. Hopefully, the building will be sold by the thirty-first.

When all the signed documents dated December 31, bank, title, and escrow, were e-mailed to her husband on New Year’s Day, they offered him the first sweet faith he had received for the year and since the whole ordeal had occurred. He thanked God with a huge relief yet not without a “but.” He could not bring himself to full relief and complete joy about the matter since there was still a remaining balance of the loan to be paid. He was concerned that the bank could still go after their house if they could not pay the remaining debt in full. He asked the woman to pray, asking God to help them that the bank would agree to work out an affordable payment plan for the remaining loan balance, and went on his way. “I have done everything humanly possible. I gave everything I got regarding your case, but nothing seemed to work out—your trial, and now your medical building. I don’t really know what else I can do. I surrendered. Only God can help us now. Maybe your God will come through and sell your building on December thirty-first.” The woman recalled those desperate words of her husband vividly and pondered. December 31 was the day the sale transaction completed, and Josh was not even in Michigan. Coincidence? Of course not. The woman learned to recognize the omen “At the break of dawn” and that the secret to “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it” rests in the cross. Every day, she had the opportunity to say yes to the cross or yes to the self. Since Alderson had stripped away all her rights and left her only one choice, it was yes to God. The moment she and her husband were bloodily helpless in the need to sell the medical building by New Year’s Eve, surrender and obedience were the only options for them, and that was when the miracle began. The antidote to the miracle is when people want to take sole

control of their life, and it’s surely a recipe for problems. The moment people still depend on themselves and are lords of their own, not removing their hands out of the way and letting God’s hand in the way, He will not force them but let them handle it alone. The secret of the cross rests in two parts: the first is salvation, and the second, resurrection. She didn’t hear much about the second part of the cross in churches on the outside except mainly during Easter. But in prison, it became clear to her when she did what she didn’t understand, understanding would follow because the power of resurrection would always manifest after obedience. Though He was a son, He learned obedience by the things He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him (Hebrews 5:8–9). That’s why Jesus emphasized something people don’t hear much about at churches today—second part of the cross, obedience and the exchanged life at the cross. Christians often emphasize only the first part of the cross, salvation, to attract people to church to be converted so they will go to heaven and not hell after they die. But many Christians live a powerless life because of lack in knowledge of the second part of the cross—obedience. She was one of those believers who knew only of the first part of the cross before prison. Once a believer comes to the cross, he receives salvation and is saved, washed, and renewed but yet to live a life in power. Until he learns obedience in the things he goes through and obedience in carrying his own cross, he receives the resurrection power to overcome beyond what he could ever ask or imagine. Because there is no resurrection without crucifixion. Crucifixion always comes before resurrection. In other words, there’s no overcoming when there’s no obedience. Crucifixion requires denying self. Denying self requires obedience through the things which one has suffered, not sacrificed. The moment one is obedient, the unleashed power will begin its work and release the exchanged life. Exchanged life (not changed life) is the life of Christ a believer received, replacing his own life of “I am my own, I am in control, and I am in charge.” Christ’s life begins to take over oneself, and now he lives the exchanged life. The difference between exchanged life and changed life is this: the power of exchanged life rests in Jesus and changed life in man. Power of exchanged life is completely working through grace and not by work; the power of changed life,

on the other hand, still rests in the work of man. She was discerning the omen that whenever midnight comes, dawn always follows. Jesus Christ is in the business of being a “helper at the break of dawn.” The woman spent the entire first three days of the New Year 2015 meditating on Salvation-to-Crucifixion-to-Resurrection power. She had heard this for years and knew which book of the New Testament and which apostle wrote about it. But when she was sitting in prison, her fear of darkness slowly dissipated, and her fear of failure was gone. When all things fail all the way to the bottom in a place like prison and rejection and failure kiss her on all sides wherever she turned for victory, to win is not to be defeated. Prison was not the road for glorious victory like medical school or building a successful practice or a short-term medical mission or planting church because victory was not on her side but failures were on all sides. But prison was the road for her to deal with failure. Here at Alderson, every failure and rejection was an opportunity to learn to fail better, to face rejection better, to surrender to the Soul of the Universe, plant the seed, hold on, and never give up. Help is on the way…just at the break of dawn. In every failure, there’s a seed of success! Resurrection is real once obedience completes its course!

*****

The woman was interestingly rested and rejuvenated, even with her khaki uniform and brown T-shirt in prison style that was unknown to her in spite of the fact that she was a desert full of crushed flint stones when she came. She learned a language that didn’t depend on words when she was asked to the Spanishspeaking Bible study group. Only after a few assemblies inside the chapel she realized that while the Spanish group was praying and sharing the discussions, she had spoken English and the others Spanish. And the people had understood each other perfectly. She realized, Alderson is the time for me to learn the sound

of silence. If I can learn to understand the language without words, I can learn to understand the world and thus overcome it. Solitude and unhurried, she resolved that it was necessary for her to walk through the jungle path, Alderson. Only in that way would she learn to discern the omens. She knew she was in prison because it would require a lot of patience and a bridled tongue, and she knew very little about either one. In this strange place, prison, she was applying more lessons she had ever learned than on the outside. And she hadn’t applied them because she hadn’t perceived them. And she hadn’t perceived them because she had become accustomed to them. All things work together for good, it is written. During her prolonged imprisonment, she begged in the depth of her soul that the longed-for miracle was imminent. It was just a matter of waiting. As adolescence had taken away the softness of a young man’s voice, so had prison taken away the softness of her heart and had make her silent and definitely solitary, but on the other hand, it had restored the intense ion that she had when she was younger. The ion to believe in the love that is possible, and she felt the world about it. The love that would expose the hypocrisy, corruption, and hatred in the world of man with religion and politics and to set the oppressions, the religious prisoners free. The love of God she received, forgiveness and mercy and a second chance, not of man. The woman awoke with the dawn, and felt the same solitude that she felt every morning. She had been in the same routine for many months: strolling down the back hill path through the lower compound to the CDR to work early sunrise under the sky, transforming its colors from purple to a red hue to fire orange, along the path—a mysterious smile reminding her of the old king she had met. Now in prison, her peace lay at the other extreme, from prior “revolving door” life between work and domestic life to quietness and bridled tongue and a boot camp lifestyle and discipline, where she plunged into impenetrable writing without exhaustion. At the same token of her “vacated” time, there were women who still found their happiness in anything but obedience to the rules and discipline, in noisy drama and gossip, in profanity and vulgarity, and in prolonged sessions with their boos where they learned to sneak in contraband, cigarettes, and drugs and talked about male business and where they once got their hands on some liquor and ended up naked, measuring and comparing the parts of their bodies. She watched the women leaving and returning to Alderson

like none were bothered, and she wondered whether or not the bad taste of prison would be the best cure for the temptation. And in fact, there was no cure for the temptation except through Jesus. She had spent tremendous hours in Alderson weeping with sincerest laughter and fear, and beyond all crises, she had found the rare feeling of bravery and boldness that she needed to write down as she saw it: the stronghold of rebellious and stony heart of the time and how the Way came and how only Love saved. As she was lamenting her misfortune, she had come to know many other fearful, oppressed women who were wrapped in an atmosphere of uncertainty much more misfortunate than hers. They were abandoned by their own mothers to drugs, child molestations by their mother’s addicted boyfriends, or by men whom they had slept with and had children together but never called them their husband. Such a peculiar place with a peculiar group of women, she thought to herself. There had been stories of many successful women out of this place: an African American Muslim drug dealer turned Evangelist and a successful entrepreneur, who owned an upscale hair and nail salon in upper Manhattan, a stripper turned praise-and-worship dance instructor with her own dance studio for a mega church in South Carolina, a prisoner to a halfway house owner helping other women reenter the society. Alderson had the omen that it had been God’s idea to gather peculiar people—the more peculiar the better—to raise a city of light out of them, for the heart that is willing and obeys. People talk a lot about faith, thought the woman. But they really don’t know what they are saying. Just as she hadn’t realized that for so many years she had been sacrificing without trusting her God. Even if you served God all your life, even if you trust God with all your tithe, you can still have dead faith when there is lack of obedience. The woman laughed when she thought about her old self. Without trust, there’s no faith. You can’t have trust without obedience. Faith without obedience is dead faith. And dead faith is no faith. There was a moment of silence so profound that it seemed the woman was eternally asleep, then she added, “I need to let go of my control and things will get better.”

*****

The woman had been a traveler through Alderson for almost thirty months, and she could see that prison wasn’t exactly the kind of place she thought it would be. She thought prison would be the end of her life but it turned into the beginning. There were periods of downpouring mountaintop spiritual experiences amidst the valley, while others were dried like a desert, but she soon grew to learn the pauses were a sign of growing and that dying is harder than right living. Alderson was not exactly designed to truly rehabilitate prisoners but rather maintain them as products and the BOP, consumers. Federal prison is a ludicrous business for a federal government agency, the BOP, and much fraud and abuse occur. Many women spent the entire day mumbling behind staff-prisoner encounters, telling one another in bitterness and bickering about the abusive BOP like modern-day slavery. But she stayed in her job and writing with solitude because Alderson, although it was a corrupt, contradictory, and mentally abusive environment, offered her spiritual retreat through numerous powerful Christian prison ministries four to five times throughout the week; the woman received a good spiritual commission for each day she survived and had already been able to put the revelatory story down for her penning. She had done some calculating; if she wanted to report God’s story, she would need to live the present every day, and she would have forty-eight plus months to be able to write it down and make it plain. Through the West Virginian Mountains, there was God in the soporific air of her in the afternoon, God in the soft breath of smelly purple magnolias, God in the dewy dew drop secrets of sunrise, God in the steamy morning coffee, God everywhere and God forever. She slowly unpacked the burden of a felon, polished her patience, and hung pictures of her family in a boat full of promises in her cerebra, which gave a breath of new life to the naked heart of hers. “I’d like to be God’s journalist, writing a report, ‘Prison to Promise,’ as real as it gets,” the woman turned and said to her friend, Kim, the professional basketball player in Europe who was doing a three-year sentence for tax evasion, while

walking back to the A2 range from the chapel, where they had just finished Saturday evening worship service. “Paulo Coelho said this in The Alchemist: ‘No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn’t know it.’ We could use our His-story and later display it on social media and attract those people who are at their crossroads and stuck.” “I’ve never done one before,” Kim answered. “People will surf the web and bump into it, and stories will be lost.” “Well, when a farmer sows his seeds in the fields, some of them may die if they come upon a bird. But that’s the way life is with the farmer and with seeds.” The woman smiled as both of them entered A2, their housing unit. She had never imagined that life in prison would be of such importance to God. “Goodbye,” Kim said. “Goodbye,” said the woman.

*****

As she learned to recognize the omens and follow them, she deciphered the magical secret of her life as the builder took it apart. Like an instrument, the builder could take it apart, and he would put it back together using the art of his wisdom. She no longer attempted to fix it. Her body did not feel fatigue despite walking up and down the hills to and from work, programming, and exercising. With a pair of black and white Nikes from commissary, she was jogging around the compound every late afternoon to tune out the drama from clusters of women from all walks of life in the A2 range because it was evolution toward a more critical manifestation, pressing toward the mark. Surprisingly, there was barely time for boredom despite her routine prison life: work, program, Christian services, studying her black leather book, reading, penning, and exercise. These were the roads through Alderson, and at the beginning of each road, she put up a sign that said “Prison” and another

larger one on the main street that said, “God exists.” No longer living in a reality that was slipping away, every moment was an omen. She understood her very presence in Alderson was an omen, and as time ed and literature was pouring into her poetry bag, she had no bitterness or excuse about having vacated for a time in Alderson, although she longed to be home hugging her daughters and husband again. She had to learn to live and move without haste. Prison life demanded much vigilance and moral strength so one wouldn’t succumb to the spell of an alternative reality, one invented by a small group of prisoners yet real powerful, Inmates.com, creating drama and gossip and stoking fear in the compound. Fear is the opposite of trust, the antidote for a miracle. Alderson, a “Lazarus” tomb, where she was buried, marked her with a permanent death on the motley map of death. But dead was good. How can the Lazarus stone be removed if Lazarus hasn’t died? she asked herself. How can resurrection come if crucifixion is not obeyed? The woman thought she was given more time than she deserved. But God knew that her stony heart wouldn’t amount to change much had she been sentenced a shorter time. Back to her cube, she immersed herself in impenetrable writing, sitting on her top bunk bed as usual. “Why do you write so much?” asked Ms. Georgia (a.k.a. Sissy), her sixth bunkie, in cube twenty-seven, to stir up the quietness inside the cube. “Because it has always made time by fast, and I want to keep a good amount of memory of the place and the experience that I will never go back to again,” the woman answered, saying nothing about her dream. The treasure was now nothing but a painful experience and a horrific memory, and she tried to avoid being depressed about it by using the pen. “I don’t know any woman around here who would want to cross that gate with all the horrific memories of the place, just forget them like quicksand sinking deeper in amnesia,” said Ms. Georgia. “This place is just a pile of injustice and human exploitation, and people can do nothing about it.” “Do you believe what man meant for evil, God can use it for good?” asked the woman. Silence.

On the height of the down time of the day, Ms. Georgia turned to her Sudoku and crossword puzzle book to sharpen her mental acuity and to make time go fast. The woman continued her writing and reading journey of sixty months in solitude. Two days later… Sitting on the metal picnic bench at the pretty spot outside the chapel in front of the recreation center in the late afternoon with uninterrupted writing in her lap, the woman watched the mountain chain in search of an outlet to the sea. Shaken by nostalgia, she scolded herself and adopted a contrite air. She spent hours examining things and herself, trying to find a difference she could have done or said that would change the age of prison time. Then in the night after nine o’clock standing count, she lay for hours in her top bunk with eyes open declaring deliverance, an early release from her appeal victory, the things which do not exist as though they were. But none came. It was only the door seeming about to open then bloodily shut repeatedly. She drenched her bed with tears and was in a state of total innocence. It was the time of conception in darkness that tears had watered and cultivated her unforeseen seed of prophesy. Her plant of poetry, with a tiny flower and tongue, was the pen of the ready writer taking root. She was hopeful by an omen she recognized and dedicated the time to continue learning to recognize omens and follow them.

*****

As the months went by, many of those in regular with the woman’s husband—her family and her in-laws, her friends and church families, her office staff and the Vietnamese community—were all baffled and perplexed by her state of incarceration. To outsiders, she must have been living a life of evil to be in prison today. To her husband and daughters, she was all—the wife, the mother, the resilient woman they knew and loved, but to her, she was a failure or just dry, thirsty land in desolate heights. “You must always know what it is that you want,” the old king reaffirmed to her. The woman knew and was now working on it. Maybe it was her treasure to have wound up in this strange mountain, meeting up with thieves, professional con

artists, drug dealers and addicts and learning what she loves without spending a cent. She learned to be content with the way things are. She had learned some important things, like culinary and poetry, and about the language without words…and about the mountains and the dawn. But the most important thing she learned was obedience and the exchanged life that brought alive what was dead. Imprisonment had left her no choice but obedience through the things which she suffered. Helplessness to oppression by the BOP and problems at home, where she once was the caretaker and in charge of so many domestic and business affairs. “When people can no longer be in charge of their life and their environment, they will learn to turn and rely on the Creator more.” She sighed. “They will learn to be more flexible and not let themselves get in the way. Humans are like the candle. The hotter the fire, the more the wax melts and is formable, but when it is cold, the wax turns hard and cannot be formed easily,” she told herself. “At least I am a burning candle in here.” There was nothing about prison she desired except to finish her duty with the best of her because she understood that desire lights the fire but duty keeps it burning. Her experience was a completely solitary one, wherein obedience was the prerequisite for the cross power that gave the exchanged life and allowed her to recognize the omens. In fifteen years of her Christian life, she didn’t know many who were walking this particular road—obedience and resurrection power. There were minimal writings or talks about obedience and on how resurrection power works that she could find. However, during the months following delay after delay of answered prayers, there had been manifestations in her marriage and the dire situation of her medical building after a period of learning obedience to circumstance, discerning omens, and following them. Instead of divorce from a far-from-perfect marriage with she, the wife, now in prison, there was a marriage revival. Instead of foreclosure, the medical building sold at the break of dawn, on the deadline date December 31, 2014. Instead of a mouthy mouth, silent prayers. She had recognized a new awareness—the kind that cautions or confirms. Wisdom from above was available for small and big decisions. She no longer had to muddle

through many situations, trying to figure out everything for herself. The helper was right there. It was the exchanged life of Christ that manifested through her state of total helplessness. Obedience and circling the compound with prayers persistently was her only option in prison. The power of the cross will always be directly proportional to a person’s obedience. When all hell breaks loose and the battle seem impossible because the wall is too high, it’s time to obey and to not stop circling. The seventh day is coming!

Chapter Eight

Disappointment to Appointment

The events that would deal the woman fatal blow to prison brought her home to the father, like a prodigal child. She found whose face she belonged and, until she found her face, she kept returning to the face mask. What is it you’re looking for? She did a self-inventory. You are terrified of change because you don’t know how to deal with change. You’re accustomed to the way things are. Today, the woman understood something she hadn’t seen before: every blessing God gives you in your life becomes a curse if you stay there too long. She became complacent with her medical practice success for over fifteen years and had ignored the voice from her belly. She began to feel a little better about her darkness. It’s good to refrain from saying anything, thought the woman to herself. So many seemingly opened doors were painfully shut. Her seemingly promising victory appeal was accepted and headed for a hearing, only to be rejected for retrial or resentencing by the Six Circuit judges despite acknowledging errors were made by the trial judge. The Prison Reform Act finally ed by the Senate, promising her a hope of potentially reducing her vacated time up to eighteen months but ended up reducing none because hers was not a drug crime but a white-collar crime. It was as if the Father had decided to put to the test every capacity for surprise and was keeping her in a permanent alternation between excitement and disappointment, doubt and revelation to such an extreme that no one knew for certain where the limits of reality lay. It was an intricate slew of truths and mirages that convulsed her old self and polished her patience. She developed the simplifying instinct. The startling thing about the simplifying instinct was that the more she ed over conventions and obeyed spontaneity and availability, the more the Father’s disturbing, incredible creativity became, and the more his

provision became. This was because of the Father’s supernatural law of provision:

He who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack. (Exodus 16:18)

*****

The woman and her husband climbed yet another hurdle, and they were tired because they were at their wit’s end. The medical building had been sold almost a year, and the lender didn’t agree to any payment plan except that the remaining balance must be paid in full. To make the matter worse, the bank wouldn’t respond to their attorney’s call or e-mail. “Wait on the Father. Be strong, take heart, and wait on him,” said the woman to herself, and she was reminded of scriptures when she would run to the chapel seeking the religious assistant, Mrs. Comfort, for advice and prayer to her problems: “Cast down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5) and “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is irable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (Philippians 4:8). Over time, the dire situation of her medical building so overwhelmed her husband that she could hear the despair, downcast manner, and frustration in his voice over the phone. “I’d prayed, believed, and done everything you asked. I’d done every possible way I knew, pleading with God for you to be home soon so our daughters can have a mother and for your business loan payment to be settled, but here’s the answer he gave me: silence,” hopelessly expressed the husband on the other side of the line. “I don’t know what else I can do. It seems that God would answer my

prayers for many things except for anything involving your legal case. I want you to know that there’s a good chance the bank will sue to take our house and pay for the remaining balance that Tran-Lee Foot and Ankle owed. And when they sue, they’ll win, according to our attorney. Nothing we can do since the bank wouldn’t return the attorney’s call or e-mail for negotiation.” Those words drew her into the abyss of abandonment, and she held on to the belief that for a while, the affliction might remain, but then it would be no more and have no effect on their residence since a home is a necessity for a stable family and for healthy growth of the children. So she clung to her mustard seed faith that the Father would save their situation without knowing how. With every ing day, the collector’s threats and other derisions became more and more acute and more unbearable. The woman would leave the A2 range to sit at the sidesteps by the chapel at sunset, horizon gazing and praying, facing the mountain and the gate, and the voice of conflict of interest would smile and whisper, “Perhaps this year will be the year Father will hear your prayers.” And the voice of conflict of interest would add, “I wonder why he hasn’t listened to your prayers.” “Stop!” “What sins you might have hidden—” “I said stop.” “To not have him hear your prayer this way.” “Stop!” But the voice of conflict of interest would not. And in time, though she did not give up prayer and love him she did, there was a part of her felt that her prayer was wooden and wanted to know why he remained silent. And she wept in solitude from that day forward. That night, the woman called home about eight o’clock to spend daily tenminute family time over the phone as usual.

“Mommy, we’re packing and getting ready for our Seattle trip,” said seven-yearold Star, her baby daughter, with an innocent and bubbly voice. “Dad said he needs to talk to you.” “Daddy, Mom’s on the phone!” Star jubilantly shouted out to her dad from another room. The woman could sense anxiety across the line and prepared herself with a sip of hot tea in a mug from commissary. “Hello, are you okay? How’s everything at home?” she asked cautiously. “How are the girls with school?” “They are doing well,” the husband said calmly. “I got a letter from Macomb County Court today. What I greatly feared has finally come. The bank has sued us to court, and if we can’t pay the remaining balance in full, most likely we will lose our house. I talked to our attorney earlier today, and he said it looks like nothing else we can do since the bank decided to go this route.” The woman listened attentively. “I’ve been having bad dreams that woke me up around three in the morning for the past few days, but I didn’t want to tell you so you might worry. Now I know why. At least I’m relieved that this thing is coming to an end. We can rebuild everything from ground zero like we had built before. It is going to be hard, but it is possible. I’m only sad that our daughters had to suffer through this, suddenly living without their mother for a while and now suddenly having to move and live in a tiny apartment with no room to run around, no backyard to play in. My main concern is that this may become too traumatic for our daughters at such an early age.” Taking a deep sigh, he continued. “What I don’t understand is why God didn’t answer our prayers involving you. Why the mail had to come just in time, four days before I’m ready to take the kids to Seattle for Christmas and ruin the family vacation.” Job’s spirit finally came upon her husband. “For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me,” Job 3:25 said. Silence. For a few seconds she could not bring herself to any word. Her desire for her husband’s victory became too much for her to bear. She knew it was a miracle that her husband’s despair in her Father’s silence was without bitterness but

rather in helplessness and surrender in their last desperate request of this whole ordeal. A subtle place inside her heart had not lost hope. Though outwardly she appeared silent, inwardly there was a burning fire of prayer for comfort, wisdom, and peace. She set man’s report aside. She ed it was the same time around Christmas a year ago when her husband was ready to take the children to Seattle. The building situation also looked dire until at the break of dawn; on December 31, it was sold. Could this be the second time God want to show me he is God of the break of dawn? she wondered. There are probably things in the world that the Word can’t teach a person. All people ever do, really, is look for food and water. And maybe it shouldn’t be that the Word is teaching a person but that a person is learning from it. There had been a time when she thought that the scriptures could teach her everything she needed to know about the world. But they could never have taught her life. Only by living, life is taught. You would have to have been traveling in it to understand it, she said to herself. The next day, when it came the time for her husband and the children to fly to Seattle, the woman was overwhelmed with grief, and she couldn’t pray. Her prayer suffered. Her spirit withered. So she came to visit Ms. Burners, her writing buddy and critic who lived three cubes northwest from hers. “What’s going on?” asked Ms. Burners. “You haven’t come visiting my cube and reading stories and scriptures to me lately. How are your husband and daughters?” “Not well. Please pray for me and my family that God will keep us and save our home, will you?” she said to her friend, wiping off moisture at the corners of her eyes. The woman was uncharacteristically feeble and pessimistic. She turned to Ms. Burners, her middle-aged Caucasian friend and a millionaire home health care owner and a master of business and istrative graduate who usually came to the woman for prayer over her depression, to seek prayer for her family’s dire situation.

*****

The woman woke before dawn to circle her prayer, asking God to save her home and her family on her top bunk in freshness, and in those times, she would write in boldness without boundary and in madness. Before little pieces of a puzzle put together began to unveil the picture and before the weight of the drama of the day began to press heavily on her, she would write, and something within the air of a women’s despairing breathing and the dawn and the stillness gave birth to the prophetic scribe. She made request after request for God to save their home, hopeful that it was circling, carrying far across the valley to her Michigan home, where her husband and daughters would sleep in comfort, awake in peace, and walk in hope. And for a while, she did the same on the mountain day after day, but in time and with seemingly unanswered prayers and silence of the Father, the woman began to sleep in a little later, to miss the dawn, and to let their communication and the writing slip away. Before long, two weeks vacationing in Seattle had ed, and the reality of being in front of the judge receiving judgment favoring the bank its request and the bank could take their house was getting near. Her husband had one week for a miracle to come. His court date was next Wednesday. The attorney continued trying to reach the bank to settle the case outside court without any sign of progress. Both her husband and the attorney had exhausted every possible option they thought of right up to the day he left for Seattle. “Honey, I know you already talked to the attorney the day you left and he said the bank refused to negotiate unless we had money for the full payment or they would take us to court,” she said persuasively to her husband. “Just call the attorney in the morning when you are back in Michigan and ask him to the bank one more time that we really want to settle this matter outside of court with everything we have and can afford considering my circumstance.” “All right! I’ll try,” her husband agreed unenthusiastically with a thread of hope.

Two days later… Father’s faithfulness has been told and retold now. But we seemed to forget quickly or disbelieve until it occurs again, she thought to herself. “Helper at the break of dawn once more,” exclaimed the woman as she read her husband’s email on the way back to the housing unit from work. “Just got an email from the attorney stating the bank agreed to talk and wanted me to fill out and fax to them immediately all the paperwork they sent over regarding our assets. Please continue to pray,” his e-mail read with a change of tone tinted with hope, mixed with a little disbelief. Without explanation, just at the break of dawn, the Father changed the heart of the lender, seven days before the court appearance date. The bank agreed to settle for a one-time payment of one-third of the remaining loan balance if her husband would send the money order in two days. The rest of the loan balance would be forgiven. The woman walked up the back hill and sat at the softball field bench in silence, thinking of nothing and listening to the sound of the wind that brought the scent of the freedom. When she had finished her meditation, she reached into one of her pockets and took out a pen and a piece of paper and sat there for a few moments, regarding the omens she had observed. It was a bundle of vision. Enough to keep her busy, write it down—her personal legacy to leave to her daughters when they faced a perfect storm in life someday. When the woman faced a seemingly unanswered prayer, the temptation to give up on the father was always real and often presented, but the answer lay in “Don’t stop circling your Jericho. Don’t stop on six. Seventh day is coming, and the wall will tumble down.” She had expected her prayer answered like a Tetris game. If she completed the bricks in a row, then the row should disappear like magic. But what happened was in reality, she had completed circling the Jericho but nothing happened. No sign of any change. The door was still shut. The wall was still standing tall and strong, much less could she expect the Jericho wall tumbling down. This was insane. It was not logic. Not making any sense. But the fact was the Father did not want her to see how after each lap around the Jericho wall, it would tumble down and disappear like a Tetris game because there was deeper work he wanted to do in her.

The deeper work the Father wanted to work in her was to have a vision. As she was circling Alderson daily, it gave her a 360-degree perspective of the wall and the promise. She was not only circling, but she was also praying. The woman just kept walking—one foot, then another foot. One lap, and another lap. She didn’t stop. She kept traveling Alderson. That was precisely what prayer did. It helped her get outside the problem, outside the box. It helped her see all the way around the situation. People face storms and tests in life all the time. This is the reality of living. To the ones who have vision, the ability to see all the way around the problem, the problem propels them to purpose and purpose to promise. But those who don’t have vision, they become prisoners of the circumstance and perish in the setback as it is written:

Where there is no vision, my people are perished. (Proverbs 29:18)

How do I learn to find a solution when I don’t have a problem? the woman started and continued writing. She felt an urge for impenetrable writing again. And in that way, the months ed.

Cross the Jordan River

A stream of thoughts flows constantly Jordan River—the good, the bad, the ugly Life current expresses through, adverse minds removed Head to toe, organism it goes Man’s ignorance and unredeemed state

With muddy sense concepts and turbulent materiality This stream of thought, promised children must cross Wilderness to Promised Land, go over Beware, adverse mind’s like cancer Spreading over the underlying spirit consciousness Believe circumstance, power of darkness Don’t stop on six, keep on circling Make up the mind and choose The gods on this side of the river Or God on the other side Own understanding versus thoughts, transforming Go over the other side of Jordan River There the “I AM” man you shall be For “He” in me is greater than he in the world Children of the promise—full potential seed But until seven days are completed Tumble down Jericho wall A promise of four hundred years old A potential only, it is.

Chapter Nine

Going Deep in Present

The woman cleaned her cube and packed her magazines, newspapers, and Mead notebooks in early Saturday morning. They filled her commissary mesh tote. As she was leaving the A2 unit to the CDR for early breakfast, she saw, all over the upper compound, a mute cloudy dew thickening the darkness, then incipient deep orange rays above the violet blue peeping through the sky at the break of dawn. It made the woman think of the king, and it startled her to realize how long it had been since he had thought of her. For nearly thirty months, she had been praying incessantly, thinking only of putting enough faith in the prayers so that she could return to Michigan as soon as possible as a victor and not a prisoner. “Never stop living,” the voice out of the sky had said. “Follow the omens.” The woman kept walking and, once again, had the strange sensation that the king was nearby. She had dreamed hard for the day of returning home, and the omens were “Live it to get it.” I’m going to go back to living just like I did before, the woman thought. Even though prison had taken her freedom and dignity. But prison had taught her something even more important: that there was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the woman had used throughout the time that she was trying to make sense things at the federal prison camp. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for some mystery worth believing in and desiring. Alderson was no longer a strange island, and she felt that, if she could conquer this place, she would conquer the world. When you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it, she

reminded herself. But the king hadn’t said anything about the driest, most barren season before periods of drizzle of hope and the hidden rain that was about to come before the bud popped out or about being robbed of your freedom or about endless deserts. The woman skipped breakfast, stopped, and sat at the pretty spot by the chapel and began her reading leisurely. It was less activity than the weekdays for this time of the morning. From where she sat, she saw her discovery of Alderson was very much like a gregarious caver’s, Howard Limbert’s discovery of Hang En Cave in the Quang Binh province of Central Vietnam, a story she recently read in the New York Times, travel section. Mr. Limbert’s hike began through fifteen hundred feet of vertical descent down a dense jungle path, reaching the valley floor at a stream in the shade of a magnificent tree canopy. As he pushed on, the valley opened up farther— magnificent lime green hills rising all around. A couple of miles later, one of the mighty arches of Hang En Cave came into view. After forging deep into the cave, he followed the water, first into darkness and onward into gradually strengthening light that built to reveal another mountain of rocks towering over. He climbed and reached a vantage point that gave the sighting of the most colossal of Hang En’s Arches, at almost four hundred feet high. With the vision of a caver that pushed on the jungle, forged deep into the cave to discovering a magnificent discovery, the four-hundred-feet-high most colossal Arch, she sat on the steel bench, facing the mountain chain and the horizon, going deep in present. It had been like a fifteen-hundred-feet vertical drop of her life into the dense jungle, prison. At Alderson, the valley floor, like grains were threshed in a threshing floor and grapes were pressed in a winepress to produce wine she was. All the ropes that held her through the whole ordeal had broken. Life became a black hole, a reverse Big Bang Theory, sucking her into this infinite gravity of darkness for five years. But with her unawareness of reaching the valley floor, she was seated at a stream of women under the same voice, calling them the “sought out,” witnessing the magnificent work of the spirit. The broken women cried out to their Father; the silent meditation, the immensity of praise flew in all directions and overflowed

all over the atmosphere. All the walls and the pews in the chapel had been filled and continued to be filled with desperate voices from thousands of thousands of women from all walks of life: the woman at the well, the woman with an issue of blood for twelve years, the harlot “Rahab,” the possessed daughters with constant violent seizures, or the one speaking in a man’s voice since the foundation of Alderson in 1927. Going deeper in the present, she ed the tears of the women on her first day in orientation, when she was stripped away from everything she knew, even stripped away from her clothes in exchange for the BOP tan khaki uniform. Stripped naked, in a squad, and coughing, and with nowhere to go—those tears had also been like the Father’s tears. It was almost as if Alderson women were lost in a deep, dark wood. They tried to follow the sounds of the water onward into the gradual strengthening light to find an exit. Deep in the dark of prison, in the same way they followed the voice of the spirit, spoken words from volunteer men and women preachers at the chapel, the religious assistant’s prayers, and the Drug Treatment Specialist’s (DTS) spiritual counseling. Those voices led them onto gradually strengthening hope and the light. The only light they saw in prison was the word. And yet many women tried to comfort one another through their own pain and experience. Others tried to help with their prison expertise that mastered the BOP rules to break them. Family had advised her with the wisdom of Job’s friends. Everything was meaningless in the end. Though their kind gestures might have helped some, it was only temporary and still led to being directionless. On the other hand, the Word spoken always appeared to help those who were trying to realize their personal legacy. The king had been here and left his mark. The woman looked across the greenery meadow toward the horizon and watched the mountaintops draining sunrays from the day. She thought of her daughters, of her husband. She thought of her dreams, scattered throughout the land. A few black ravens cried out in the distance. They circled the sky. She closed her eyes and took in a breath of the briskly mountain air. She didn’t know how it was possible, but the Word gave life to her pen. She continued

penning breathlessly. The vision, the purpose of her sitting in prison began to unravel life deep in present as David said. “All this,” said David, “the Lord made me understand in writing, by his hand upon me, all the works of these plans” (1 Chronicles 28:19). Moments later, the woman put away the writing and reading materials back in her tote. She left without hesitation back to A2 unit. She didn’t want to cry with other people there. Though she was missing her freedom and all the good things she had in the life outside, she was more confident in herself and felt as though she could conquer Alderson. And she would conquer the world.

*****

The woman was sitting at a metal wall-mounted desk in her cube in a structure that smelled of people, sweat, and dust; it was a female warehouse. She never thought she’d end up in a place like this, she thought, as she leafed through the pages of a travel magazine. Ten years in college and medical school, and here she was in a prison. But she had to keep moving. She believed in sowing and reaping. All her life and all her studies were aimed at avoiding one thing: failure. First, she had studied mathematics where it required mainly numbers and minimal English, then podiatric medicine where the job was good and a guarantee, but now it was life itself. She knew how to solve differential equations, the sine and cosine of trigonometry, and the Pythagorean Theorem. She understood the physiology of the human body and diagnoses of the foot well, but she wasn’t quite an alchemist who knew how to transform lead to gold. And now spending at least four years at Alderson prison, her university of life, she had unraveled the one important truth of the universe. School could teach her anything she might need in life, but it couldn’t teach her how to live, except life itself. She had tried in vain to establish a relationship with the world. The world with strange people, who thought only about themselves, and almost always “This for that.” The period of mourning emancipated the insipid love of the world and had taken her to months in solitude. It was during those days she came to know the secret

of her identity in who she was and to whom she belonged. Her eyes were opened to the moments of carelessness she had been to the omens in the pre-Alderson days, the repeating voice. The world so lost in the extent of her pride could not find any way to remedy it, and the more she thought of solutions, the less rational they seemed to her. Day after day, she whispered to the sun; night after night, she wept in silence, begging from the depth of her soul that the period of mourning would come to an end. She had spent enormous amounts of time reading the great history book of man and had discovered this rarest and important moment she must learned. Nothing would last forever. Everything must . It bought iration to her duality. One who was frivolous to the world and even with a slightly odd character did not seem up to any serious writing, but when she sat down with the pen and studied the horizon, she became a different person, one whose unforeseen darkness promised her this would be the great invention of our time. Months and days on the mountain of the east coincided with the period of mourning. She divided her time in those days between the humble chef at staff dining and the quiet moments, iring the mountain tops dancing and twirling in dresses of gold to orange to red then purple rhythmically at the seventeenth hour of fall afternoon. No one knew him as her lover better than herself. One day, she ambled through the solitary morning paths of the compound and heard a harmonized concert like never before. Birds trilling their greeting to the morning, winds sighing swiftly through the clapping hands of the trees of the field, interweaving the sound of crystal train of raindrops into a secret promise: unbridled faith always went beyond the genius of Mother Nature and beyond intelligence. She had the certainty that prison would not be her end but the beginning of a great friendship. It was said that he was more than two thousand years old and that he would reveal his secret to his friend, to the one who fears him (Psalm 25:14). The woman had been profoundly encouraged and, at the same time, contrite by the promise. But she would never have thought it more than just a theology, had not such a time as this—away from everyone and everything she knew to sitting in prison—told her that fear sometimes could be a good motivation. “I’ve always loved you, Father,” the woman had said. “But I am sorry for not fearing you and just doing it my way.”

The woman could not contain her contrition. She’d gone full speed without fear and built a practice around the swamp in health care and pharmacy, and now here she was sitting inside a dusty, pandemonium-filled female warehouse. Like a tree taking root downward in the dark ground and bearing fruit upward, she was planted in Alderson to bear her fruit. Unpacking the battles of the mind before the old king in her wanderlust, she could feel he was holding her by each hand so as not to lose them in the tumult of thoughts and keeping her from bumping too harshly into acrobatic life of Alderson Prison Camp. He had not disappointed her with requests concerning necessity and her family. Like a caged bird set free, the downcast spirit that consumed her was replaced by an urge to discover the mystery in not knowing, being not in control, yet there was fear that though he is the loving Father and a faithful friend, he was also the judge. She single-eyed on foreseen dances and music of a jubilant, uproarious joy through the woman’s summit and the streets the day she and the women would share and overcome and testimony of burden to blessing, prison to promise. She wanted to invent a memory machine for all testimonies through going deep in present, so she stretched out her hand toward the pen. It was as if the pen and she were ed till death by a bond that was more solid that love: a common prick of fate.

Chapter Ten

Bewilderment of Light

“That’s strange,” said the woman, as she tried to make sense that God had spoken to her in the magical secret of cooking and her whirlwind experience in the CDR, where its spontaneity and unpredictability helped her writing. The istration unexpectedly decided to enforce the BOP rule that the prisoner was no longer allowed to stay at any job longer than eighteen months, including jobs in the CDR, and she had to get a job change to a different department. It’s ashamed that I’m not going to be able to see my friends much anymore, disappointedly she sighed to herself. Another reason she wanted to stay at staff dining was that she would be able to talk to two sisters, Mrs. Encouragement and Ms. Authority, who frequently came in for lunch. They were prisoner staff filled with God’s countenance. She felt safe and had some sense of her normal life back when she was around them. But change is good, she encouraged herself as she started the new job, a valley aide working for Ms. “Dragon,” a building unit manager, one of the toughest, meanest prisoner staff. “I’ve been trying hard not to get on the staff’s bad side, yet I can’t control who likes or dislikes me. If the unit manager finds me unfavorable, I’d be doomed. You’ve gotten to protect me since you put me here,” the woman reasoned to the old king. The mystery of God seemed to be trembling in the very air about Alderson. What took place in the process of taking her to prison then putting her in unexpected or unwanted places was a kind of modern Road to Damascus experience. Why, at the prime of her career and now when she was in the favor of the warden and staff in staff dining, must he strike her with sudden change? she thought, baffled. It just didn’t make sense.

“My way is sudden,” replied the old king. “My way does not make sense. It’s not for you to understand.” She felt sometimes God brought sudden change like lightning to blind her sight and muffle her understanding. This feeling started in the pit of her stomach, then it was bubbling up into her head. As the days went by, there were moments shafts of light seemed to break through the dark for her. New Prison Reform law just ed, and she might benefit from it. However, nothing would involve early release, or matters with the law seemed to favor her but she was disfavored. Darkness still surrounded her. It wasn’t so much the place, the job, or her circumstance but it was the people in Alderson— a negative that weighed down her spirit. Christian life was like a snow globe for those who did not have a relationship with Jesus. Every day felt like the exact same routine, the operation in the human nature of the flesh. No true change. It was just a matter of shaking the fake snowflakes in their appearance of being dreamy and beautiful. Their short life flying in motions soon returned to the bottom of the globe by gravity of life, and the snow globe returned exactly as before it was stirred. The inhabitants of Alderson, many would fake it until they make it, religious and nonreligious women alike. The woman found herself very much alone, not fitting in the BOP system, much less fitting in the inmate system. She was aware of an inability to relate to the place, and the people would be devastating to her. Unless she became one of them, she would be an outcast of the place. When she left prison, she would also be an outcast in the society by the “felony” label. She was ever doomed. Her life was like shooting a movie right now. No matter which angle the camera was placed, there was not enough brightness with natural light. She needed the supernatural light to direct the movies. She needed her sight to go out so she could see with listening, to be able to see a story behind prison and beyond circumstance. She was lying in the top bunk one night, while an abyss of abandonment was still fresh and sudden. That night, the frightful time of lying awake awakened her to her blindness all these years. How could I be so blinded in zealously serving God, thinking I could walk with Him and disobey at the same time? she

reflected. With a successful professional career—white coats, meetings, late kitchen table dinner, late evening church meetings, nights Josh and children slept alone because Mom was out doing people’s work. Now I got myself to a state like this. My family suffered. In the abyss of darkness, she could no longer see. No matter which angle she looked at her dire circumstance, it was impossible to have any solution. The bewilderment of light that came and blinded Paul’s sight now came upon her (Acts 9:1–9). Alderson is my road to Damascus, she decided. She still had some doubts about Alderson and the decision she had made. But she was able to understand one thing: making a decision was only the beginning of a reality to come. When someone makes a decision, he is really about to enter into another dimension where a strong current will carry him to places he had never seen, heard, or thought of when he first made the decision. When I decided to seek the “part the water” experience and go forth to trial, I never imagined that I’d wind up on the Road to Damascus, Alderson, she thought. Taking this road might have been her decision, but where it led was a mystery to her. Gravel crunched underfoot as she walked through the entire compound, lower to upper compound and in front of the Willebrandt Building (recreation center), studying the paths and watching the day awakening all around her. Soon I will walk out the gate, she self-motivated. My career rose and disappeared as the smoke rises and disappears as smiths fan their hearth fires into flame. But this backward is only part of the pottery process. A vision of Jeremiah 18:1–5 began to germinate in her mind. Clay must be marred before it is made into a vessel. During the making and molding of the clay in the pottery process, the clay tends to fall off the center of the wheel and often dries out and cracks unless the potter drips waters upon it continuously. As the potter hand-molds the clay to the vessel he so desires, he also turns the wheel backward (counterclockwise) while his hands guide and keep the clay closed to the center of the wheel. Many women felt dry and cracked as the days of Alderson turned: “boo” relationships and female drama, peer pressure to belong in a clique of prisoner elites, and the bureaucracy, the harsh and contradictory BOP environment. There

was no remedy for the pandemonium of the female warehouse except those who stayed on the word and let it drip upon them daily. The novelties of prison socializing could distract people. The woman continued walking endlessly in the compound. She felt that she didn’t want to do anything that might make her cave to peer pressure or BOP pressure. She would rather stay close and be pressured under the invisible hand of the potter than the visible hand of man. When the potter turns the wheel backward, he also pulls the clay in the upward position because there’s no condemnation in the journey with God. The woman was lifted with hope, though blurry, like looking into a smoky mirror in the bathroom due to hot water, in the promise of a purposeful vessel that stores his treasure once the potter has completed it. “Everything in life is an omen,” said the old king to her as she was walking. “There is a language, understood by you but not known. That’s why I’m here to help you.” The Alderson journey was an absurd journey by man and an unmistakable by God. A personal makeover for some, making beauty for ash. There were also women who had been involved in ministry and had continued to love God but who never made up their minds to make a commitment to walk his ways because they were a woman apart. They promised to follow God to the ends of the earth but only later on, when they put their affairs in order. They became tired of waiting for God. They knew of his love and mercy; they knew all about his faithfulness and goodness except they did not know him. They lived the lives of gossip, deceitful tongues, stealing hands, and mocking lips in disobedience around the compound, outside their “chapel” life. As for the woman, Alderson Women Camp bore a lugubrious lament and a vague smell of trustworthy, privately owned BOP. The camp received approximately thirty-one thousand dollars (taxpayers’ money) for every prisoner it housed and majority of labor work required to run and maintain the camp performed by the female inmates (male inmates at federal prison camp made twenty to forty times more) for five dollars, thirty-five cents a month. It was a ludicrous business for the privately own BOP, not a rehabilitation camp for women. There was a murmur across the compound. Each was crying quietly to her own God. And the murmur lasted longer than a simple vow would have. The prisoners were also praying to heaven for deliverance. The woman knew she was

about to describe, though: the mysterious chain that linked one thing to another, the same chain that had caused her to become a podiatrist, that had brought her to prison, to depend on the king, and to be stripped naked in order to meet the writer, and… The woman observed in silence the progress of the prisoners in A2 unit. Now everything was quite different from how it was that day she had arrived: then, there had been confusion and fear, the cries of women and their whinnying about the injustices of the United States Justice Department, all mixed with intimidating orders of the guards, the counselor, and the case manager. But on the road to Damascus, there was only the sound of the eternal voice that led her to things she had never thought of. “The mountain is so huge, the horizons so distant, and the BOP’s power so bottomless that they make a person feel small and as if I should remain silent,’ she said one night. I’ve learned things from the patients, and I’ve learned things from operations, she thought. I can learn something from the mountain too. It seems old and wise. The current of life never stopped. The air in A2 housing felt heavy and oppressive, with an attending chill of the hidden cruelty of people’s heart. For love and submission is not something that people can do, at least not on one’s own. Apart from Christ’s life inside a person, one cannot submit to anyone else in his or her own life, including to the Father. A person’s heart is deceiving and selfish by nature. Anxious for solitude, bitten by a virulent rancor from the world. One evening, the woman left her cube, not to the chapel or the pretty spot or the e-mail room or the recreation building as usual but to mingle in the tumult of the affairs of A2 where she resided. After wandering about among all kinds of contraptions of acrobatic life in prison without becoming interested in any of them, she spotted something that was not a part of it at all: a middle-aged African American veteran, Mrs. Akgabor, with the spirit of a child and the wisdom of life of the elderly. Mrs. Akgabor was weighed down by the spirit of oppression being in Alderson and possessed from her childhood when her mother used to offer her to witchcraft and a medium. She was the most humble and fascinating person the woman had met in Alderson. Mrs. Akgabor was lying in her bottom bunk at the bus stop at the time among the crowd, witnessing sad spectacles of many prisoners who had turned into snakes, setting up schemes to create drama and to snitch on others. While the sad interrogation of the “snake” women was taking place, Mrs. Akgabor made her way through prison life and

the BOP system by remaining in the crowd but not being of the crowd. It was noted that Mrs. Akgabor would scream almost every night in different voices in oppression by another spirit, sometimes with a deep man’s voice and other times with another woman’s voice or a child’s voice. Cop-outs written by A2 residents flooded the case manager’s office demanding for the middle-aged woman to be moved out of A2 because they were scared of her nightmare screams. The woman thought of a slave girl with a possessed spirit that the apostle Paul had cast out in the Bible (Acts 16:16–24) and was sure that in the spirit of obedience, she was to do the same for the middle-aged woman. Without haste or fright, the woman decided to stop and visit the middle-aged woman. “Hello, my name is Jade. I heard you had nightmares at night. How are you today?” the woman greeted Mrs. Akgabor. “I’m sorry if I bothered you with my screams at night,” said Mrs. Akgabor. “I’m scared to go to bed every night because they come out in my sleep, so I stay up late and crochet every night.” “Would you like to pray for your nightmare to go away?” asked the woman to Mrs. Akgabor. “Sure, please pray for me. I’m scared. They come out in my sleep every night.” With the authority of the scriptures, the woman began to plead the blood, pray over the possessed middle-aged woman, and declare war over the demonic spirit subtly. Mrs. Akgabor slept in peace without screaming that night. She continued to pray for Mrs. Akgabor the next three nights, and she slept peacefully without nightmares or screaming those nights. The fourth night, the middle-aged woman returned, terrified in her sleep, and spoke with a different voice this time, a man with a deeper and louder voice. The woman ed she had stopped praying over Mrs. Akgabor that night. Immediately, she got up in her top bunk, around the third hour of the day, stretching out her right hand toward Mrs. Akgabor’s bed. The woman prayed in tongues, praised the name of Jesus, and pleaded the blood and the power of the cross to bind the demonic spirit and cast them out like she’d never done before. Immediately and miraculously, the possessed woman became silent. The woman and Mrs. Akgabor became friends through the common grasp of the gospel amid the common prick of pain. The woman visited her middle-aged friend almost every night to pray and read her the Bible along with her writing at her request. The bond of their friendship grew

stronger after a short period. Mrs. Akgabor’s wisdom and patience compensated for the woman’s fright in the place, and the woman’s being a prayer warrior and writing compensated for Mrs. Akgabor’s spiritual vulnerability. Their friendship later evolved to more than just-before-bedtime prayers. Each afternoon, after returning to A2 unit from staff dining, the woman would come to her middle-aged friend’s cube and read her the scriptures and her writing, and the middle-aged woman became her valuable writing critic. They were together in that routine for their remaining time in Alderson, which brought people the rumors that they were each other’s boo. There were some nights the woman didn’t visit and read the scriptures and pray over the middle-age woman, and her nightmares and talking during sleep would resurface but she was not as terrified and they were not as profound as before. “I don’t quite understand why prayers work and how God works. All I know is it feels wonderful.” She found her middle-aged friend’s note under the pillow on her bed one afternoon while returning to her cube from work, ready for the four o’clock official standing count. It read, “Thank you. What a wonderful time I had at church. Everything is gradual for me. Just give me time. Thank you again, my daughter, for helping me find my way.” Other times, her middle-aged friend’s note under the pillow would read, “My life would be empty without you explaining the Bible to me. You are the hidden angel of knowledge. Thank you for explaining things about the Bible to me. I will keep reading and will spend time with you.” The woman was excited at her intuitive understanding of her middle-age friend’s comments. Maybe she was also here to learn the Language of the Universe that deals with the past and the present and the unexplainable things about all people. The woman was beginning to understand that prayer is really an immersion of the soul into the universe, where the power within all people are connected and we are able to overcome anything. Another explosion on the road in Alderson was an early-thirties woman with violent seizure attacks many nights a week for many weeks. The Health Service Unit (HSU) under the BOP guidelines would not give her any new anticonvulsant medications other than the generic. Instead of increasing the dosage or changing to brand-name medication, two guards were sent to check on the patient then left to other prisoners to care for her until her seizure attack

subsided on its own. This happened too frequently, almost every day for weeks, that the woman realized it never occurred to her that she should pray for the woman with seizures since the HSU wouldn’t give her any medication she might need. The woman’s seizures were out of control. I should try to pray for her since it seems nothing can be done for her, thought the woman, then she got off her top bunk and approached the bus stop area where the seizure woman lay. There were three other prisoners standing at the bus stop surrounding the woman with seizures: one kept fanning to keep her cool down, other kept a tongue depressor in her mouth so she wouldn’t bite her tongue, and other dabbed her face and forehead with a wet towel. The woman scooched behind one of the helpers and started calling on the Name, declaring the blood, and casting the spirit of violent convulsion out of the thirty-year-old woman quietly to avoid any attention from the guard. It was Alderson policy that no prayer was allowed outside the chapel. Nothing happened for fifteen minutes. The three helpers, who weren’t exactly Jesus lovers and often mocked churchgoers in prison, changed their tone this time. “Here’s Jesus Girl, calling on his name,” one of the helpers cheered her for praying. “Come on, keep calling on Jesus’s Name.” Another inmate saw that everyone was working hard together for the healing of the seizure woman, and she came over and helped shield the woman so others or the guard wouldn’t give her trouble for praying outside the chapel. But there were still no movements for twenty minutes as the woman watched the clock on the wall by the horseshoe. “I’ve been calling on your name,” she reasoned frustratedly with God. “You said your Word never returns to you void, and I’ve been declaring your Word over this seizure for twenty minutes, but nothing happened.” At this time, running out of words to pray, the woman began humming praise about the blood, about the power of the Name, and when she ran out of songs to sing, she spoke in tongues quietly with care taken not to cause a scene that could attract attention. She interceded for the seizure woman continuously in that order: praise, speak in tongues until the Word was released to her, then she pleaded the blood and the Word. She continued reasoning with God, pleading that his Word could not return to him void but must bring healing over the seizure woman. Ten minutes later, the seizure woman’s shaking began to slow

down. She was shaking less violently and gradually came to a halt after another ten minutes. After a total of forty minutes praising, pleading the blood, calling on the name, and speaking in tongues, the seizure spirit was confused and left, and the thirtyyear-old woman fell asleep peacefully. Everyone was encouraged and relieved. Each night, when the spirit of violent shaking attacked the thirty-year-old patient, the woman and three friends would sit around the patient, and another adventure in prayer began. Each time, it seemed that the violent seizure would cut shorter the moment the name of Jesus was called on in praise, and the woman fell deep in her sleep peacefully. Prison, the bewilderment of light, caused blindness to her sight to where she was going that left the blind even better, all she could do was to listen and obey to the ebbs and flows of life as she learned to discern the omens and follow them. Nature had made her reserved and withdrawn, and God had molded an opposite character in her, one that was vital and expansive, and He had injected her with peace. She was learning the “even now” faith (John 11:22) at the valley floor. Others had looked at her as one with head full of fantastic ideas and lacking any with reality, but God had made a woman with vision of her. Alderson Federal Prison was an ordinary land of captivity by man but a Brook Cherith by God. God told Elijah to go to Brook Cherith and told him to bring nothing with him. God promised there He would send a raven to feed Elijah and provide water from the brook. Elijah made a decision to obey, not knowing there, in the middle of nowhere, he was being prepared by God to become the greatest prophet to later face off the greatest false god, Baal, and defeat him (1 Kings 17:1–9). It came to the woman that the omen pointed when there was total darkness, there is bewilderment of light that leads the way by new sight. Sight relies on senses beneath the skin. Sight keeps blood circulating to every organ in the body. And sight sees with the ears, not the eyes. Sometimes it is the light that put a person in blindness and not the dark.

At the Brook Cherith

At Alderson Federal Prison Camp She finally lost all with the world What in other times had been a real activity, and Irresistible ion of the flesh Became a remote point of reference for her. Her only refuge was his presence, Her only comforter and teacher, the Holy Spirit. At the Brook Cherith, His voice was in the wet wind Out of the thick, dewy sky Swiftly, gently running above the treetops. Early at the break of dawn down the hilly path, She liked watching his hands weaving Crystal train of raindrops Strains of mist tangled in leaves and rocks Whispered through her heart Hours in silence Absorbed in the presence There, an inwardly pleasant Awareness of the secret designs

Of her indecipherable heart For years, he kept repeating his love And she would find a way to reject him Here, she looked at the desolate streets The crystal-clear water Fresh asleep in early dawn On the leaves of the almond trees Find herself lost in solitude His immense authority O, though she has not succeeded In loving him as she should She could no longer live without him She longed to know him, just to know him Her heart was burnt for him, just burnt for him She cried, “Holy Spirit comes, Holy Spirit comes! O, my comforter, my helper!”

Chapter Eleven

Dry Bones and Instincts

Sometimes, Alderson inhabitants met with others. Women always found something that the other needed—as if everything were indeed predestined. As they sat around the pretty spot at the highest point in the upper compound, the women exchanged information about the Prison Reform laws and the BOP’s new rules and told stories about their valleys and deserts. At other times, career prisoners, those who had been in the camp longer than any other prisoner and were way too comfortable in prison that they seemed to have forgotten the world that existed on the outside or those in and out of prison like a traditional family reunion would appear; they were experts who did surveillance of the camp. They provided warnings about creepy jailers and thieves and barbarian inmates. By the mystery of the omens, the woman came in silence and knew she must remain silent. Time in the world, work, and the countless everyday transactions had made her forget about herself. The Father, the only one who had not lost for a single minute the awareness of her life, her purpose, thought of her at dawn, when the ice of her heart awakened her in her solitary bed. Always at every moment, her sleep and her waking, during her most sublime and most abject moments, he thought about her. The solitude with him had made a selection in her memory and had burned a dimming pile of nostalgic waste that life had accumulated in her heart and had purified, magnified, and eternalized the others, the most peaceful ones. The camp felt silent. The woman noted that there was a sense of fear in the air, even when there was no one around saying anything. Once again, she was experiencing the omens, the language without words…the Language of the Universe.

You may not know your vision until there’s no going back, the woman thought. Once you get into the wood and when there’s no going back, you have to worry only about keeping moving forward. The rest is up to the maker, including the danger. And she concluded that Satan must have been frustrated by her transient faith. She had needed this prison in order to attain the privilege of solitude, just her and the maker, to receive vision in the bewilderment of light and to cherish better every moment with her husband and daughters. Never would she want to waste the moment again. She was not disposed to renounce them in exchange for anything less than the maker purposed for her. She was then saw what a purposeful point her separation from the world had been when she arrived, and she understood that it would be impossible to rescue her from the stubborn thoughts while she still had a breath of success in the world. The maker’s infinite wisdom for manual destruction of her inside out was to let her faith remain intact, or else her faith would only grow in the mountaintop, not the valley, and as easy as she was, she was going downhill. The world was reduced to the surface of her skin, and her inner being was safe from fear and whinnying. It pained the woman not to have had this revelation many years ago when it had still been possible to avoid the slough of Alderson misery. But by then, her acceptance of her fate as the will of the maker was so deep that she was not even upset by the certainty that all possibilities of retrial and resentencing were closed to her case. She became apart from people not out of hatred or out of love but because of the measureless understanding of the omens and solitude with him.

*****

The overcrowded federal prisons and the new prison reform laws recently ed that could deal federal prison its fatal reality were just showing themselves when a massive 16 percent population in federal prisons were to be released at once. The uncertainty in the public situation and the politics of the swamp government influenced by rich donors and lobbyists, causing confusion and lawlessness in the nation and corruption and contradictory environment of the BOP where no one had sufficient spirit for discernment, had caused silent internal war and

division creeping in among the people. The people were blinded to the uncertainty of the days, the reality of the Maker and his Word, and the reality of the corrupted BOP and the swamp, Washington DC, falling farther from the biblical foundations of the original “one nation under God,” denying the power of truth in exchange for perception culture and media mob, the power of Holy Scriptures for the power of big government. The waves of lucidity that was scarce during the blessing rains pouring on the nation became more frequent after September 11, 2001, but America continued walking in pride and arrogance of heart, quoting the scripture in Isaiah 9:10:

The bricks have fallen down but we will rebuild with hewn stones; the sycamores are cut down, but we will replace them with cedars.

Greed, like an arid wind, began to blow and suffocate thousands of talented lives, ruined many rose bushes with the abuse of power BOP, petrified the muddy souls, and ended up scattering over the nation with federal prisons the burning dust of forgotten ashes—mothers, daughters, grandmothers, and granddaughters that covered the federal prison. The woman cried in her lamentation. Despite the fact that Alderson failed to rehabilitate thousands of lives, it was the valley of dry bones and at the same time the valley of vision to her and others because reality still exists. God still exists. Although the woman was already marred and on the point of going blind to hopes, dreams, and the future by the cataracts in her felony conviction, the potter was not done with his clay; the constant dripping of the Word gave physical dynamism, keeping her unwavering character and her mental balance intact. No one would be better able than the potter to shape a virtuous woman out of her from the flaccid clay. He would restore the prestige of her family. Always after midnight hours, she came to the dawn. The dawn of this book. Stories kept coming to life, which had no endings, for it was like a certain woman who had nothing but a jar of oil, and as she kept pouring, it never ran out. The story of Alderson and the BOP and the RDAP (Residential Drug Abuse Program) was nowhere near to rehabilitating women, though many had been, but

to conform people to institutionalized thinking, to suppress the spirit of liberty in Christ. The people, in turn, stayed dependent on the government and her handouts. The government stayed in power and gained more power. Prisoners were mumbling and grumbling, being distraught, but they would rather not stand up to the truth for fear of losing the benefits. People operated in a system of whom you know, not what you know, and turned their back on their fellow penitents and friends, snitching and lying for the benefit of cutting their sentence short. In spite of the mind had having been shut up in Alderson, the air seemed fresher than ever. Against the aluminum picnic bench and table facing the northeast mountain toward the gate standing with hands in her sweatpants pockets, the dry, cold wind out of the clear orange-hued sky of the late afternoon in the fall ran swiftly and swirled above the treetops, rushing down her cheeks. Like a mysterious breath waking up golden dead leaves from the ground, a cloud burst of golden leaves leaped into the air, back to the ground. They synchronously rushed across the green grass field of the upper compound, chasing one another, then leaped to life with carefree twirls and dances in the air. They freely followed wherever the currents flowed, whenever the wind blew. Standing there, absorbing the immense wisdom unveiling, the woman slowly inhaled and exhaled the mysterious breath. “It is fall. Cheers to the fall,” exclaimed the woman. “The season of change. And change is good.” She was released from fear of change. That prodigious time enveloping in a revelatory aura, she seemed to know what there was on the other side of prison. Marred. Change. A good marred story, stories as real as they get. And she concluded by saying the mysterious words, “As it is written.” “Again He said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones,’ and say to them, ‘O, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord?’ Thus says the Lord God to these bones: ‘Surely I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live’” (Ezekiel 37:4–5).

*****

In the suffocating land of captivity, curiosity was no longer greater than fear;

rather it was the fear of discerning the omens and revelation that was greater than curiosity. She was crossing the silent, stormy river with all kinds of unforgettable moments while she kept living as a donkey in the place. Her husband and those who had known her since the foundation of Alderson were startled at how much she had been broken and quiet under the prison’s influence. But she knew it wasn’t under the prison’s influence. She had changed because of His influence. Alderson chapel, the Willebrand recreation center, the oak trees, the birds, the squirrels, and she lived in peaceful communion with the maker. With mountains surrounding on all sides, Alderson prevailed for a long time, inspired by the arbitrary government masking with different BOP programs. The search of ways to an outlet to an early release no longer interested her after months for it could lead only to the past, the grumbling, and the disappointment. The discovery of her, the merchant ship, an indication of the proximity of the sea, and her vision broke her drive. She considered it a trick of her whimsical fate all these years prior to Alderson to having searched for the way to joy and peace at the cost of countless hours of work and sacrifices and to have found it all of sudden without looking for it, as it lay across the prison path like an insurmountable object. With that certainty, mulled over for several months in her cube she used as her spiritual laboratory, she came to the certainty that the Maker had brought her to prison for the conception of his purpose. Ships might be safe inside the harbor, but that was not where ships belonged, she thought. The immense collection of women, Christian services at the chapel, and the mountains began to fill her prison life faster. The days had always been occupied with programming, but even the evenings, when the women were accustomed to talking around the picnic tables scattered throughout the upper compound, had also become occupied with the Word and prayers. And one day, the new Captain of Alderson made the decision that prayers should no longer be tolerated outside the chapel so as not to create a possible scene or chaos to the compound. The woman adopted the practice of arranging a group meeting in a small circle of friends walking at night, saying their prayers like a conversation to God and to one another as protection against the snitch. And the woman’s life slowly came back alive with slim hope on the other side. Alderson was a prelude to the promise. She heard faint echoes of the coming themes, propelling her forward into the music of being homeward bound, but the

echoes never quite fulfilled the longings they ignited. Usually, homeward bound danced just within reach but never reached, just over the next horizon, just beyond the next purchase. This life is both a gift for today called present and a hint of tomorrow, mystery. And the theme won’t be resolved until the final movement to those who endure until the end, thought the woman.

Ship Days at Sea

Ships may be safe inside the harbor, But that is not where ships belong. Immense aquatic expanse, Tossed and turned in unknown atmosphere, With visibly unforeseen imable obstacles. Small rudder, the captain’s hand turns wherever he wishes. Through fierce winds and stormy storms, His hand guides her safely. The world rewards those who rise before the sun. Mornings are when the place is most specifically itself. In morning’s filmy half-light, hard edges soften. Even the most foreign place, Alderson prison, Can achieve certain gentleness. Untethered from the familiar,

Propelled into a place that was not logical. Until I surrender Some small measure of control, I could not go anywhere.

Farewell to Fear of Unknown

Farewell to fear of mistakes, Just a detour from a wrong turn, enjoy the scenery. One door closes; always another opens. Embrace unknown; engage changes. The power behind is greater than the task ahead. Afraid not, just start, Even if it means jumping off a cliff. Wings will develop as you’re on your way down And catch some big air in the sky. Farewell to fear of falling. Not how many times you fall, It’s how many times you get up. Farewell to fear of the unknown. Live to create; create to live.

Let the unknown become your known. The author, perfecter, and finisher To the lives who praise.

*****

The woman was unable to sleep many nights. In her burning bed, rivers flowed down her cheeks because people rejected the king and his laws; she was not excused. She understood that she had to come to prison even if she was not capable, even when she did not succeed in deciphering the grave dream. Her mind got undressed by feeling, listening in the dark to other women’s breathing —the asthma of an inmate in the next cube, the beating of her heart, the inordinate world of writing that she had not noticed until then—and she went out at dawn walking into the sleeping paths of the camp. With all her heart, she wanted the gate to open and not just open, but the whole nation to open the gate to the oppressed captives as it is written of the promise in the Shemitah year that every debt will be forgiven, every captive will be set free, and to rebuild the old ancient ruins in the government for a better one nation under God. But the gate was still shut. The frozen echoes inside her pushed the tips of fingers to articulate the mournful moan through the pen that became her tongue. Prison had blinded her by tears that she could no longer walk by sight. In order to stay alive, she learned to think with the heart, see with ears, and listen with eyes. She longed for the air in her intestines and fear and the anxiety to flee, but they seemed to stay eternally in that exasperated silence and that fearful solitude. In the absolute darkness, she understood with a hopeless nostalgia that she was completely disoriented. The smell of prison had been all over the woman, so devious and at the same time so definite that she could not quiet herself. She did not move for a long time. She sensed an invisible hand extending and feeling about in the darkness easing her heart. She was not surprised because without knowing, she had been expecting it. Then she gave herself over that invisible hand, in bloody tears drenching her pillow, begging for mercy. In a terrible state of exhaustion, she let herself be led to a shapeless place where her spirit was undressed and she was heaved about like a sack of potatoes in a pitless darkness

in which her arms were useless and her thinking was useless, where it no longer mattered, the woman she strived to be. She tried to her face and found before her only one face, Christ. She had tried all she had imagined that could be done, not knowing what she was doing because she did not know where Christ’s feet were or where Christ’s hands were or whose feet and whose head she belonged, except that the feeling of zeal for him was her main drive. She had been part of the exodus that went through with the founding of Alderson, in order to separate her from the old woman who had raped her of being free indeed. Prison became the platform of woman’s instincts. Like animals living in a jungle, the woman developed the instinct not to be extinct and prey for others.

Giraffe’s Instinct: A Creed of the Heart

A giraffe is walking, Funny-looking long neck, Eating leaves from the tree. “Ha, ha, ha,” mocking and laughing From those eating on the ground. Giraffe keeps head high and sees Alderson jungle, Valley of Vision. Giraffe keeps strolling, But turtle, rabbit, and worms Eat only what they find

From where they are crawling on the ground. Eat the vision; it’s your provision Until it makes the stomach bitter Yet tastes like honey in the mouth. Not the brain, it’s the heart that matters. Out of the heart springs the issues of life. Muscle pumps; blood flows. River of life flourishing. Giraffe’s heart, forty times turtle’s heart. Giraffe keeps its trolls, Heart with diligence. Accept not what the turtle says; It sees only what’s on the ground. Giraffe, necked with mercy and truth, Written tablets in the heart. Though coated with botchy skin, Its testimony and endurance, Where messages are written, A creed of the heart, giraffe’s instinct, Fast walker, uprightly, beyond eye level, it sees!

Chapter Twelve

Human Experiences

The woman was startled. Today, the world lives in a digital age where people “Mobile—enable your workforce and unleash your business.” The thumb generation believes “mobile” is everything. People hardly sit still anymore and are constantly on the move. Our attention spans are short. Our lives become like movies filled with editing and cinematography tricks that make them appear exciting, appealing to the viewers, though only short term, just an emptiness to many who hold them. Many women were still fascinated in the past about the progressive life they had lived before entering Alderson, and now in prison, they were eager to impress one another with the same editing and cinematographic life. Christians were not excused—editing and cinematography praise testimony and worship. “That’s the principle that governs all things,” she said. “When you want something with all your heart, all the universe conspires in helping you. There’s always a positive force toward it.” Many Alderson women still chose the life as lovers of themselves, headstrong and boasters. They were not sorry for what they’d done. They were sorry for getting caught. Women would gather together, gossiping endlessly to tell over and over for hours on end the same jokes accompanied with vulgarity for every conversation that departed their lips. People had lack of reverence for the creator, much less respect for the authority. Many still worshiped God yet served their own gods, according to the rituals of their bondages. This brought her to inconsolable weeping and loneliness. She knew her hermits were not odd. Although she seemed expansive and cordial, she had a solitary character and an impenetrable heart that were mean at times. In fact, she could not bear the earth of too many women clustering her, but the camp had trained her patience. She overcame the growing anxiety, and little by little, the satisfaction of “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” strengthened her for daily battle.

Everything on earth is being continuously transformed because the earth is alive…and we are part of that life. The woman thought about that for a while as she thought of the moon and the hazy hilly meadow of Alderson. “I have watched the women as they lived on the mountain,” she said. “The women and the mountain speak the same language, and it’s for that reason that the mountain allows the living. It’s going to test the women’s every step to see if they have understanding, and if they do, they will make it to the oasis. If any women had lived on this mountain based only on time but without understanding that language, the journey would have been only misery and much more difficult.” The woman stood there, looking at the moon. “That’s the magic of going deep in the present,” said the woman. “I’ve seen how the case managers read the guide of the BOP and how the soul of women speaks to the soul of these West Virginian mountains.” The old king said, “You’d better pay more attention to the women.” “And I’d better read your book,” said the woman.

*****

Illuminated by recognizing omens, she became excited, which she shared with her oppressed middle-aged friend living only two cubes from her whose possessed spirit had been cast out. She read to her several scriptures which her middle-aged friend did not fully understand but which when read aloud were like encyclicals being chanted, soothing the middle-aged woman’s soul, and she was able to sleep through the night without nightmares and screaming as before. The middle-aged woman was Mrs. Akgabor. The woman and her middle-aged friend became Bible buddies as Mrs. Akgabor wanted to listen to her writing along with the scriptures every day. Each day, returning to the housing unit from work, the woman would visit and read to Ms. Akgabor in her cube before the four o’clock count. It was a strange friendship. The woman spoke about omens, scriptures, and the old king, and the middle-aged friend didn’t understand any of the scriptures when read by themselves. But there was one thing that seemed to repeat itself

throughout their relationship: all scriptures seemed to make sense to Mrs. Akgabor when read with her writing. Three days later… “Feel lost without my daughter’s reading session and your poems. Miss you so much.” The woman found and read Mrs. Akgabor’s note dropped under the pillow on her bed one evening as they had not spent time together the last couple of days for the woman was busy at the chapel for the revival week. Mrs. Akgabor found the scripture pleasant, and she understood it with the woman’s writing. It was the reality in the scripture that brought alive the immediate reality and friendship of the woman and Mrs. Akgabor. Mrs. Akgabor would tell her stories of wisdom through her sewing and crochet, her life growing up in America as African American woman, and her serving in the military and her travel experiences with the world. The woman didn’t know any of it. Their souls were lifted up in one another’s stories, and Mrs. Akgabor became her frequent writing critic. They wished that the time machine would have broken so that they could no longer look at the time but only watched the appearance of nature in the surroundings for signs of their release home. Then the woman and Mrs. Akgabor would witness an undeniable proof of the infinite power and majesty of God and find in Him the justification that they need to live embracing their present, even prison. During the Alderson stage, the woman was developing the instincts of butterfly, giraffe, lion, and ant. The certainty that the day was assigned gave her a mysterious immunity, a morality for a fixed period that made her invulnerable to the risks of spiritual war in prison and, in the end, permitted her to win a defeat that was much more difficult, much more bloody and valuable than victory, the overcoming by the blood, for it was a war for her own liberation and not for abstract ideals, for slogans that politicians or religions could twist left and right according to circumstances. It was a war for liberation from self, by the blood, filled with ardent enthusiasm. She knew she could never be a greater soldier than at Alders on time.

Lion: Instinct for the Lost

Bolder before giant enemy, Roaring before, catching prey. King of the jungle, lion is. Stand solely, reign in righteousness. Exceptional night vision, his specialty. Hunting in group always, Protector and provider for the weak. Let species extinct not, His job never done ’Til a new leader is raised. He who’s hungry roars at all cost, Instinct for the lost.

Butterfly: A Creed of Transforming

Behind four brick walls, A cocoon in isolation. Protection, not imprison. In solitude, she sings her tune, Her system of immune. “I believe I can fly,”

Praising the most high. ’Til others, mocking and laughing, Only arrows ing by. The cocoon in between stages, Eat and stand still. Saliva turns silk. Vision to provision, Affection to protection ’Til transformation completed. Sing her favorite tune, “I believe I can fly.” Now it’s time to fly, Yet no movement, wings frozen. Four hours—“Hang there,” wonder. Butterfly can’t fly. Don’t quit, just hang there. Blood must flow through For a time before butterfly can fly. Now lose heart not While carrying your own cross. Crucifixion before resurrection,

Where blood will flow. ’Til then, you will arise and fly Now, butterfly in the field. Mornings by mornings, Flowers to flowers, Meditating, spreading, and producing seeds, A creed of transforming.

Ant: A Creed of Wisdom

A people not strong, Smaller than most, Gather in community, The assembly forsake not. Big task, small task, don’t mind. Little on the earth Yet exceedingly wise. In the summer, provision prepared, Giant defeater not scared. Heart with diligence, The ant’s instinct—wisdom.

*****

There was nothing for her in the hypocrite Christians in Alderson. Only harsh reminders of the past, of the famine church on the outside world that drove the woman to abandon her family for the work of her church. She couldn’t praise in the spirit of playing church, in that atmosphere of jagged memories, so she decided to share her concerns. But she wasn’t exactly expressing them in peace and comion. She was expressing out of frustration. Then one evening, Allie, a thirtyish attractive friend, an Egyptian beauty, from a Bible study group, and the woman had a heated session, during which Allie spoke words rebuking the woman about her judgmental and critical tendency, her aloofness, and her inability to demonstrate love to the hypocrites. The woman knew there was truth in what Allie said, and she did it sincerely, but resistance has a way of residing in a person’s heart for a while. After that session with her friend, it was obvious that the rebuke came from the belly; the woman took it with ease. “I confess that I have a hard time facilitating a relationship with the female world, Papa,” she confessed. “Perhaps the real reason of my uneasiness is the question I keep asking myself, ‘Why can’t I trust women easily?’ Is there in any way hypocrisy in me as a woman that causes me to struggle with other women?” The next day, early Saturday morning, the woman stood in the A2 bathroom looking into the mirror while rinsing her face with water; she was searching for some signs of justice in those eyes staring back at her. “Is this justice?” asked the woman, thinking about her state of Alderson. “Of course not, it is impossible. Life is never fair,” she sighed. She turned off the faucets, froze her eyes in the mirror, and those eyes staring back at her watched the water dripping down her cheeks. Suddenly… “God does not desire justice. God desires mercy,” the deep voice of an older volunteer minister, Dr. Noble, who had preached this message, recently

resonated in the woman’s heart with a vision of her driving in the dark, stormy night. A train of diamond-sized raindrops stung off the windshield of her car, and the windshield wipers kept wiping them continuously. The windshield with stinging raindrops was like her life and the hypocrite Christians full of perpetual sins and iniquity. Jesus, the windshield wipers, constantly wiped away people’s sins, and she was one of them. Like metal being heated for many years that would free itself of all its individual properties, what was left would be the Soul of the Universe that allowed understanding anything on the face of the earth, because it was the language without words by which all things communicated. The woman thought of The Alchemist and what Paulo Coelho had said and how true it was. There were some releases about the storm that interrupted life. It released people from expectations, performance demands, and the tyranny of appointments and schedules. Standing still in the A2 housing bathroom in front of the mirror for another moment, there was a dead silence, and then she submerged her face in cupped hands with running cold water for seconds then wiped and dried it with a towel. She exited the bathroom. “Ooooh, that feels refreshing,” she exclaimed, walking back to her cube. She sat leaning against the wall on the top bunk, watching her mind disquiet with many thoughts. She was able to examine them forward and backward of her imprisonment. It didn’t matter whose fault it was that she came to Alderson because the mess of broken vessels would be a process for success. There was an old craftsman who was an expert at using broken pieces and pieced them together into a whole vessel for his purpose. The woman had a mania for simplifying scriptures. A relationship is a serious obedience. Everything has to do with facilitating a relationship. Jesus came in human form to facilitate the relationship with man. He didn’t come to the world to show his superiority but left all power and authority in heaven. He even chose to lose competition to the high priest, Pharisees, and man to accomplish love. Whose fault is it that Jesus was broken and put in prison crowded with criminals —the world full of sinners? During the moments of self-examination, the deep agony, confusion, and

puzzling from the depth of the well of her soul by the voice began surfacing. “It’s not easy to facilitate relationships in a place like Alderson!” reasoned the woman with the old king. Alderson women spent months in the camp observing the fire of man, corrupt government, contradictory BOP, and con artist prisoners, and spent so much time close to the fire that gradually, they gave up the truth for lies. “How am I supposed to be equally yoked with them?” “If it wasn’t for my mercy, you wouldn’t be standing here reasoning with me,” the old king replied. “Mercy triumphs over judgment always.” The woman recalled her Egyptian-looking friend’s, Allie’s, words in the heartto-heart letter she wrote to her before Allie left Alderson and went home. “I am excited how God already has given me the word that he was increasing your spiritual gifts! And along with the increase showing you just how to apply them, by going deeper past the veil into your heart—relating with others more.” It was a good thing for the woman to go deeper in present, to be around people, and to cook and clean with her prison jobs so that she could free herself from boastful thoughts. The woman was becoming more and more convinced that every Alderson woman is an alchemist and that alchemy could be learned in her daily life while in prison. This life in prison is all about relationship and love; the woman was determined to follow the omens. At the same moment, there was a silent train full of unhappy, uncomfortable, and worried thoughts about her family at home, about the chaos and division and hatred because of power-hungry people in the world of politics and religion, and about her present and future across her mind. It left no cerebral tract untracked, and she sank into the abyss of sadness of a common prisoner’s fate. The images of pretentious, deceptive, and self-serving Christians and hidden drama behind the “holy” chapel workers and the “anointed” chapel’s praise leaders as if God were blind and deaf kept paining her in some part of her body. It was a physical sensation that almost bothered her when she walked, like a pebble in her shoe. Their love for God echoed the artificial aura by man-made praise and worship performance, accented with wordy and self-congratulatory testimonies. Some RDAP women even developed institutionalized faith about God and the work of Holy Spirit to paint an image of deliverance for the benefit of graduating the RDAP. These had awakened her loneliness to the ends of the earth and driven her desire and hunger for enormous solitude with God, not

wanting much relationship with other women in prison. Nevertheless, she was also lifted and encouraged by the fact that God still existed in Alderson—the majestic beauty of the mountain, the comion and anointing men and women volunteer ministers, chapel staff, and many anointed talented prisoners. The beauty of a woman which became evermore solemnly desirable with age when God was her utmost, highest ion; otherwise, the beauty would just be the loveliness of the field that soon faded away, as seen in the female volunteer ministers. She desired and longed for that kind of beauty. Alderson Federal Prison Camp, the well of wealth for the privately owned BOP and government bureaucracy yet the well of living water to some prisoners. “How could that be?” the woman puzzled. “Did you learn anything?” the old king asked. “You can stand here and do what you’ve always done. But if you do what you’ve always done, then you will be where you’ve always been.” It was during those days that the moment of peaceful communion with the old king, understanding of the omens and following them, and her relationship with Allie, Kim, Ebony, Stacie, Michelle, and the prison staff sisters and the chaplain brought rebuking and encouraging lessons to the woman. The existence beyond the pond in various shades of colorful sun rays dancing on the mountaintops, in the pillar of clouds floating slowly across the sky, swiftly transforming from one image to the next, unknown to her mind at first, soon unveiled a picturesque promise. She delighted in the secret of her identity in him in the secret place, in the despised place. The imminent possibility in the promise beyond the pond inspired a serene courage inside. The woman sat in her cube for a few hours. She knew what she was hearing. As unsure as she was about what to do, it was something incredibly undeniable to obey. Prison was her now coming out of it—what she’d been trained, what she had been doing. No longer solely taking refuge in solitude with the king, she facilitated more relationships with other women in the camp. She changed her job from working in staff dining, dealing mainly with Alderson staff, to chapel worker to GED teacher aide to art instructor, dealing with prisoners. She was coming out of it. “Did you learn anything?” the old king asked again. He needed to converse with her so as to avoid her the possibility of falling into the spirit of Elijah—anointed

in depression and isolation. She considered herself like a rock climber in prison and was reminded of what was said about rock climbing and mountain biking, the sports she loved to do in college days. “Rock climber when standing at its base, the rock looms large. By studying its curves and crevices, its sediment, and its smoothness, it’s the only way to create new routes to the top. Without ropes or aids, a rock climber proves the perseverance and confidence are the drivers to break records, to gain new perspectives, to set one’s sights on future summits.” The woman went back to contemplating the silence of Alderson and the abusive power by the BOP. “Everyone has his or her own way of learning things,” she said to herself. “My prison may loom large at this moment. By understanding the omens, studying what prison life has to offer in this place, persevering, and facilitating relationship, like a rock climber, Alderson women and I shall soon create new routes to success, and there, a women’s summit may arise. She became convinced that Alderson was her workshop to facilitate relationships, to find her personal legacy.

*****

The intention of her Alderson stay was more obvious as time ed because she was no longer concerned with or having the urge just to search for a comfortable life and peaceful old age; it was a preparation of the woman in her. Certain that she would not be defeated by circumstance, the woman did not even take the trouble to put her plan together, but she set about discerning the omens among the now: the acrobatic life of culinary art in staff dining brought poetry, the despised janitorial job cleaning the broken sewage that caused feces to flood the chapel, facilitating a relationship with other women, sweeping spiderwebs under the black sidewalk handrails of the Hallelujah Hill, the unbridled pact of union between the old king and her in the least adequate place. The more and more dissatisfied circumstances deepened, the more enriched with a ion the old king moved her as two sweethearts simply being intimate in the field of violets. The old king and she began to love each other at an altitude of thousands of feet in the early morning air of the mountains, and they felt all the closer together as

the beings on earth grew more and more minute. She conversed day and night in her journey to the old king about her darkest and most painful city on earth and of the enormous female warehouse scented with corruptions of the master to break the rules, from which she longed to leave and not have to stay longer.

*****

“I’m still alive,” the woman said to a seventy-five-year-old Minnesotan elderly in the next cube while they played king in the corners and ate a bag of butter popcorn from commissary one typical weekend evening in the elderly woman’s cube after nine o’clock count, with no stars and no moon. “There’s no life in this place,” the elderly woman said. “Women tried to make a lot of detours, but the BOP held the same destination for us. It’s all about money for them. Nothing is going to change. When I am playing cards with you, that’s all I think about,” she responded. “I just concentrate on winning. If I have to live to fight, it will be just as good a day to die as any other. Most people are afraid of dying. I’m not.” “What are you afraid of?” “I’m afraid of not living. If I live a risk-free life, then I’m afraid that I don’t live. If I live in either my past or my future, then I don’t live. I’m interested mainly in the present. If I can master the present, I will be a happy woman. Because there’s life in the valley, there’re stars in the sky, and there’s corruption in the BOP. They are part of the human race. Life will be a favor for you, your personal legacy, because life is the moments we are living. We are having fun playing king in the corner now, right? Right. “Just think, we are queens in the corners in this place. No husband, no children, no domestic affairs to take care of,” jokingly the woman said to her elderly friend, and they both laughed. Although people had not died, the arrival to the place had brought on a radical

change in many women: dead to self at the most popular bookstore. Only sixtysix books in the entire store but they covered all women ever needed to know and to cope with their desert, and answered every confusion life had to offer. Alderson was a valley full of dry bones, which was still adrift at the mercy of God for they remained of the pasts whose annihilation had not taken place because they were still in a process of annihilation, consuming themselves from within, ending at every moment but never ending their endings. People had reached such extremes of spiritual inactivity because of the prison from within. In that Alderson, forgotten even by the birds, where the dust and the heat had become so strong that it was difficult to breathe, secluded by solitude, and the Word stood alone from the chapel, where it was almost impossible to sleep spiritually. It was a mad, indescribable ion. Her tremulous bones, with horror, turned in a state perpetual hunger for something bigger and better beyond her immediate reality.

Chapter Thirteen

The View

Oceanside where the best views are inside.

Fourth summer in Alderson…the woman awoke as the sun rose. There, in front of her, where the small stars had been the night before, was an endless field of fresh greenery and wild flowers, stretching across the entire back field of the Alderson upper compound. “I would be upbeat about the things I was hoping or writing, but often, time would in a fog and I’d open my eyes only to realize the days or even weeks had ed without much change living in prison,” said the woman, who had awakened early Saturday morning, sitting in the television room inside the A2 unit to write where there was hardly anybody in there. The women’s shrieks, her songs of agony would break out the same at five in the afternoon under the dark oak tree facing the mountain as at five in the morning inside A2. She told God what hurt her most was all the time that she and her husband had wasted. In the bewilderment of ion, she watched the ants devastating the yard, sating their prehistory hunger with the beams of the housing unit. She lost her sense of reality, the notion of time, the rhythm of daily habits while she penned with tears and died with laughter over her own “self”; she was becoming more and more absorbed and silent. She opened her eyes and dug deep into her soul, as she looked at the pictures of her husband and daughters in her hands, and understood that they were so close to each other that they preferred death to separation. She reread her husband’s calm, almost paternal letter with two whole pages devoted to a warning against trusting the fickleness of man’s heart and indiscernible faith and a final paragraph with unmistakable love and of a husband to his wife. It was such an unforeseen attitude that she felt humbled by the idea that she had given her husband the pretext that he had not been a man of great faith in order not to abandon her in her fate. Her husband bore her wrongs and pain

patiently and made an effort to show her that he could be as good a husband in adversity as in prosperity, and the daily needs of the family that besieged them when her last money ran out and she had to stay in Alderson created a bond of solidarity between them that was not as dazzling and heady as ion but that let them desire each other as much and be as happy as during their uproarious and salacious days. The images of her husband did not lose his good humor or his genius for erotic mischief and acquired the habit of sitting on the bench when he visited her in the visitation backyard, watching the children swinging playfully in a kind of wakeful and thoughtful siesta, and she would accompany him. Those times they would remain there in silence until visitation was over, opposite each other’s eyes, loving each other as much as in the scandalous days, and the uncertainty of the future made them turn their hearts to embrace and live every moment of the present. It brought the woman to pen her husband a letter of truths in which she repeated her love and said how anxious she was to see him and the children again, but at the same time, she itted as a design of fate the impossibility of being together without Alderson for the time, contrary to what they had anticipated and believed in total faith. When she thought of their memories, the woman saw her husband and her in the lost paradise of the deluge, exploring street corners for savory authentic food from Paris to Venice to Florence to Rome to Naples, playful splashing in the waters with their daughters by Pensacola Beach and the Pacific Ocean, riding adventurous rides of the Cape Cod Park of Disney World, and those memories revealed to her the truth that they had been happy together ever since they had had memory. Going deep into the memory, she ed the evening which she had the first date with her husband at a restaurant, and she told him that young woman was nobody’s child because she had been found floating from the Midwest to the West Coast and back to the Midwest all over major different cities, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Detroit, looking for the meaning of life through doors of education at University of Minnesota and California College of Podiatric Medicine, San Francisco, and somewhere down the road, she was lost in a relationship that she had no business to be in until she found a man named Jesus who rescued her from the unending misery, and he set her feet on a rock and made her walk like a deer. Her life had been changed since, and she could never go back living without Jesus. She told him then she believes it’s only worthwhile and possible to pursue a healthy life and relationship when the person knows Jesus. Although the version of her Jesus seemed new to him much different from what he had heard or known about, he did not have any information enabling him to replace with the true one. All that

he was sure of after examining all the possibilities was that Jesus was not a legend, a fairy tale, or a religion. He was inclined to believe that Jesus was someone worth to explore for himself and for the beginning of their new birthed relationship. That very moment, sitting across from each other at the restaurant table, she measured him with a curious look and sensed that it was enough for her to be sure that he and her existed for one another. Those memories and thoughts of her husband and daughter’s love and their waiting for her coming home gave Alderson a new look from the inside. Because love cast out fear and negative thoughts. The woman was quiet. She was at peace with the silence of Alderson, and she was hopeful just to look at the green field. She still had a long way to her good time date, and someday, this morning would just be a memory. But this was the present moment, the favor that she and the elderly friend had talked about, and she wanted to live it as she did the lessons of her past and her dreams of the future. Sometimes a message uttered to her in a place beneath her senses. It spoke in a way she couldn’t smell or expect or taste, with words she couldn’t hear with ears and with truth she didn’t see with eyes. Some called them God’s voice, the Holy Spirit, whatever people wished. She called them vision. She sat in the A2 television room and looked out the window across the bare green field that appeared before her. “A spectacular view of the oceanside where the best views are inside” by Fine Cabinetry Company Wood Mode, d inside Travel Magazine. Although looking at it from Alderson, the view was not a spectacular ocean view, she wanted to live the present moment where the best views are inside. Life speaks many languages, the woman thought. She did not want to miss views of the present and vision of the future. Because Alderson pointed her to God’s natural law of the second: “The spiritual is not the first but the natural, and afterward the spiritual” (1 Corinthians 15:46). Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Saul and David, Adam and Jesus, though the first born was gifted beyond measure, he came from the flesh, and destruction followed. But the second was of the spirit with blessing glory that lasts. The woman thought about the signs and omens left by God along her path in no contradiction to what he showed in the Bible. Alderson is the path of supernatural law of the second to him who believes, the

woman thought. God is the god of second chances, and all things work together for good to those who love him as it is written. She had surprised herself with the thought. Until then, she had considered prison to be her condemnation in the world. “We have a ion for our business. God has a ion for protecting and prospering it. It is this liberty reciprocal that births the Alderson view where the best views are inside,” she exclaimed, as she was leafing through the pages of a travel magazine.

Other Side of the Through

One day, the sky crumbled into A set of destructive storms That scattered roofs about And knocked down walls And uprooted every last plant Of “self” and what I’ve built, Tormented by grave doubts, Saw only dark clouds That barely permitted me To make out the shape of things, But there was one thing That I, myself, could not really define,

An inscription of a conception Or a grave dream. Overwhelmed by feelings of sorrow, Responsible for this grave dream That my careless words had been, I tried to walk in secret tears. Tears like the water came up to my ankle, He brought me through. The water came up to my knees, He brought me through. The water came up to my waist, Struggled to walk through Till the water to my head, It was like a river That I could not cross over, For the water was too deep. Then I heard a voice say, “Swim, I’ll make you a head swimmer In the river that could not be crossed. I’ll spread out my hand in your midst As a swimmer reaches out to swim,

And I will bring down your pride. Together, with the trickery of your hands, You shall flee through The mountain valley. Not your destination, But the preparation For the feast of choices pieces in darkness.” Alderson prison, immediate reality Come to be more than bearable. Nights of listening in the dark To other women’s despairing breathing. The dry cough of the elderly woman next cube, The buzz of the mosquitoes, The mournful moan of the mosquitoes, The mournful moan of the cancer woman at the bus stop, Her skin was sad, with the bones almost exposed. In consternation, many wandering souls That left a frozen echo inside of me. Tears of nostalgia salted my palate, Lying awake in solitude. God’s immense authority

Beyond all wisdom and knowledge. Beneath a place of my senses Came a rare sensibility, For appreciating the simple things of the world In the secret tenderness, To God, in his secret place, those nights Forever changing, forever changing me. Flee through the mountain valley. I consider all these in my heart, To everything there is a season. There’s a time to plant And a time to pluck what is planted. Emancipated, moment to moment, With precision, he has synchronized Each tear he collected in the bottle. Grew merry, the progressive chords Of obedient song until it reaches its climax. My life is an exact and unanimous, At a sharp complete waltz to him, the songwriter. Now through the gate of Alderson, No longer powerless.

Walking in Satan’s principle—rebellious. But by authority in the name, Obedient through the things which one suffers, No longer the same. Through this gate, I proceed by faith. Though I may appear to be blind For not noticing the bareness before me, Yet the eyes of faith Unlike the eyes of disobedience, Though are quite sharp. Alas, all they see is the wilderness. Sees the better promise which lies ahead. God shall fulfill his promise Before the imagined time. Go through, just go through the gate. Though you entered the gate as a desert, Through the gate, a prepared road will be, And a highway for the people. Though you entered the gate with stony heart, Through the gate, a meek heart, with stones replaced with jewel, You entered this gate as the forgotten ashes,

Through the gate, the beauty for ashes.

*****

The times steadily ed, and so did the prisoners as she watched new commits arriving at Alderson each week. People were greeting the new arrivals, dust obscured the mountain sun, and the children of the BOP were bursting with mixture of empathy, curiosity, and partly excitement at the arrival of the new commits and their returned prison friends—probation violators. The woman saw the camp ringleader greet new arrivals and conversed with them for a while. But none of that mattered to the woman. She had already seen many people come and go, and Alderson Camp remained as it was. She had seen drama queens and talented athletes walking the prison games. Alderson Camp rules were changed constantly by the wind of bureaucracy and politics of the BOP, yet these were the same rules she had known since she first arrived. She always enjoyed seeing the spiritual awakening that Alderson sojourners experienced when, after few days of mountain and sky, they first saw the talk of the chapel. Maybe as God created the desert so that man could appreciate the palm trees, and He created Alderson chapel so that women and thus one day, the church in the outside world, could be awakened, she thought. She decided to concentrate on more practical matters. What reality TV can teach politics, so does reality faith can teach marriage, revive family, and empower lives. From the start of prison journey, she had been dismissed as the “Reality show religionist.” It’s an easy jab: “The faith of a mustard seed spent a decade leading and planting church, she stumps with the kind of exaggerated faith that typifies the charismatic Christians, yet her faith has not been able to deliver her from prison.” The skeptics kept insisting that the people would see and not believe with her prison history, and why she felt the need to go to church in prison because if she did when she lived in the outside, she wouldn’t end up in prison. People are living in a “reality show kind of generation,” as some have put it. The emotion and hype about faith and the Holy Spirit of charismatic Christians of the here and now will subside. The history of reality show itself of almost two decades is much like Trump’s

politics, though they both were initially written off as a fad but they proved the establishment was wrong. Within a few years of reality TV history, every major network had launched an arsenal of reality hits, including Big Brother, Shark Tank, and American Idol according to Times Magazine. Months into his presidential run and four years into his presidency, the reality TV star-turnedreality politician-turned-reality president, Donald J. Trump, continued to top nearly every national and local polls as Trump’s campaign rolled on toward spring 2016 and continued to win for American people during his presidency. Reality show and President Trump both were about as real as people wanted to get. It turned out people are intrigued by the raw competition of reality show, just as they’re drawn to politicians who scoff at standard politics. The woman knew that in prison, there was the old king who was to teach her some of his secrets. The omens told her so. Much like reality show, Alderson would be her reality show of faith, as good as it gets, to her family, to the broken woman, and to the church on the outside once all was said and done. I don’t know why these things have to be transmitted by word of mouth, she thought. It wasn’t exactly that they were secrets; God revealed his secrets easily to all creatures. Each week, a new show of reality, Faith, was being produced through the path in Alderson; it was written from the chapel. As reality shows became commonplace, they redefined how people “acted” in life, not just on TV. People were under pressure to please the producers. She had only one explanation for this fact: reality faith hits are no different and have to be transmitted this way because they were made up from the pure life. Reality faith in Alderson also redefined how women “acted” in life, not just in the chapel. Instead of being under pressure to please the people, they were under pressure to please the producer of life, God. And this kind of life cannot be captured in pictures or words. The Language of the Universe is beyond pictures and words. As for the woman, she understood she was brought to prison for this very reason: to learn the Language of the Universe and live it to see it. Another reason the reality show business was so popular was it was embracing on “confessional” instead of “professional,” the woman thought, as she scanned the Bible verse:

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all Unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). In that vein, it was never probable that women with reality faith would subside out of prison. If anything, faith rising from a place of brokenness and hardship would mark the start of a new normal, in which reality faith was rewarded for being the biggest possible reality ever, walking on the water in the storm as walking on earth. In a nutshell, prison would be a place of importance for being little, for the all power to be revealed through faith because God is real. God still exists in Alderson. “Good fortune deceives, but bad fortune enlightens” (Anicius Boethius, Christian philosopher, poet, and politician, 480–524).

*****

A life full of wants is a life empty of needs, which the woman saw from the Alderson window. Three years ago, she had moved from a two-story colonial home in suburb of Detroit to the brick wall building inside a small captive town, Alderson of West Virginia, of about eighteen hundred females clustering all together, and the view depressed her eyes. She had learned to take up her position on the rock, where she could keep an eye on the trees outside, the mountains surrounding her. Sometimes squirrels approached for a face-off at her feet. In the new place, the window across her cube looked into nothing but sky and distant shadows. She stopped bothering to look. She thought of that nearsighted captive when her mind revisited her San Francisco residential high-rise and skyscraper surroundings during her medical school days and took in its imperial panorama. Gazing through the early morning sun lying low in the pregnant sky, the eye drifted to the vague horizon. The mood of the day remained uncertain. In urban life, the loftiest perches made it possible to watch thousands of individuals flyspecking the sidewalks while at

the same time learning nothing about them. The hyper wealthy lived so high that they could hardly see anything at all. Here, the rest of the female prisoners had less omniscient, more ultimate, sometimes downright peculiar views of life. Women watched engers on the back hill of the compound arcing aimlessly past their windows or stared out at the ultra-quiet West Virginian mountains early morning. Hopeless Alderson dwellers looked out to see a parade of feet. Plenty of women faced nothing but a brick wall in the place, and maybe, some only used that surface as a screen on which to project an escapist fantasy. But even ordinary, confined views could give people a sense of belonging. Through their particular rectangles of the outside, Alderson people got to know which women ran late for programming to the buildings that stood a few yards from their housing unit, the health service unit, the recreation building, and the chapel. They noticed when the unit team across the hall had regional visitors or whether a neighbor on the other side of the cube had gotten the news of her halfway house date back. They started to see the rough poetry in two o’clock fire drills on a twenty-degree Fahrenheit morning, a visitation strip search, or ascending a forty-five-degree steep Hallelujah Hill under the desert sun—all the Alderson musculature that generally accepted as status quo. With the bird’s-eye view prison life shot on the mountain, she used writing and poetry to establish the nowness of Alderson, with security gate or without, before or after the griddled pencil case of a free bird soaring the sky. But more modest views, too, instilled the real-life sense that every status quo was provisional. A few scenes were effectively permanent. If a person looks out onto her life in Alderson, it’s like looking out onto the Central Park in New York; it’s probably not going anywhere. But most things evolve. In urban living, a tower went up a few blocks away, and Grandma couldn’t grow Asian red pepper plant at her windowsill anymore. A children’s hospital went up to darken her studio. The graffiti people, love or loathe them, came and went with the neighbor’s fortunes. The streetlight outside his bedroom suddenly acquired an intrusive LED glare. While in her life in parking at Alderson, a tower of trouble at home minus her, five hundred miles away, grew more and more, and she could hardly do anything about it. Every day, the growing evidences of the rigged Bureau of Prisons, Department of Justice (DOJ), and judicial system, designed to protect and favor the federal government over the common public, went up and darkened her vision and hope of early release

through appeal process or new Prison Reformed Law ed by Congress. Occluded views can feel imprisoning. The woman was assigned a place far from home, five hundred miles away, in a female warehouse with about eighteen hundred other women. In a small Bible study group in the TV room in A2 range with five friends in their thirties, people of the valley of dry bones, they clustered to hear each other’s stories about their valleys. The woman saw to it that looking out a bottom-floor window means being acutely aware of all that lies outside the frame. It’s only the cloud people, enjoying their Olympian vistas that have no idea what they’re missing. “Though I cherish every lumen of daylight and foot elevation of life I can manage,” she said, as she shared with her Bible group, “I make do with shadowed prison close-ups that are as various as lives of the Bible crews.” “I need to find out which life of the Bible crew I am,” said the thirty-year-old Ebony, whose dream was to own a food truck after she left prison. The woman didn’t want to tell others about her feeling being at the oasis. She was sort of feeling the need not to be buried by high-rises, buildings, and “revolving door” life on the outside. So what did the woman see from the Alderson window? Usually the best views are from the top, but she thought of the Manhattan Bridge, known to have its most spectacular view at its base, where it is said, “Nothing drives home the monumentality of the Manhattan Bridge more than being this close to its base.” At the base for a few years of sitting in the beneath of the beneath, prison, slowly she learned everything reversed at the moment of death, and the Language of the Universe became ever more visible, a realism that spoke to her in a place beneath her senses, beyond the three dimensions. Call it omens, revelation, vision, or spiritual experience, whatever people wish. Her nonbeliever extended family or those Doubting Thomas Christians called it a dream and declared her a dreamer. But…she called it a spectacular view! A spectacular view of the Language of the Universe was visible and outstretched

between circumstances to circumstances and chapters to chapters of life. In the middle of walking through the other side relentlessly, in realizing her personal legacy, the reality of faith, her rock bottom became the solid rock on which she stood. Prison, her rock bottom, turned into stepping stones for the book. Because when someone was in such pursuit, the entire universe made an effort to help him succeed—that’s the secret the old king taught her. He couldn’t have been wrong.

Chapter Fourteen

Living Gift

Legends aren’t born. They are engineered. —Nissan

Several women dressed in tan khaki uniforms came to the chapel to work, in scattered clusters between the small worship room, the chapel library, and the main sanctuary, like they had come to the well for water. Some thirsted for the water to the dry soul so they would spend the “do-nothing time” to read the scriptures and some for the gossips, “inmate.com,” and some to sit around, hoping that time would slip away quickly to the day they could walk out the gate and never have to look back. The woman would speak to none of them but kept writing in resisting growing old or being crushed. In spite of time, of the superimposed periods of mourning and her accumulated afflictions yet not without grace and his friendship in the midst. Then a middle-aged Caucasian woman approached. “How do you stay within yourself in peace and write in this pandemonium?” the middle-aged Caucasian woman, Ms. Brueners, who lived a few cubes away from hers in A2 range, asked curiously. “God cures our problems,” said the woman, clearly inconvincible to the middleaged woman. “I’m looking for him. If such God is here at this place, he must be the powerful one and stop all the madness of the place,” said Ms. Brueners. ‘As long as God gives me life,” the woman said, “there will always be testimony and penning in this mad shack.”

God found and gave each one the gift of instinct developing in the shack of the captured town, especially in the most abject ones, and he would make her materialize the smell of dry blood of the wicked, humanistic heart on the bandages of materialism and religion, which covered the wound of broken souls, in the instantaneous terror of the danger of death in the spirit, into active penning at all times and in all places. Her ion for immediate release had been extinguished as writing took its root in the shack without leaving any scars. “What are you writing?” asked Ms. Brueners after being silent for a few moments. “Would you like to hear it?” the woman responded. “Sure, if you don’t mind. I have all the time in the world to wait for this war to end.” Instead of shying away from people or giving a lengthy testimony about God, she began reading her writing to Ms. Brueners, who without anticipation let herself be saturated with the soft feeling of relaxation. She felt the spirit of ease slip in under the words as if they were her own personally, and she could not repress her cold sweat and the chattering of her teeth when she realized every word seemed as if they were her own footprints in Alderson. “These are exactly how I feel,” Ms. Brueners whispered, suffocating with consternation. “I just don’t know how to express them in writing.” The middleaged Caucasian woman had been real devastated by prison that she had fled from her reality by sleeping her way through Alderson every day, except during programming, in an attempt to wipe away her grave memory, not only through time but by means of a muddled appetite which she thought to be unhealthy, but the more her grave memory wallowed in the dung hill of her internal war, the more the war resembled her reality. That was how Ms. Brueners suffered in exile, looking for a way of killing her grief with her own sleep. She became melancholy and withdrawn. A month into suddenly facilitating a relationship with one another during programming in the chapel and living in the same A2 unit, Ms. Brueners had made a supernatural effort not to sleep her life away. She managed to praise God for having been born before she lost herself in the inconceivable depth of the unbearable pain of Alderson, splashing a smile on her face with a glow which

absorbed the light from the spirit. She was an intelligent, successful home healthcare owner with a master’s degree in business istration and doing her five years for non-violent white-collar crime. She had always been studying the scriptures, reading countless Christian inspirational books and novels, but she still appeared in agony and scarcity of her personal legacy until one day, she facilitated relationship with the church in the chapel, and she began to show signs of progress, a more alive person. Ms. Brueners taught the woman how to be a friend and entertain strangers, including the hypocrite, and to grow her womanhood through their friendship. At this moment, it looked clear to her that there was still life in Alderson, and the Soul of the Universe surged within her. She was relieved at least her prison life was God’s will and not hers. Despite the fact that Alderson had reach its highest level of madness and many prisoners had satisfied themselves by wearing their masks by day to impress the prison staff and much roaring by night to provoke one another in delirium, lust, pride, and rebelliousness, the place still enriched the woman with the gifted female’s world from all walks of life. The shack was God’s path to simple realities and stripping away the essential. It was astounding to watch how prisoners would turn ordinary dead branches and leaves on the ground, toilet paper, and shredded papers with just glitter and glue into gorgeous Christmas wreaths and lively holiday decorations; thrown-away carton boxes, cardboard, cotton balls, zip ties, trash bags, and paint into props for Good Friday skits, “Alderson Got Talent Show,” and Christmas plays. In such time of darkness, women looked into each other’s eyes and saw that their lips were poised between laugh and silence, prayer and keeping mum; they learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke—the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love.

*****

Having crossed the wilderness after having confused grief with the vehement stroking of prison, she found a virtuosity in waiting. Not pushing the feelings nor following the emotions, letting herself be engineered along Alderson by the natural flow of time, she reached a point where all that was left to do was eat, sleep, relax, read, and repeat. Prison, with the hidden display of talented gifts

among women, became a melodic oasis where one could forget the government’s arbitrary acts and the inmates’ distant nightmare of the criminal pasts. Darkness woke a kind of reality caused by the unity in brokenness that was worth more than this world and led one to find that no other person on earth could have done this except he who is love. What the woman felt during those days was that she was in the presence of the only man in her life and that with no need for words, he recognized the same thing. She was more certain of it than of anything in the world. Imive, without even worrying about making a show of anything, she listened to the interminable voice silently behind all the noises of prison. She thought that her husband at that hour must have been in bed by the children and lonesome. She thought about her preteen daughter, who went through few years without a mother, and by now, her little nine-year-old daughter still prayed every night, believing in miracle that her mother would come home the next day. She found the formality of conviction ridiculous. The felony history no longer mattered to her, but living did, and therefore the sensation she felt of being in Alderson now was not a feeling of fear but of nostalgia. She was exasperated by the interminable nights of loud, boastful, and vulgar conversations, which puffed up with human knowledge and wisdom among the women whose obnoxious loudness was their way to popularity and leadership and creativity that added music to life of the modern-day culture. The woman determined to facilitate friendship, and that was certainly God’s purpose—the omen she had been searching for, without even knowing she was, for all her life. She thought about Alderson women without sentimentality, with a strict closing of her with life, beginning to understand how much she really loved the people she hated most. Actually, she was not a creature of this world because her nature rejected all manner of convention. She became a physician not because she knew what she wanted but because she knew what she did not want to do, a nine-to-five job working on computer or numbers for the rest of her life as an engineer or computer scientist. What interested her, whether her five dollars, twenty-five cents, or a ninety-nine-dollars-a-month prison job, was the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes the gift and has a purpose for every person in the world. Without such purpose, one’s works would fulfill no satisfaction. It is all written, thought the woman.

The implacable following of omens awarded her with peace in the soul. Taciturn, silent, insensible to the new breath of vitality that was roaming for prey in her housing unit and around the compound, she could understand only that the secret of growing with grace is simply an honorable pact with solitude. Seeking the Wisdom of Solomon, she would read the black leather book of the law in her hands at five thirty in the morning in her top bunk as long as the silence of the dawn would allow her. No one dared to disturb her solitude except cling, cling, cling, the rattling metal sound as the keys and chains of the correctional officers ing the cubes for unofficial, non-standing five o’clock morning count as if they wanted to remind her that she was the caged bird. The main focus for the woman was to resist growing weary. She began to lose her sight, not that it was a matter of debility, but quite soon, she began to realize that because she was sinking into the irrevocable darkness of expectation after expectation of prayers answered only to received blow after blow with rejections to a point where she never had a clear notion of the usefulness of the eyes, for when they put in the information she was only able to perceive the blurry glow of future or the frightful days ahead, which caused her to stop going further. She did not tell anyone about it because it would have been a public recognition of her usefulness. She concentrated on a silent schooling in the distances of things and people’s voices so that she would still able to see with her memory the shadows of her sight which were blinded by fear. Later on, she was to discover the unforeseen help of odors, which were defined in the shadows with a strength that was much more convincing than that of the bulk of color and which saved her finally from the shame of itting defeat. She knew when the heat of a place was about to boil. She knew with so much certainty the time and the purpose of everything that she herself forgot that her sight was paralyzed by defeat. Quite simply, while other prisoners were going carelessly about, she watched them with her four senses so that they never took her by surprise, and after some time, she discovered that many women in prison community, without realizing it, repeated the same path every day, the same actions, and almost the same words at the same hour. Only when they deviated from the meticulous routine did they run the chance of seeing something; otherwise, they looked for it in vain along the paths of their everyday itinerary without knowing their gift was hindered by routine habits, and that was why it was so difficult to see them. She was sure that her sight paralyzed her vision. And she did not know her vision until there was no going back. Alderson was a peculiar place by men but a legend manufactured by God where women were engineered to find their personal legend.

Chapter Fifteen

Derangement Syndrome and the Lizard Brain

Guilty by association and guilty until proven innocent, two simple criteria for conviction of a conspiracy charge and to serving federal prison time. Interestingly, these same conspiracy laws do not apply to federal government; otherwise, most congressmen and congresswomen will serve time for conspiracy to bribery and receive kickback from their lobbyists and from the top 1 percent wealthy. The conspiracy laws required to convict common public and private citizens require a much lower standard than those required to convict the federal government. Here’s the pattern. The federal prosecutor says something that’s edgy and outrageous out of proportions to feed the government’s narrative, the media flocks and covers that, the public buys into it, and all of a sudden, everyone is guilty until proven innocent. The government plays stereotype victimization games. The government, with the help from the mainstream media, fixed on the narrative and hype of Federal Anti-Healthcare Fraud and Abuse effort and sensationalized how taxpayers’ money is being wasted and taken by the greedy white-collar doctors, nurses, therapists, and entrepreneurs in the health care industry, which were true in most convicted cases, making the public have biaseyed distrust, even as far as maybe being angry toward the healthcare profession and workers. This means that the government and the media didn’t talk about three other important facts: (1) the relative small statistic of healthcare fraud and abuse cases in proportion to a very large population of healthcare providers and healthcare businesses nationwide, (2) the substance and nature of healthcare practices that made the providers vulnerable prey and victims to the fraudsters because of the complicated complex healthcare rules and regulations that doctors were not taught in medical school but only after years into their practice and came down with the charge by the government one day, and (3) an insurmountable amount loss of taxpayers’ money in fraud and abuse by the

federal prosecutors with unlimited power and resources to investigate and convict just about anyone the government set her eye on; it is said that federal prosecutors can even convict a chair if they want to. Suffering from the government’s derangement syndrome, the woman began operating out of the lizard brain—a common phrase for the ancient knob of reflexive lower-brain structures perched atop human’s spinal cord—rather than her frontal lobe, which is where thought and reason take place. The lizard brain, or a small, primitive brain also called the hypothalamus, operates out of the unconscious mind, not the conscious mind. Unlike the lizard brain, the frontal brain operates out of the conscious mind and is highly adored and praised as intelligent by the Silicon Valley, the New Yorkers, the Californians, the Hollywood, and the mainstream media while the lizard brain is mocked and laughed at. Looking from the eye of creation science, however, Adam and Eve brought destruction to mankind began by operating out of the frontal lobe, logic and reason wanting to have power like the creator knowing all lead to a battle of the mind—sins, depression, anxiety, entitlement, victimization, pride. Satan knows exactly what he’s doing by inciting humanistic freedom and thinking into the conscious mind of the frontal brain and deceiving people in believing these are the major roads to success, fame, and power of the modern day. His policy ignorance is the strategy. Every position Satan takes is craftily calibrated to elicit a reflexive response from people. His campaign is to spread fears that have existed since the beginning of the creation. Fear of being an outcast, fear of being behind, fear of not knowing. He has a canny ability to find the perfect brickbat to throw at people’s identity, causing insecurity and selfdoubt. Satan, Father of Lies, is the perfect example of operating out of the frontal brain, logic and reason of politics, and fake news seen in the dishonest mainstream media. The mainstream media sensationalized the news with deceitful headlines, often mastering their white lies with pundits’ opinions, the so-called “expert” of the issue, taking half true facts and presenting them out of context to spread their propagandized narrative against those they dislike. They sowed discourse, fear, and hatred and caused divisiveness among the people. Satan, a perfect campaign for low morality and liberal television and low creditability, reality TV news media. The outrageous is more fun than the substance or sobriety, and it brings more rating. Outrageous, sensational, deceitful headlines masking as truth and reality that improve the rating, the one true currency in the desperately

competitive world hungry for broadcasting and publicity. Another frontal brain operation in the world of advertising, for example: “Marry me sounds so much better than just Merry Christmas,” by De Beers Group of Companies d for its trademark, A Diamond Is Forever. This is another prime example of derangement syndrome in the world relying solely frontal brain operation in which the whole notion of the ads was deceiving and further from truth than ever. Marriage longevity continues to decline, and divorce rate continues to climb as the twenty-first century is approaching. People are becoming more and more interested in cohabitation than traditional marriage. According to some studies, it was stated, “Researchers have long known that married couples tend to live longer and be healthier than their single peers. But while a good marriage is good for hearts, it takes work.” Humanistic freedom of self, I, me, in individual right and humanistic equality, in which all parts of the frontal brain operation have caused people whose marriages are ambivalent to be more likely to divorce rather than work out their marriage. Today, “A Diamond Is Forever,” but “Marry Me” is no longer valued to be forever as it once was. “Merry Christmas,” however, is everlasting. Christmas, December 25, was first recorded and celebrated in year 336 during the time of Roman Emperor Constantine, and since, Christmas has been celebrated by people around the world, whether they are Christians or not. It’s a time when family and friends come together and the good things they have. It’s a time to share love and when people give and receive gifts. The true gift of Christmas is God himself given unto man through his only Son, Jesus, so the universe can have joy, hope, and love in this life as it is in heaven amidst quarrels, fights, war, social injustice and discrimination, corruption—all the darkness of the world caused by sins of man. This understanding could only come by the lizard brain operation, which is later confirmed by the frontal brain operation. No wrong, no suffering, no depth, no height, no death, no prison, no sin, not even people’s rejection of God—there is nothing man can do to separate his love or break his promise that he has for them. A true definition of “forever.” “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in

Christ Jesus our Lord” (Roman 8:38–39). Today’s perceptive culture tried to replace “Merry Christmas” with “Marry Me.” The government replaced “Merry Christmas” with manmade “Happy Holidays.” A culture of temporal replacement—things that last for things that are temporary. Unlike “Marry Me” and “Happy Holidays,” in which pleasure and happiness come for a moment, in “Merry Christmas” there is the cross that paid, there is the crown of life to people who love and receive the reason for the season, and there is the implanted Language of the World that is able to save souls and deliver lives, and the joy that comes from within with the lasting moment to moment, time to time, and ever to ever. And this knowledge is a product of meekness and the subconscious mind out of the lizard brain, not the frontal brain. Because with flesh and blood, no one would call Jesus the Christ and God except by the spirit within. “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to us, but our Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 16:17). With flesh and blood, the Jews, God’s chosen people, put Jesus to death on the cross. With flesh and blood, there was holy war. With flesh and blood, there are so many religions in the world. But only from the heart and what comes from within, the spirit, can tell one that Jesus is Lord, and therefore embrace and celebrate “Merry Christmas” instead of oppressing, suppressing it. How canny the lizard brain has been about marrying moral urgency to spiritual reflection and unveiling hidden wisdom, the mystery of truth as foundation for stability which stands forever. Whatever is not true, though, may be more popular, more hyped, and seem winning, but it will be like flowers of the field that fade at the end. Never mind the Robin Hood cultural glitz by the big government. The government has spent about thirty-one thousand dollars per inmate in Alderson a year, taxpayers’ money, for overincarceration of people in a federal prison that is privately owned. There were also millions of millions of taxpayers’ dollars being vested in federal prosecutors in the Department of Justice, the FBI, and other federal agencies to investigate and crack down healthcare fraud and abuse in an outrageously biased, unfair, overpowered, sweeping manner, and which conspired writ and plea with the crooked by the federal government. There is

giant power abuse with almost unlimited resources in using taxpayers’ money by the federal government for criminal investigation under the current federal laws, rules, and regulations. So much for the government derangement syndrome; her frontal lobe began ailing and adding a little “safari” to her Alderson vacation; she operated more out of the lizard brain. Thoughts and reasons seemed to not make sense, how she was so blinded in pride to the point that she was ordered to prison for five years and how the Alderson vacation turned misery to memorable to unforgettable as she traveled and explored untouched landscapes of the soul and learned the language without words, the Language of the World in search of a wild, majestic vision—her personal legacy. From guided yard walks throughout the camp surrounded by roaring mountains, hunger for the lost to open vehicle drives of the soul, the prison became a safari for jungle animals to develop their instincts, each at their own pace to survive, just one of the big life experiences the woman simply could not forget. This happens when the frontal brain is brutalized and catching fire at every tract, the corner of thoughts and reasoning, then it surrenders, and the lizard brain, the hypothalamus that controls the autonomous nervous system (unconscious), the headquarters of all CEO organs in the body—the heart (heartbeat), lungs (breathing), stomach (digestive), and blood vessels (nutrients and body temperature)—continues operating under control of the Supreme Power beyond the conscious mind and human control. Ironically, Alderson became an island for many women to surround themselves with the things that matter most. The woman sat there by the softball field for a long time, ing that one day during medical residency in Detroit, a coresident brought to the lost soul the book of history of man, realizing that the old king had loved her before she even knew he existed. Discovering your main things begins here where to find yourself is Me, the I Am, God, the old king told her then. Now sitting in the most despised place where BOP and government derangement syndrome was rampant, her frontal brain was no longer useful, and she began operating out of the lizard brain. Discovering your main things begins here where to find yourself is Me, the I Am, God. She knew that her love for him would enable her to discover every treasure in the world, including treasure in the darkness. The next day, the woman continued her voyage, writing!

Chapter Sixteen

Voyages

Watching the summit of West Virginian Mountains in the rain, the fog, the snow, the golden rays under so many different colors in the sky in one day. The insipient deep orange peeping behind a thick mute cloud hugging the dews and the violet blue of an early sunrise. The caressing into burning, dancing orange rays of the noon day to the fiery red quietly kissing the redeeming violet as the sky says goodbye into the night. Days ed. The temptation to overlook the adventures and rather focus on the destination, bringing about mumbling and grumbling about the place and doubting God’s purpose, was always there. The woman returned to the pretty spot with her middle-aged Caucasian friend, looking out the gate. “I waited each day and all afternoon and all evening,” she said to her friend. He appeared with the first shooting stars of evening while a few friends and I were moon bathing. I told him what I was seeking, and he asked me if I had ever transformed living to adventures. I told him that was what I came here to learn. He told me I should try to do so. These are what he said: “Go and try. Wrap around the place and not just the other side.” Her middle-aged friend didn’t say anything. The poor woman and her friend had asked the old king to deliver them out of the place all this time, only to be told that they should repeat what they have been doing. As the woman sat at the pretty spot, leafing through different magazines and thinking what staff dining menu she should prepare for next week, Holland America Line ads jumped out at her, “Delightful adventures are accompanied by inspired culinary experiences. A journey of the palate with innovative cuisine

and fine wines. Explore hands-on cooking demonstration in Culinary Art Center. Every delicious encounter recharges the soul for the voyage ahead.” The woman turned to her friend, as she got a revelation out of the ads. “I’m going to wait for him here every day. I have lived on this mountain in search of a treasure that is promised in the darkness, and for me, prison seemed a curse. But now it’s a blessing, because it brought me to adventures with the king and writing.” “Our battle will come to an end one day,” said the middle-aged friend. The woman looked around them toward the gate. She reminded herself that she had been a physician and that she would be a physician again. Adventures with the king were more important than her release home. She was determined that prison would not stop her from experiencing adventures accompanying by the inspired, powerful word. A journey of the lizard brain and the “spiritual” palate with uncorrupted powerful Word through the mouth of volunteer prophets and ministers that were like fine wines from God’s culinary art center, the chapel. “Surely, with every meal I encounter in the chapel and on this mountain, my soul is recharged for the voyage ahead,” said the woman to her middle-aged friend. “You are always in search of the positive,” the middle-aged friend said, as she had doubted what the woman was saying. “And this place is full of crooks, both prisoners and prison staff.” The woman put away her magazines in her gray mesh tote, and they both got up and headed back to A2 range, getting ready for the four o’clock official standing count before dinner.

*****

The woman wished she would be allowed to have a camera for a photo essay of a voyage—an adventure where she met living faith, hidden riches in a secret

place. She wrote a bit about Alderson and did a bit of other writing, poetry and politics. And she stumbled into a surprise: the majority of her time flew by as she went into absorbing the voyage taking photographs by a pen, in all weather and at all elevations across prison life, the mountain valley of Alderson, thinking with the pen about the place around her. The drama in these landscapes and atmosphere was real, from both the prisoners and prisoner staff’s world, and seemed almost to demand a response from the writer. The woman went to the pretty spot every day to meet with the mountains and the horizon. She told them about her life as a traveler, about the old king’s promise, and about her family’s need of a supernatural hand of provision and protection. They became friends, and except for the times she spent with them, each day seemed that it would never . The people went back to where others had gone and lived by Alderson activities, hanging out in Alderson’s gay bar (recreation center), playing cards and board games and watching TV in the housing unit, walking and jogging on the tracks of upper and lower compound, or sleeping their way to the release date as much as they could in their cube. The woman scanned the horizon, sniffed the air, and listened to the sound of rocks and meadows and briskly mountain wind, and thought the wind was freer here than the wind in the skyscrapers and the high-rise buildings on the outside. “Travelers tend to go where other travelers have gone, and perhaps this is part of the reason travel photography remains enthralling to the typical,” recalled the woman as she had read about travel photography in the New York Times travel section. This doesn’t mean the world is uninteresting, she thought. It only means that the world is more uniform than photo essays acknowledge and that a lot of travelers rely on an easy essentialism. Italo Calvino, an Italian journalist and writer, had suggested that people in the world live in one giant continuous city that does not begin or end; only the name of the airport changes. What is then interesting is to find, in that continuity, the less obvious differences of texture: the signs, the markings, the assemblages, the things hiding in plain sight in each cityscape or landscape. This is the mystery in the builder, the hidden wisdom of the one who created in which that outstanding travel photographers are able to capture, and it is the target the rest of the world chases. The woman saw to it that the writing instrument would be the lens for her to

capture the travel photography of Alderson prison without being enthralled to the typical oppression and condemnation. The question she confronted in prison was similar to that confronted by any prisoners in a great landscape of an oppressed captured town by man and a great landscape of the Soul of the Universe by the Creator: Does my story convey an experience that others have already captured so well? I might feel myself to be a singular traveler, but I am in fact part of a great, endless horde. The woman rose up early many weekend mornings, jettisoning the luxury of exercise for the luxury of horizon gazing free from busy wife and mother duties, and took many pictures of slopes and summits, the horde, in the rain, in the fog, by memory only to later take a voyage with her companion, the pen. She knew, even then, that those images would not necessarily play a central role in her search for her personal legacy. She considered them, instead, small installments on a debt to beauty, a relief from having to follow the horde. But beyond the prison mountain (this Alderson Camp became clear for her) lay a smaller desert, ordinary land. Alderson took women and wife, mother and grandmother, daughter and granddaughter from the society, and people didn’t always return after a long time. They were used to it. Those who didn’t return for a long time became a part of the desert, a part of the animals that survive in the heat of the burning sand and of the clouds that water the earth. They became a part of everything…they became the Soul of the Universe. Having opened herself to the sublime experience of the mountains and horizons and the demoralizing experience from the BOP surrounding Alderson, it was to this the woman turned as she got deeper into her voyage. The woman was proud of that. She wanted to wander as free as the wind that shapes the cloud. And if she had to, she would accept the fact that she had become a part of the horde in tan and brown khaki uniforms and the animals and the clouds and the water of the desert. Prison was the door, but what lay beyond or below? It remained the secret of the old king to be revealed…

Chapter Seventeen

Common Prick of Pain

The woman was standing on the hilltop of the upper compound, looking northeast toward the gate, watching women entering and leaving Alderson and a group of crowd wandering in the place. What a captured town with an endless horde lost in the translation entering the place ever since before the imagined time, she thought. Alderson was a town that was unknown to the living until death truly arrived and marked it with a small red dot on the motley maps of rehabilitation. At Alderson, often women conversed with one another while walking around the camp until twilight. A few hours after worn out by the vigil, one middle-aged woman asked her companion who was walking up the Hallelujah Hill, “What day is today?” Her companion told her that it was Tuesday. The middle-aged woman looked at the sky, the buildings, and the oak trees, and said, “Today is Monday too.” On the next day, Wednesday, the middle-aged woman carried her commissary bag up the Hallelujah Hill. “This is a disaster, a waste of time,” she said. “Look at the air, listen to the heat of the sun, the same as yesterday and the day before. Today is Monday too.” The middle age woman spent hours examining things, trying to find a difference from the appearance on the previous day in the hope of discovering in them some change that would reveal the age of time. On Friday, before anyone arose, she watched the appearance of nature again until she did not have the slightest doubt but that it was Monday and that every day was just the same as yesterday in this place and her time was wasted here. She became depressed. There was other prisoner who spent the whole night in bed with eyes open,

calling to her late mother, grandmother, Muhammad, to all the dead so that they would share her distress. But no one came. The woman found herself sitting on her top bunk, weeping for whom, what, and why she did not really know, for all she could was a sense of a culture of aloneness in the death of the world. She found herself wondering what was happening behind the closed curtains of those hearts. She was afraid to approach women along the paths in the camp or just knock on the door of their hearts in the neighborhood all over the captured town for they shared very different life languages. It was not very easy. She could not take photographs of the captured town either. No camera was allowed inside the government property. She kept feeling their spirits knocking on her spirit, so she started intentionally following their trail, visiting places they went, thinking they might see the same things she was seeing. Her work was rooted in visualizing the age of time. Without the common language of life, they were unable to interact in a different way; it was another way of communication. There was a new kind of adventure in the women’s world on the mountain; she could see it was a wild journey to Alderson, West Virginia, from Michigan. She wandered for a while from around the upper compound to the lower compound and back to upper compound. People in the captured town thought that her mind was wandering aimlessly, especially since the time the woman had begun walking about the camp with her arms raised like Archangel Gabriel. Her middle-aged friend, Mrs. Akgabor, realized that there was a sun of clairvoyance in the shadows of that wandering, for they enjoyed the revelations and stories they shared as the woman read her writing to her friend, and Mrs. Akgabor would feed her back with criticism and with the Wisdom of Solomon. The reciprocal friendship restored their former joviality, and the pleasure of being with each other kept them from their dissipation. As she kept discerning the omens and following them, the woman listened to the wind and felt the grass beneath her feet. She sat on a rock and allowed herself to become hypnotized by the mountain. She tried to deal with the concept of vision as inseparable from provision. As she sat there thinking, she sensed motion above her. Looking up, she saw a pair of black ravens soaring in the sky. She watched the ravens as they glided on the wind. Although their path appeared to be aimless, it became clear to the woman. The ravens felt the current and didn’t go against it. They followed it. They kept circling the sky. It was just that

she couldn’t grasp what it meant. She followed the movement of the birds, hoping with the guide from above she would be able to read something into it. She felt an urge in her heart. She wanted to remain awake with the mountains, the horizon, and the ravens for as long as moments allowed. “I am learning the Soul of the Universe, and everything through this mountain is beginning to make sense to me…even the circling of the ravens,” she said to the old king. And in that sentiment, she was grateful to be alive. When you are in nothingness, simple things become more appreciative to you, she thought. When you are in the dark, the only thing you see is light. Suddenly, the golden rays descended graciously, piercing through the sky and baptizing the mountain. As they did, a sudden fleeting image came to the woman: a thick wood, speaking only in hushed tones, allowing the redwoods to tell the stories, a walking pilgrimage into the oasis. The vision vanished quickly, but it had awakened her to a reality. She had heard people speak of a blind man, John Muir, who was a visionary, the founding father of famous national parks Yosemite and Muir Wood, and she had already seen Muir Wood National Park herself. How could a blind man see the beauty of God’s mountains and became the founder of the place? When one sense is lost, other senses multiply. She thought of John Muir’s famous quote, “John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God’s Mountain.” The woman became certain that although she didn’t desire to be in Alderson prison, she was to be baptized by his presence in the West Virginian mountains. She wanted to think about the vision. She ed the old king’s advice to her since the day Alderson began, “Always heed the omens.” She recalled what she had seen in the vision and that it was actually going to help her seize it. She rose and tried to concentrate on the burning of far orange rays rolling on the horizon. They would do this sometimes, chase the people then descend and surround them with a dark night. Once again, she perceived the many languages in the things about the place: this time, the image of the final moment’s goodbye to Mrs. Comfort, the religious assistant who was retiring, appeared fresh and alive in her. “Stay strong. Continue seeking him with revelation and vision, will you?” Those were Mrs. Comfort’s final words to her before entering the black 2016 Grand Cherokee SUV parking in front of the chapel. The woman tried to look up toward the mountains so the gravity wouldn’t pull the moisture in her

eyes down the cheeks. “Promise me. Will you do it for me? Uh…not for me. Will you do it for him?” She nodded in silence. The woman watched her friend from the other side of the gate drive off in her black SUV, disappearing like a horseman who was leaving town, galloping off in a mute cloud of dust. The pain and the mountain fill people’s hearts with vision, the woman thought. She learned that any given thing on the face of the earth could reveal the omens or the history of all things. One could find a connection with his experience of the moment. It wasn’t superstitious to think that those things themselves had any magic to reveal anything at all; it was just that people, looking at what was occurring around them, could learn to understand the language without words and find a means of penetration to the Soul of the Universe. In the secluded mountain living, Alderson was full of women who earned their living based on the ease with which they could penetrate to the realism of the scriptures. Everyone has their own Goliath to face, the giant that is impossible to defeat. A giant that has control over their life. It would be impossible to be effective in battle if one knew that she was fated to die. But those who could penetrate to the Soul of the Universe would understand that wherever there is Goliath, there’s David. And Alderson women were engineered to be little David. The woman preferred the taste of the battle of Goliath and the thrill of knowing when you see the giant you are at the gate, and what the outcome would be; the future was already written by one hand, and whatever the hand had written was always for the good of men. The woman understood whatever the old king had at her gate, she had no time to negotiate. She was brought on the mountain to kill that thing, whatever was between her and her king. How do we down what we’ve spent our adult life building up? she thought. Invest in what lasts! “A legacy of faith to my daughters, from generation to generation, will be my personal legacy,” exclaimed the woman as she rose and made her way back to the housing unit.

Chapter Eighteen

War

Sitting in the stacked-up gray plastic chairs in the TV room in A2 range alone at five thirty in the morning while other women were still asleep, with her uninterrupted writing all over her lap, the woman gazed at her daughters’ pictures during Fox news TV commercial break, thinking. The rain of hair had ed her fifteen-year-old daughter’s shoulder-length hair midway down the back. Her first cycle started this year, and her blackheads bled on her forehead. Her nine-year-old baby daughter, now with a concept of time, realized how long her mother had been gone. Things were changing quickly and never returned to the same as before since that distant day the woman left for Alderson. Vivid images of the laborious process circulated her heart and gave her the feeling that she had begun to grow older at that moment. “Star, you look just like Mommy when I was at this age,” sighed the woman, staring at her daughter’s picture with an absorbed look. “Soon, you’re going to be a teenager!” She kept on examining the pictures of her family, Josh and two daughters, discovering the miracle of their intimacy inch by inch, and she felt her skin tingle as she contemplated the day they would reunite. Ever since a small child, she had the custom of dreaming and living the dream as real because it was a way of overcoming her fear of the unwanted reality of growing during the Vietnam War. But since the day when she became aware of her own nakedness in prison, it was not fear of the unwanted reality that drove her to dream but an urge to feel the warm breath of the Language of the Universe alive. Early one Saturday morning during the time when she awoke with the feeling that she could not breathe, she felt invisible fingers searching across her stomach like warm and anxious little caterpillars. Pretending to sleep, she changed her position to make it easier, and then she felt the invisible hand without expectation diving like a jellyfish into the algae of her anxiety. Although she

seemed to ignore at first what both of them, the secret man and she, knew, what each one knew, the other knew; from that night on, they were yoked together in an inviolable bond. She could not get to sleep until she realized that she had gone too far, that she was no longer playing a game with him but was to be naked before him, to cry out to him until he would whisper to her the secrets. “It is easy to take off your clothes and sleep with someone. People do it all the time. But opening up your soul to someone, letting them into your spirit, thoughts, fears, future, hopes, and dreams…that’s being naked,” whispered the secret man to her heart through the voice of Dianna, a prayer warrior in the RDAP and her Spanish-speaking friend from the chapel who did her time for selling drugs and recently gave her this anonymous quote before she went home for the halfway house. So the woman lived only for the present because the present was full of surprises, and she had to be aware of many things: Where was the voice coming from, her or the devil or the secret man? Where was her sword? What kind of blow should one deliver next in order to remain alive? The woman was a natural fighter, but she had to consult with the seer in her black leather book. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness,” said the seer in 1 John 1:9 in the black leather book. Waking up to the consultation, the woman wrote down her confessions, her desires, her dreams, and her prayers for family and others, circled them, and made them to a circle maker as she circling her cried out to God each morning and each night. A short time after she felt the emptiness of the internal war about guilt, condemnation disappearing, she finally lost interest in the war that in other times had been a real activity. An irresistible ion of her youth became a remote point of reference for her: empty. Her only refuge in the place was her spiritual laboratory, A2-cube 27. The secret man would visit her every day at dawn and at night and at bedtime. He liked to watch her hands as she raised frothy fingers in the air that was kept in motion by an act of naked surrender. They spent almost an hour at time without speaking, content with their reciprocal company, but while she was focusing on keeping the fire of her devotion alive, she was unaware of the secret designs of the indecipherable language. Suddenly, she saw how her lips began stammering vigorously as if to exile all filthy unrighteousness buried inside by naked confession before the old king. The woman appeared smothered by anxiety (to the common people), but the euphoria and the unspeakable lightness was her reversal destiny. She could not think of anything to say. From that time on, it was perhaps the most critical

moment of the internal war. The revolution in the beginning had made alliances with the secret man in order to stop authorizing criminal thoughts, an unbridled tongue, pride, and people pleasing as properties of hers. At night or at siesta time, no longer obtaining a rudimentary satisfaction from people with certain uncertainty forever, the woman intoxicated herself to writing and poetry, and then she would sleep like a stone that was not concerned by the slightest indication of worry. But first, intoxicated by understanding the omens that are here in the present, she had peeped into the abyss of confidence that if one pays attention to the present, he can improve upon it. And if one improves on the present, what comes later will also be better. Forget about tomorrow, when her release date will come or what the case manager will do to her release date like she had done to other women or what was going to become of her daughters because their mother went to prison, and live each day according to the instructions, confident in God’s greatness and that he loves his children. Each day in itself brings with it eternal future present. Men always live their lives motivated based on the future. She took pleasure in keeping her right hand stretching upward and forward to the One, her great teacher in the art of war, to whom victories belong. In the circle maker, she would draw whenever she raised her right hand and declared war to the enemy in naked confession.

*****

“Watch out for your heart,” the secret man would say to her, “that you’re not rotting alive.” At Alderson, the woman found all types: idealists, ambitious people and adventurers, those with social resentments and common criminals. She was one. There were even conservative female pastors and pastors’ wives who had taken a judgment for misappropriation of funds. So many people did not even know what they were fighting for. To some women, an inner coldness which shattered their bones and tortured them even in the heat of the mountain sun had not let many women sleep for several months until it became a habit. Searching for a cure against the chill had them lost in the loneliness of their immense power; they began to lose direction.

They were bothered by the people who cheered them in such place, and they imagined that they were the same cheers they gave the enemy. Everywhere in the camp, a prisoner met others who looked at her with her own eyes, who spoke to her with her own voice, who greeted her with the same mistrust with which she greeted them, and who said they were her friends. She felt scattered about, multiplied, and more solitary than ever. She was convinced that her own counselor or case manager or every BOP staff was lying to her. She fought with her best friend “self.” People were weary of the uncertainty, of the vicious circle of the internal war that always found them in the same place, but always older, wearier, even more in the position of not knowing why or how or even when. There was always someone outside the circle maker. Someone who needed money, someone who had a son with whooping cough, or someone who wanted to go off and sleep forever because she could not stand the nasty taste of the war in her mouth and who, nevertheless, stood at attention to inform her, “Everything is normal.” And normality was precisely the most fearful part of that infinite war: nothing ever happened. Alone, abandoned by their premonitions, fleeing the chill that was to accompany them until death, many women sought their last refuge in the chapel in the warmth of their oldest memories. In the midst of the motley crowd, whose differences of values were on the verge of causing an internal explosion, one subtle authority stood out: Mrs. Comfort, religious assistant, at the chapel. She was full-blooded born again and endowed with reserved wisdom and a messianic vocation that aroused an unequivocal spirit fanaticism in Alderson women. Mrs. Comfort’s intention of unifying the peculiar outcasts to the work of the spirit against the maneuvers of the flesh. Alderson naturally became her ministry, “Women at the Well.” “Ladies, welcome to Breaking Free. We are more than conquerors in the Most High.” Mrs. Comfort welcomed her new Breaking Free class with a prophetic introduction. Then she went on and said during the class discussion, “The best friend a person has is ‘self,’ which is the one who has gotten to die.” She did not give it as a command but as a matter of fact. Her words to the chapel workers often were being carried out even before they were given, even before she thought of them, and they always went much beyond what she would have dared them do. It was quite simple—the words that came from the heart after God always seemed to have a way and the authority to penetrate the hard shell of people’s loneliness. Worn out by the tormented vigil in Alderson, many women

would come to the chapel an hour early before the General Christian service. Their only place of breaking free was when inside the chapel together with other broken souls singing and praising their God. “I realized it is easier to start a war than to end one,” the woman said to her bunkie one Saturday afternoon, Ms. Powder, who sat on her bed all day most days of the week. “The farce is over. Let’s get off this bed and go to the chapel with me before the mosquitoes here execute us.” Ms. Powder was a heroin addict and proud of her free spirit in drug use that brought her back to prison for the third time. Ms. Powder, also known as Ms. Heroin, could not repress the disdain that was inspired in her by the attitude. “No thanks, bunkie,” Ms. Powder replied. “I’d rather be dead than see you change me into a bloody Christian.” “You won’t regret it,” the woman said. “Get off your bed and help me get this war over with.” When she said it, she did not know that it was easier to end a war than get one to come to church. It took her almost half a year of fierce and bloody effort to challenge Ms. Powder to propose conditions of peace and salvation favorable to Jesus as the only way and another three months to convince her of the convenience of accepting Jesus. The woman went to inconceivable extremes of comion to cruelty to put down the rebellion of her bunkie’s “self,” who resisted and called for victory in witchcraft and other mediums, and she finally had to surrender to God to make Ms. Powder submit. She was never a greater soldier for Christ than at that time. The certainty that even in prison, she was fighting for soul liberation and not for abstract ideal, for a religious ideology that religionists could twist left and right according to the circumstances, filled her with purposeful enthusiasm.

*****

Josh, spring 2017…

In three years of being torn apart by her prison war, her husband had been at his peak of bitter rancor, but the state of utmost with which he always arrived, the family and two small daughters that accompanied him everywhere, the aura of tradition that glowed about his presence and of which even she was aware, changed him into a reborn, stronger man than ever. Her husband could not reconcile the image of his wife who had spent her entire career regarding her friend and the people with that of the mythical faith which had placed a distance of ten feet between her and him and also brought her to prison. But as the days of Alderson became known, the woman found him more taciturn than ever, more pensive and solitary. She realized without surprise that her husband was the only human being who had succeeded in penetrating her misery, and for the first time in many years, she looked toward him for prayers and emotional . “How awful the way we let time ed,” she recalled her husband saying to her one night during their eight-minute family daily phone time. He didn’t notice the minute tearing destruction arrived that time had brought him to a new love, a hobby in the art of woodwork around the house during her prolonged absence which had kept his marriage memories alive. He was pained by the peeling of the whitewash on the wooded siding of the house or the dirty, cottony cobwebs in the corners or the dust on the magnolias and the white pine trees or an insidious traps that nostalgia offered him at his house in the absence of her. He sat down in the library, wrapped in his blanket and with his desktop still on, as if only waiting for it to clear. He spent one whole weekend afternoon watching it rain on the magnolias. He understood then they had a rare connection for appreciating the things of the world and a secret tenderness in togetherness. If it’s not Alderson war, he thought, it can only be death in my marriage. It was a supposition that was so neat, so convincing that he identified it as premonition of fate. Every night, at dinner, he broke bread and drank soup with Grace and Star. Their bright, innocent eyes, lighting up their white and powdery faces like the silent morning light which had the aura of sky capes, had merited the endurance, the risks, and the sacrifices of his adventure—single parenthood. His tiredness and thoughts were sinking at that moment into the quicksand of forgetfulness. To be sure that the feeling of aloneness and overwhelming responsibility of being a single parent would not overtake a son, his mother from Seattle would make sure that she kept him company over the phone every day at his lunch break from work and every evening after dinner. Although his voice was so broken by the

uncertainty and his mind seemed to doubt the existence of his family’s bright future to be as it was the pre-Alderson days, it was evident that he came to the world where prayers become man’s best friend. He found himself sitting in the great family room oftentimes forgotten while he tried helping Grace and Star with undivided attention with their homework. He taught them with a broad show of discipline, afraid that he had known its good consequences at his time and that he did not teach his children now. But one frequent visitor, none other than his mother, was aware of his falseness. She felt her son stiffen, not with the irremediable stiffness of the heart but with a different kind of stiffness, which was more cruel and irrevocable and which she knew very well because it was the stiffness of death. Then he understood. He opened his heart to indecipherable scriptures, and from among them, he began relief without having to understand how. He gave second thought about God as the dark went on in his memory. His eyes became moist from silent weeping as he noticed himself in an absurd situation where his daughters were without a mother all of a sudden, and he felt hopeless of the solemn mark written on his wife’s ego wall, and he even recognized the newcomer would be forever. It was her felony record. While the world and his extended family were celebrating the birth of Christ each year of her absence, her husband really had been through death, but he had returned to Seattle for Christmas because he could not bear the solitude of his children. Repudiated by his pride, having lost all his natural faculties because of his faithfulness to his daughters’ lives, he decided to take refuge in that corner of the world which was often discovered after experiencing death, dedicated to the operation of faith. He had never turned to faith like this. But when he saw himself and his family fastened onto a freefall for an eternity, he was mute with overwhelming grief. That was the date he discovered the scratches, the welts, the sores, the ulcers, and the scars that had been left on his wife from Alderson, and he saw that those damages aroused helplessness in him. Then he made an effort to search in his heart for the place where his hope had rotten away, and he found it in his daughters’ daily bread readings aloud each morning in the car while he was driving them to school.

*****

In the haze of prison, surrounded by two “mini mes” in her mind, the woman brought back the decisive periods of her happy marriage existence by reading her family photos of their visits taken at Alderson visitation center. For many years, balancing on the edge of the surprises of a domestic war with no bright future, in rhymed verse, she resolved her experience on the shores of death. Then her thoughts became so clear that she was able to examine them minute by minute. One night, lying in bed, she asked herself, Why were you fighting? What other reason could there be that you and Josh fought? For the great family value, she thought. The truth is I would be lucky if I know why. She sighed. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve come to realize only just now that I’m fighting because of pride. Her pride had slowly eaten her marriage alive. She knew, however, that as soon as she put those samples aside, she would break the vicious circle of the war. Prison sat her down for a time to reflect. Then she succeeded in getting her husband to give her the rest of his buried fear, thoughts, hope, dreams, shame, and most of all, his confession of being harsh and lacking empathy as a husband at times, lacking silence and a listening ear. Josh was not only her husband, but she knew him as a man closest to her heart through prison. Sensitive, cautious, with natural good manners, he was, however, better suited for war than for family prior to her prison war. His familial advisers easily entangled him in theoretical labyrinths. But he succeeded in giving his home the atmosphere of rural peace that she would rest so that she could die of old age collecting prayers in a bottle and not having to confront their silent war. For many years, when Grace was still a small child, he declared that time the woman was so illusioned with her unrealistic and lonely ion for Jesus that he laughed at her. She feigned a reaction of peace. “I’m not married to please a man,” she declared to her husband. “I’m marrying for Jesus, and sooner or later, you will learn if God calls us apart.” She said it without thinking, but that was the time that her husband had announced the threat to stop going to church if she did not stop choosing church over family. A couple years later, Alderson came. The woman shut herself up to weep, overwhelmed by a feeling as if once more, her careless words had been responsible for their separation.

An adventure of process to promise and burden to blessing, Alderson prison, the circumstance where God allowed her to see the future. God only rarely reveals the future. And when he himself does so, it is only for one reason: a future that was written so as to be altered. Many addicts in prison said God brought me to Alderson to save my life, otherwise I would have been dead to heroin, cocaine, or meth already. Most white-collar-crime women would say God brought me here to humble me. I was too proud. I didn’t appreciate the time I had with family. I was too busy taking care of everyone around me but myself, so God had to sit me down. These were the common themes to Alderson women on the reason why God sat them down. But she was more convinced now than ever that although all the aforementioned might be true, they were not the primary reason. God could save the addicts with the rehabilitation on the outside or humble her with a disease or sickness for a time and sit her down in her home with her family, but instead, he chose to bring all these women to the secluded mountain of Alderson, West Virginia. Why? The clue to know where things are going is where things have been. God always used the past to warn or foretell the future to his people. And none other than the Bible is the best book of clues to show where men have been and where men are going. So what was one common theme among Alderson women, regardless of their walks of life, their kind of faith, and their type of crimes? The evidence rested in the stories of Moses, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, David, Elijah. Breathtakingly, the similarity between these Bible heroes and women in Alderson rested in one reason. They were all separated from a place of familiarity to a foreign land. They were set apart for God. Joseph was sold to Egypt as slave then placed in prison before he became the second highest government official of the land to save his family and people during the famine; David had to run and hide in a cave, living with gangs and bandits before he became the greatest king of Israel; Elijah was told to go to the Brook Cherith and lived there in solitude for a time, fed by the ravens, and drank water out of the rocks before he could defeat Baal as the greatest prophet; Moses was drawn out of the water and lived with an adopted family before God used him to lead the Israelites out of slavery, out of Egypt.

Like the Bible legends, women were brought to Alderson to be set apart for God not because they were holy but because God is holy, and they were unclean. God has shown us a part of the future, the woman thought. Why was it that he wanted to bring us all the way onto this mountain? Why would God reveal things in such a place, when he knows he could speak to us anywhere? “Because your eyes are not yet accustomed to the mountain,” her heart said to her. “People can see things that the eyes habituated to the mountain might not see.” The woman became more convinced than ever that prison was the path of process to promise to women who know about the Soul of the Universe. Before the promise, there must be a process. The bigger the promise, the tougher the process, and the more pain it would be!

Chapter Nineteen

Time

Walking along life in prison in the silence, the woman had no doubts. If she stayed any day longer, it would be because God was not willing to change the future. She would at least have lived after having crossed the mountain desert, after having worked in the staff dining and having known the silence of the mountain and the shooting stars and women’s brokenness. She had lived every one of her days intensely since she had left home long ago. If she stayed any day longer, she would already have seen and written more than designed for a travel photographer, and she was proud of that. It’s time for an attitude to pen this travel photography, she thought. Only you can make time stand still. You are to capture the moment no matter where your journey may take. There’s always more to the story—the HIS-story behind. The woman paused, and her eyes fixed on the blank papers with a Bic black ink pen in her hand. Alderson, the dewy mountain! Alderson, the torrential cloudburst! Alderson, the solitude horizon! On the first , the woman’s bones seemed to become disted with a disorderly crunch like the sound of a box of dominoes from the disservice of fraud and abuse of the federal government and the contradictory and corrupt Bureau of Prisons. Federal prison camp flirted with the dollars of the hardworking taxpayers, and lives of the inmates were their currency. Federal government invited their employees, federal judges, and federal prosecutors in defending her while prosecuting the people with unlimited power and resources, and together with the private own BOP, somehow it just happened that they ended up over incarcerated and overcrowded the federal prison system with nonviolent crime mainly for conspiracy. A charge that is easy to indict and convict without evidence and must be proved innocent because you are guilty until proven innocent, not innocent until proven guilty.

Her skin broke out into a pale sweat and her eyes filled with tears as her whole body exhaled a lugubrious lament from nostalgia. The woman longed for home when she arose and when she lay down. She tried to bear the impact with a firmness of character and a bravery that were irable. But God felt her heart and misery. He raised her up into a state of seraphic inspiration, where he brought forth with an outpouring of colorful sunrise and sunset and tenderly kissed the mountains of the captured town which quietly entered her eyes to her palate and came out through her fingers, translating into travel photography with her rugged camera—the Bic pen. Time had architecturally designed Alderson for those who know the Soul of the Universe as the crossroads that punched way above its weight. At the crossroads, two unexpected things met and greatness occurred: quietness and strength, pragmatism and beauty, history and future. At the intersection of faith and brokenness, one finds what he never expected or imagined. Gently living downstream was life in Alderson. Going fast wasn’t an option on the mountain, but those who were willing to push deeper into the heart of the rocky season of their life found themselves surrounded in scenery few ever experience. God always has ways of catching his people’s attention and speaking to them directly. To Moses in the wilderness, God spoke through the burning bush; to Israelites in the desert, he led them through the clouds by day and the fire by night; to Elijah at the Brook Cherith, through the raven that feeding him food; to the woman, he spoke through the prison that shook and destroyed every foundation of her prison, fed her manna from his animated conversations through volunteer ministers in the chapel, and led her penning through dancing mountains dominating the skyline and stunning peaks crowned by sunrise and sunset up close and personal that left you simply the natural world experience with all five senses plus one, the Spirit. Through the crisp inhale of mountain air, she trumped the guitar with campfire praise and worship songs with various friends at different times of the day while allowing herself to be hypnotized by the horizon. Baptized by majesty of the mountain, she was to follow the omens to the answers of unanswered prayers. She understood that she was to tell the world about the Soul of the Universe through the strokes of a pen and now was the time. She found that the

architectural design of penning had the strong power to create an atmosphere that touched people’s hearts. The solitude in the secluded mountain was necessary for her to obtain architectural penning. The spirit, like the calm water offered a canvas for double vision, a contemplative feel as well as an air of mystery where pragmatism and beauty, quietness and strength, brokenness and faith, history and future met at Alderson, where the crossroads and his greatness occurred. Prison was her hike to the top of a greater fall in the valley. She was suddenly forced to trade a two-stairways colonial home for a seven-by-eight feet cube, a car for a hike, and hit the canyon trail of life on a road less traveled, not by choice. But she’d always felt a sense in this rugged, unspoiled, wild journey of her life that anything is possible. There’s always a place for God’s people to peer into his mystery and the boundless blue skies to inspire discovery every season of the moment. A road to perdition into a low life in prison turned into an unknown valley scenic walk, where the woman was prepared to be amazed by wide-eyed wonders as she followed and pressed on the omens and the fact that time is “His-story.” It’s time to discover the possibilities of time. She went for walks in the place and watched. All is so temporary. This too is temporary, she thought, and will end.

Chapter Twenty

What Next

Be there to know the unknown.

Watching Alderson for over three years, sleeping on the broken spring top bunk, treated and paid like a modern slave, the woman had already made up her mind. She was only here to learn the unknown, but she wasn’t sure how she would learn it. Finally, as the dim light slanted through the invisible prison bars months after months, she began to stir. “What next?” She asked the same question that most women here wondered. With available technology of the twenty-first century, today’s world is forever more eagerly designed to help keep people safe in an unpredictable world. Today society’s motto, intelligent technology, is “What next?” “Not quite exactly!” she exclaimed. In fact, “What next?” has always been the kernel of the mind since creation. The desire for “What next?” had caused Eve to eat from the forbidden tree then give the fruit to her husband, Adam, which led to the entire human’s race downfall in sins. Coming to prison was like a neon sign flashing before her eyes. “Ugly, hopeless, failure, what next, what next, and what next!” The future for her looked ugly by the time she had done her time in prison with the eternal felony mark. The first thing her husband did after learning of the inevitable Alderson for the family was to put her on a strict reminder of how ugly her series of “What next?” in the future was going to look. This was her husband’s “cure all” for everything! He

thought if she were to know what next, all her problems would go away. What next for their daughters while she was away? What next for him as a single parent when in emergency without any relatives in the state? Feeling beating down in helplessness for the disgrace crime she committed that brought her family in this miserable situation. She bridled her tongue from defending “What next?” from her husband. She hated this, but who wouldn’t? Life in prison did not exactly have much to do either, and it cramped her free, independent lifestyle. She longed to go home so she could help with all “What next?” for her family and have her freedom again. “What was” and “what next,” the prescriptions of anxiety and depression across Alderson dwellers, which had claimed so many women’s lives during the setback of prison. Everyone hears voices sometimes—the voice of their desires, their dreams, or their consciences. Some women said that they heard the voice of God. How do people sort them out? How can people tell which ones are coming from themselves and which might be coming from the spirit of darkness or from God? But the things some women claimed the Holy Spirit told them to do, she could not imagine any God directing his child to do. In the beginning of the sentence, many women, and she was not excluded, would roam the hills day and night and claimed, “We are going home this year. No weapon formed against us shall prosper. Every word raised against us shall be condemned,” as they focused on what was next every minute for the red phone to ring, hoping it would be a call from the istration telling them to pack up and report to Receiving and Discharge for immediate release. Then a year ed, another six months, then another year flew by. The red phone stood still in silence for the ones who insisted on “What next?” Some women suffered bipolar and depression, and anxiety attacks worsened. Time continued ing. Looking up, the woman stood and scanned the mountains, breathed the air, and smelled the mountain breeze that carried up the climbs on a dry season. Tomorrow starts today; “What next?” starts “What now?” The woman meditated on what she read from The Alchemist: “I’m not reading the future. I am guessing at the future. The future belongs to God, and it is only He who reveals it, under extraordinary circumstances.” The future is only guessed based on the omens of

the present. The secret is here in “What now?” If a person pays attention to today, he can improve upon it. And if he improves on today, what comes tomorrow will also be better. For a dose of culture in the now, she was brought to prison, a place where she accessed two worlds as a sojourner: “I am” but “I am not.” From the beginning of Alderson, she was a mother but was not mothering her daughters for the moment; she was a wife, yet she could not be her husband’s helper for the present time; she was a doctor, and she was unable to care for patients for a while. All the “I am” but “I am not” not only enticing her to penetrate to the Soul of the Universe but allowing the Soul of the Universe to penetrate her. Suddenly, she smiled most imperceptibly, realizing that “I am not” was her present and “I am” her vision. “What next?” is not for me to control. “What next?” is my vision because its desire originated from the Soul of the Universe. Abraham received the Word of God in a vision to become a father at one hundred years old and be father to nations, and that was his “What next?” Suddenly, she heard a thundering sound, and she was thrown to the handrail on the walkway of the back hill by a wind such as she had never known. The compound was swirling in dust so intense that it hid people from view. Before her was a horseman leaving town, galloping off in a mute cloud of dust. When the blinding dust had settled a bit, the woman stood there for a moment, holding the handrail as she looked onto the faraway light tower on top of the back mountain of the camp. “Who dares to read the meaning of the cloudburst of dust, the flight of the ravens?” she asked. “It is I who dared to do so,” declared the woman. She was reminded of the image of Mrs. Comfort, mounted on her black horse, a 2016 black Grand Cherokee SUV, with the last words, “Stay strong, continue seeking him diligently with revelation and vision.” Mrs. Comfort appeared to be the anointed religious assistant from Alderson to the women of the desert, but her presence was much more than that of a mere religious assistant. She was a messenger who knew the Soul of the Universe and understood the Language of the World.

“The world invites people to countless experiences. Make them your own wherever you’re at, no matter who you are, and people will see that nothing beats being there. Going deeper in present, discerning the omens and following them, what next is not for you to control,” her heart said to her as she thought of the image of the horseman disappearing into a mute cloud of dust. Soon, this will be in the rearview mirror.

Chapter Twenty-One

Math-ster of the Mind

Be renewed in the spirit of your mind. —Ephesians 4:23

Four hundred years ago, Galileo believed that mathematics was the language God used to write the universe. Two thousand years ago, Jesus showed that love was the language God used to conquer the universe. Today, John Overdeck, a math genius, and his partner, David Siegel, a stereotypical computer nerd, used their ions to conquer the world in investment. The math-sters of the mind quietly translated these secrets into Two Sigma Investments, a little-known quantitative hedge fund firm that gathers seemingly random bits of information and tries to detect patterns that can be used to forecast the price direction of stocks and other securities. They’re both math-stering their ions to a living investment and conquering success. Wouldn’t that be awesome if everyone could see and invest what they love to make a living and conquer success? Would this be possible for everyone or only for some geniuses like Galileo, Overdeck, and Siegel? The answer the woman believes is yes! God shows men how he masters his love and ion to the world and conquers the universe, conquering death. There were about one thousand talented women from all walks of life, professional artists and athletes, successful entrepreneurs and business owners, doctors and lawyers, bank writers and real estate agents, pastors and pastors’ wives, writers and actresses, addicts and drug dealers, and human traffickers and

professional con artists scattered throughout the camp. They had mastered their ions to a living and conquered their desire for fame or money or pleasure. And they were very successful at what they did, which cost them prison. Before the sun had reached its high point, women appeared on the horizon. The mounted troops of thoughts entered the minds from all four corners of the earth; it appeared to be a “battle of the mind” expedition, but many carried weapons, the Bible, hidden in their mesh totes or their jackets. When they reached their work destinations, they withdrew the Bibles. And they tried to attack the corrupt mind with the reading of scriptures and prayers. The woman saw to it that if she invests her ion to living by gathering seemingly random bits of daily happenings and tries to detect patterns of the omens that can be used to forecast the direction of her “What next?” according to the Word, she too will conquer success despite invisible chains and shackles of the corrupt BOP and federal government. The tricky part was there were other players, called sin, flesh, and bitterness, on her team, who would hinder her success. The woman needed to find the solution to the problem. So what did life look like during the Alderson period to the woman? First, she began gathering the patterns of seemingly random bits of her growing up from teenager to young adulthood to womanhood and getting convinced that the trainings and competitions in Vietnam National Junior Bton and the USA National Junior Bton, the perseverance of medical school, and the ion for her mathematics major as a premed student had prepared her for the incarceration period. Alderson became a series of problem solving wherein she needed to learn to math-ster her ion and find solutions for success. Without having the ion for any and while not math-stering the ion, she would live a life of void, wasting the gifts and trading them off for whining, grumbling, and mumbling, a perfect prescription to anxiety, depression, self-destruction, and ultimately, failure. “Jesus conquers the world with love for man, and man conquers the world with love for Jesus,” she exclaimed. The woman began declaring war and decided to take ownership of her thoughts, although she couldn’t control what thoughts that

came in her mind often times. But she could control how she should react to them, starting from the mindset. Running away from the excuse and blame games, she armored herself with the scriptures, and the moment the mood swing came, she recognized them and swung them the other way. King David is an expert at mood swinging. Look at all the Psalms he wrote, she thought. If he would have lived today, he might have been diagnosed with bipolar, I wonder? In one chapter in Psalms, he is all praising God and upbeat, then the next chapter, he is extremely downcast and depressed. Psalm 42 and Psalm 147 for example. It made her puzzled at times. Is this the same David that wrote both these chapters in Psalms? An athlete cannot master his game without fitness of the body. A problem solver cannot master the mind without fitness of the mind. People say the mind is a terrible thing to waste. The greatest asset God gives man is the mind. The woman began her exercise of the mind and kept it fit throughout prison starting out her day praying with these two scriptures daily: “Casting down doubts, arguments, thoughts, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). “Be renewal in the spirit of your mind” (Ephesians 4:23). Medicine of the twenty-first century has been able to transplant virtually every vital organ in the human body except the brain. Intelligent technology might be able to make everything better except create the human mind. Why? When God created his creations, it was not until the sixth day that he created man and breathed his spirit into Adam’s nostril. Therefore, only by the spirit of God can the human mind be created. Like a car, the human’s body parts and organs function as mechanical units in a system, except the brain. When the brain controls only the unconscious but not the conscious parts of the body, it is called brain-dead. The brain without the spirit is brain-dead. The best commander-in-chief of the human mind is God. The woman came to that she could either allow her mind to be controlled by the Word or by the world. When the spirit of God controls one’s mind, he will walk in power, liberty, and peace. But when people let the world view control their mind, though they might have a lot of power in the world, they are being enslaved by that power in restlessness and without peace.

Not until the sun had set and the stars made their first appearance of her second winter in Alderson, the math-ster of the mind with scripture equations and her problem solving rode to view like a horseman galloping out of a mute cloud of dust and returning home. And she ed it had been written somewhere, “To every problem there’s a solution.” Like the food problem and solution story two thousand years ago in the Judean wilderness, there was no food to feed a crowd of five thousand who were listening to Jesus speaking. A boy with a ion offered his brown lunch bag of five loaves of bread and two fish to Jesus. The adult in the room, Andrew, verbalized what all other disciples thought, “How far will they go among so many?” Andrew started doing the math and puzzled. Five plus two is seven and not five thousand. It didn’t add up. It was impossible. But one thing Andrew forgot to add. And after God was added to the equation, five plus two equaled five thousand with a remainder of twelve (5 + 2 = 5,000 R12). This is God’s mathematics, God’s provision principle. When a person stops looking at what he’s lacking and starts math-stering his ion with what’s in his hand to a living investment, God will do the rest. His lack becomes his abundance as long as God is the center of the equation. It is also interesting to note that God’s mathematic and provisional principle story of two fish and five loaves of bread did not start from Jesus but was initiated by the nameless boy. Jesus cannot perform a miracle when man will not open his heart and start acting. God will do what men can’t, but He will not act for them. The woman looked around then got up and began to circle the upper compound with the moon lighting her way. I don’t know if I’ll be able to conquer life on this mountain, the woman thought. I don’t know Alderson that well yet. But she was determined to be like Overdeck and Siegel, the math-sters of the mind, and math-ster her ion for a living investment in the place. She gathered bit by bit of information from sermon after sermon from the chapel and the Bible readings that brought forth the patterns to the solutions of every problems in her road to fail better. She was able to forecast the direction where she is going. “Prison cannot break me, it builds me,” she declared in accordance with her ion for the vision that came to view. “Prison cannot bind me, it loses me. Prison is not my punishment, but a promotion. Prison is my Goliath and the gate.” Here’s one of the patterns of math-stering the mind to the problem and conquering success. The giant is always at the gate. When people see the giant,

they know they are at the gate. When David meets Goliath, he’s at the gate to kingship. But first he must kill Goliath (giant). Everyone has a Goliath in his life. When a person is at the gate, there’s no time to negotiate. He has to kill that thing, whatever that stands between him and God. Wherever the giant is, that’s where the gate is. A promise always has a giant at the gate. So what did life look like during her Alderson period? Prison was where she faced the Goliath that had to be destroyed. Her pride, her being a people pleaser instead of a God pleaser, her unbridled tongue, her recklessness, and her fear of failure were all destroyed on the mountain, although she had not succeeded in defeating her giant all the time. The giant kept creeping back at times when she was least expected. Life is a series of battle victories. Some battles she has to fight, be on the offense, and kill whatever that stands between her and God, and other battles, she has to put on the body of the armor of God and just stand still and wait. Alderson was her battle to stand still and wait on God. It is time to win my game with the best defense, not offense, she thought. There are two ways to a victory: defense versus offense. Now is the time to play the best defense I’ve got. The black leather book that she brought from home with her to prison was her best companion and strategic adviser for battles. The woman recalled Super Bowl 50, 2016, a spectacular victory by the best defense team and the best ion for the game of Denver Broncos against the best offense team with the youngest quarterback, South Carolina Panther. The Broncos were led by the ready-to-retire and oldest quarterback, Peyton Manning, to win Super Bowl in the NFL history. The older team with the best defense prevailed and defeated the much younger team with the best offense. At the post Super Bowl game show interview and press conference, Mr. Manning was asked by a reporter, “How are you able to carry your team to a victory against such a younger team with better athletes and better offense like the Panthers? And what do you want your teammates and coaches to you for after retiring?” Mr. Manning’s answer was simple. He gave thanks first to the man upstairs then said, “I just came out with all the love for God and the ion for the game of football and gave my best. I want to be ed not only by my teammates and coaches but also by my opponents. I want to leave a legacy as a man who carried his team with the ion for football, the grinding humility, the running a good race, and the fighting a good fight of football and faith.” At that moment, the woman understood the old king was talking to her of

Alderson, the road to fail better through Mr. Manning and Super Bowl 50. She loosened her body and continued walking toward the rocks where there was only the gigantic moon above her and its silver reflections from the rocks and the mountain. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the woman’s fear and anxiousness began to unload. And she birthed the Super Bowl 50 poem.

Super Bowl 50

Life is like a game of football Expect sack, tackle, fumble Be ready, press toward the goal A team of ready people Always to take you down, watch you fall—their goal Hush! Hush! Arise! Gather your next move Doesn’t matter how many times you are knocked down It’s how many times you get up There’s always a third down conversion Even a fourth down conversion Completely new ball game Quells the opponents—sudden change Live to play, not play to live! Innovate a play, and play to innovate

A play maker, not a make player Eyes glued to finish line Better opponents, fumble, sack, tackle, don’t mind All for the ion of the game This is your best defense Though there’re two roads to victory Best offense versus best defense Best offense may appear more glorious Best receiver, best rusher, best quarterback—the Panthers Yet with great ion for the game An older, ready retiring quarterback And grinding humility Good defense turns good offense Comion, persistence, and humility The best defense to a victory Super Bowl 50, 2016 The Broncos, Peyton Manning is!

*****

It’s all in the mindset that comes from the heart of grinding endurance and brings

about the positivity of life. Researches and studies in psychology have hinted that women and men are more equal when the sport relies on endurance and not on brute strength and speed. It is because of the wonder women mindset. The ability to dig deep and mentally pivot to a plan B (or C…or D) is one important factor in how successful an athlete can be. Endurance events are a unique mental challenge. Steve Portenga, PhD, a sport psychologist in Denver who coached triathletes, believed that people have to reflect honestly when they encounter a challenge to figure out a solution. The bigger one’s vocabulary for discussing emotions is, the better he’ll be at staying calm as he encounters big and small bumps along the way. If all one can think of is happy or angry, when a challenge comes up, he’ll end up very anxious, which makes it harder to solve. There’s a perfect law that has the power to transform anyone’s life for the better despite how bad the circumstance is, the law of endurance: “Keep your heart with diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life,” Proverbs 4:23 said. There’s also the law of attraction: Like attracts like, and what we think about bring about. Life attracts life. At the time of writing this powerful law of the mindset, the woman started the strategy in fitness of the mind. The strategy was quite simple. There are only twenty-four hours in a day to worry or to think positive. Any number of hours being used to attract positive thinking, the same number of hours less will be used to attract the negatives. Beth Moore’s Bible study course she took in the chapel was titled, “It’s Tough Being a Woman.” How true that was for women of Alderson. It’s tougher being a woman in Alderson, she thought. Constantly surrounded by a crowd of a thousand women twenty-four seven many of whom were either pessimistic or still operating by their criminal thinking, utilizing the frontal lobe to get ahead of the contradictory environment of BOP, breaking the rules and playing the victimization game instead of surrendering to the lizard brain and operating the math-stering of the mind with their ion for the Word investment. Some prisoners enjoyed the drama and the pandemonium in prison and stated they enjoyed a little more chaos than most people would prefer. They felt that they ran well in chaos. The woman, however, enjoyed things a little more unpredictable than most people would prefer. She understood that love never keeps a person from reaching his personal legacy and that love can help achieve unpredictable things. God is predictably unpredictable to bless his children with unpredictably predictable promise. Alderson was a boot camp for the woman to math-ster the mind and use her ion to a living investment of a writer, an unpredictable dream she never

knew she had, with God’s mathematics and God’s provision principle and the law of attractions. She wanted to math-ster the ion of writing His-story of the unpredictable journey on the mountain, a faith investment that conquers a world of audiences, even if it defies the natural law of literature, both fiction and nonfiction writing.

Chapter Twenty-TWO

DNA Whisperers: 3andMe and Power of Three

Today, people live in a generation of social media and technology where people desired to know the “me” in every level, from the social to the molecular level of who they are. 23andMe is a pharma company where molecular biologist learned the solution lay in aggregating the world’s genetic data and teasing out the pattern to prevent and combat disease like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. By collecting people’s saliva, 23andMe could decode the DNA embedded in their twenty-three chromosomes. 23andMe promises the discovery of everything from the existence of long-lost relatives to whether the people were at risk for inherited diseases like cystic fibrosis or genetic traits like lactose intolerance. People seek the secrets in their own genes. The company’s growing database of DNA and personal information is, in turn, used to correlate genotypes to diseases, which could ultimately lead to efficient, targeted drug breakthrough. Americans live in an advanced science era and a high-tech society, where humans have the answer to everything. People do everything to find out their identity, to change it, and to manipulate it. Life becomes more in chaos and confusion. With all the advanced surgery and medicine and science, Americans are more in an identity crisis today than they’ve ever been. Why? Man is never all power. Never was. Never is. Never will. God is! 23andMe may help identify people’s inherited or genetic diseases or may help to prevent and combat diseases, but it could never help people find their identity. The relationship with the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and me, 3andMe, is the only sure and true way to find one’s identity and combat the identity crisis that so many Americans today suffer—celebrities and common people, rich and poor, male and female, LGBTQ and straight alike.

The woman spent a sleepless Friday night writing. Who am I really? she pondered as she thought of her miserable current state and questionable future. Who will people say I am after I return home? She asked the questions many women in Alderson struggle to face. “Don’t think about what you’ve lost,” the old king said to her as she was doing her fitness regimen for the mind with a marathon—scripture reading, meditation, and prayer. “Everything is written in the book of law, and there it will stay forever. To know who you are, you have to learn how to decode the promises and which ones are yours. A theologian says there are about three thousand potential promises written in the Bible for everyone, but they are not anyone’s until he learns to decode and translate them to specific message given to him from God.” “How?” she wondered. “In a molecular level, where 23andMe tries to seek the secret in people’s gene, transcription is a process by which the genetic information of DNA is copied into a new molecule of messenger RNA (mRNA), then transcription is followed by translation, a process in which ribosomes (macromolecular machine) decode and translate mRNA to protein. The entire process is called gene expression, which will determine a person’s look, health, disease, sex, and inheritance. In the same science, the Bible is the book of God’s DNA, promised to every living man and woman in the universe. The entire process of promised expression from God’s DNA in each person is much the same at the molecular level, where transcription and translation must take place. Biblical transcription is a process by which God’s DNA is copied to a person’s heart from either by listening or reading the Word and biblical translation, a process in which prayer (device) decodes and translates the Word to promise that (s)he able to turn her/his mess to message with the help from the Holy Spirit.” “How’s my mess turning into a message?” she wondered. It was difficult not to think about what she had left behind and what she had lost. Alderson, with its endless monotony, put her to dreaming. The woman could still see the fiery red Japanese maple tree, the beaches, and the faces of her husband and daughters she loved. She could see the old king holding out his golden scepter and the religious assistant who was a teacher without realizing it. Maybe Alderson is the laboratory for the experiments of the soul. The squirrel knew the

language of the mountain well. She was here to know the Language of the Universe. “If I can fill my saliva and whisper God’s DNA, sending them upward, 3andMe will help me decode God’s DNA embedded in three thousand promises from even the preexistence of my Alderson to where I am and where I am going,” said the woman as she was conducting experiments at the molecular level of the Bible for herself. 23andMe, with their DNA whisperers, helped people find their past and hoped to combat inherited diseases, yet people live in more identity crisis and confusion today than ever before. But there’s help on the way! With 3andMe, God’s DNA whisperers would be able to combat the inherited disease of sins, overcome addictions, and take ownership of their future. Coming to Alderson without social media and technology, women suddenly faced the question of “Who am I?” where everything were taken away, and they were put in isolation, away from everyone they loved and everything they knew. But what was once an endless horde lost in the translation entering prison now became the DNA whisperers, finding their identity of who they are and to whom they belonged. The certainty of their identity, no longer in crisis but rested in Christ, brought forth in a barren desert without social media, technology, designer cell phones, and luxury cars, except accompanied by the company of 3andMe.

*****

Beyond the cold brick buildings, stoicism of the prison staffs, hustling and bustling, and wheeling and dealing according to the unwritten prison “jungle” rules on both sides of the gate, there’s the part of Alderson worth mentioning. It was like being at Alderson Got Talent. She was incredulous at the sight of the women leaping from the show in front of people. They grand-jéte in the air at crazy sideways angles during a basketball game; they vocalize tunes praising the

Maker out of the wave that make the walls and the pews in the chapel out to the yard tremble. They’re screenwriters and makeup artists for the Spanish, women of color, “We are the World” shows and Easter and Christmas plays, flapping like mini Hollywood as they try to propel themselves upstream out of the minimal in the camp. Here, a working world that doesn’t understand Alderson women might not want to hire them and definitely wouldn’t want to pay them very much. Still, there’s hope for Alderson’s rising group of women visionaries—they are original and faith-savvy. There are a lot of different kinds of cakes that people can make in a mug; so are there a lot of different kinds of women that people can discover of themselves in Alderson. A nurse-turned-paralegal; a felon-to-lawyer; a drug addict-tocosmetologist-to-successful entrepreneur in an upscale part of Manhattan, New York; a Muslim-turned-evangelist; a stripper-to-praise dance instructor with her own studio for a mega church. The pathways to promise got so congested people could see rows of iridescent, golden-speckled hope idling under the surface of brown and tan uniform. Not that every woman saw the pathway or caught any. From the mossy landscape on the riverbank of the place, the woman had watched many women glide by—but few were grasping the pathway. Part of the unpredictable in Alderson she was learning is availability. She didn’t have to try so hard to perfect her future like the earlier days in college and medical schools and in the street, but she was actually reeling anything in even when it seemed beside the point. Patience, persistence, ion: three Ps that helped guide her to a discovery beyond logic yet began to bring more logic and clarity to the branding, “Do what I don’t love to love what I do.” Power of three, 3andMe, was the key to her discovery. Crisscrossed by rivers and streams of life—Saigon (Vietnam) to Minneapolis to Los Angeles to San Francisco to Detroit—she’d learned many, but Alderson was beyond her imagined destination, nothing to look forward or excite about. Sometimes, God brought people to a place of suffering so they may sit where others sat, learn to rest in 3andMe, learn to welcome the inevitable challenges, and learn to forget their toils in order to bring forth fruitfulness and the authority of turning their sorrows to their righteous blessing (Benoni to Benjamin, Genesis 35:18). In Jacob’s story, after years of waiting for his dearly beloved yet barren wife,

Rachel, to become pregnant with a son, he learned that she was going to die at the moment of delivery. Rachel wanted to name her son Benoni, meaning “son of sorrow,” but Jacob decided to change the destiny of his son, sorrow to blessing, by naming him Benjamin, meaning “son of righteousness” or “son of right hand” (Genesis 35:18). In Joseph’s story, only after he was wrongfully hated by his own blood, the older brothers, sold as a slave to Egypt, and wrongfully imprisoned, he named his first son Manasseh and said, “For God has made me forget all my toil and all my father’s house,” then he named his second son, Ephraim, meaning, “For God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering” (Genesis 41:51–52). God cannot bless His children when they still hold a grudge or hold on to the past. God also promises His children that there’s always the seed of fruitfulness through the pain and suffering for those who love Him (Romans 8:28). Some moments deserve an audience. Jacob’s story deserves an audience. Joseph’s story deserves an audience. For the woman, Alderson’s story deserves an audience. Her story in prison was probably ordinary, as many ordinary women’s, but there’s a story beyond each ordinary Alderson woman. God is in the business of using the ordinary life and making it extraordinary, like the ordinary prostitute, Rahab, became a woman of extraordinary faith and an ancestor in the family line of Jesus, or the ordinary rosy-cheeked lad, David, to an extraordinary king of Israel with an extraordinary heart after God. God could also use an ordinary thing like a jawbone of a donkey, but as He breathed into it, it became an extraordinary weapon that helped Samson struck down a thousand Philistines (Judge 15:14–15). So people can’t dismiss the ordinary. Here, beyond the ordinary prison, Alderson, she found… From the days of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest to days in the dawn at the steepest hilly path, Hallelujah Hill, to strolling the Camp’s ample walks in the sunrises and sunsets that painted the sky like a canvas, it was a pastoral oasis in the heart amidst the captured town with 3andMe using the three Ps (patience, persistence, ion) and the equation of math-stering of the mind, not with the power of man but by the power of three: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God demonstrates the power of three throughout the Bible and the world and in

Alderson living. When God called Moses to lead his people out of Egypt to the Promised Land, God instructed them to build a tabernacle with a specific pattern, where he promised to dwell among them, by which His presence would be with them wherever they went (Exodus 29:45). The tabernacle consisted of three rooms: the outer court filled with natural light where people bring praises and sacrifice animals, the middle room with candlelight (Holy Spirit) and showbread (scriptures) called the holy place, and the innermost room, the holiest of holy places where total darkness and absolutely no natural light (sunlight) or manmade light (candle) could enter. The innermost holy place is where the Ark of Covenant is kept and the secret promise revealed. The reason for all these three courts is that the tabernacle was to teach us something of the nature of man, the nature of prayer, and the nature of God in the power of three. The Holy Trinity is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; no illustration can adequately explain a Triune Being, God, and she wouldn’t dare to attempt either. There is the infinite God and the finite human; therefore, God cannot be truly compared to or illustrated by anything. People can only know the truth of Trinity by revelation. “To who shall you like Me, or to whom shall I be equal?” (Isaiah 40:25). In fact, the world also reflects the Holy Trinity in some aspect. All space is triune in dimension: height, width, depth. Each dimension is distinct from other two, and yet all three are a part of the same and no part exists without the other. Time is the same. Time is triune: past, present, future; hour, minute, second. People cannot imagine one element of time without the other two, and yet three are always distinct from each other. Together, each of these three components makes up one basic entity—time. A human is also triune: body, soul, and spirit. People are created to master three worlds: the spiritual world as the world above, the psychological world as the world within, and the material or physical world as the world beneath. Understand these three worlds are related to the three parts of human nature— spirit, soul, and body—and people are more likely to live a victorious life as many wonderful truths will come into focus. At Alderson, the mountain nights were cold and were becoming darker and darker as the phases of the moon ed. The woman went on for weeks then months speaking only of the precautions she needed to follow in order to avoid

the battles between people. The internal war continued, and at times, the wind carried the bitter, sickly smell of the talebearer. Battles of the mind had been fought, and the wind reminded the woman that there was the language of omens, always ready to show her what her eyes had failed to observe. When man is rightly related to the material world with his body, he is healthy. When he is rightly related to the psychological world with his soul, he has joy. When he is properly related to the spiritual world with his spirit, he is holy. God’s plan is that ultimately, people are to experience all three realities: health, joy, and holiness (set apart for God). However, these three blessed realities, though they initiate from man, rest in the nature of the power of three—the work of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Alderson Camp was a pandemonium. First of all, everyone wanted to get issues at home resolved through the three-hundred-minute phone calls the BOP allowed per month and unlimited e-mails as they would be there. This is where it came in handy to be in tight with 3andMe. The rules of governing life: accumulate scriptures, and when the opportunity presents itself, good or bad, subject to the Word, then wait on the Holy Spirit, and pay attention to the language of omens. Life is all about timing. She learned to be a juggler in prison, juggling a very unconventional take on Alderson culinary traditions in staff dining, transforming a food culture rooted in Bureau of Prisons necessity into “haute” cuisine. Classic dishes at staff dining café created include vegetable spring roll, grilled lemon pepper chicken, golden garlic chicken, steamed garlic spinach, spinach with cherry tomato frittata, chicken dumpling soup, sweet and sour chicken, crème brûlée. She could see how her life reflects the juggling world. It was about catching one ball at a time while the rest were tossed in the air in a rhythm. No one could try to catch all three balls at once with only two hands or he would drop one or all of them. Instead of being simply a prisoner at the camp, she became a juggler who juggled her worries with scriptures, prayers, and praise, and with 3andMe. She had learned a lot about prayers while searching the horizon, looking for any language of omens through the flight of the ravens or the clouds. And she must it that prayer was probably the hardest part of her Christian life, not the work of the ministry. Jesus’s disciples often didn’t have a problem following Jesus to do the work of ministry; however, in the garden of Gethsemane, they

failed to stay awake and pray with Jesus multiple times. They didn’t have a problem following Jesus learning to do the miracle of casting out demons, but they failed to fast and pray before casting out demons from those who were possessed. By this time, the woman was convinced that as dark as prison was, where absolutely no comfort, no light, and no love from family and friends could ever save or promise her any hope of brighter future, Alderson also became her tabernacle, the innermost court, the holiest of holy places that brought her to the “drop zone” on her knees with 3andMe. Prison didn’t just add prayer to her life; it added life to her prayer. Prison taught her how to pray the “tabernacle prayer.” Just as the tabernacle is triune: outer court, inner court (holy place), innermost court (holiest of holy places), tabernacle prayer is also triune: outer court prayer (praise, thanksgiving, confession, pleading the blood of the Lamb), inner court prayer (praying in spirit and in tongues, listening for Rhema word, declaring Rhema word given), innermost court prayer (intimacy at the mercy seat, waiting, listening, and receiving revelation). She encountered again and again this tabernacle prayer. First, outer court prayer should be all about God, praising and thanksgiving Him for who God is, what He has done, and what He is going to do. God promises to dwell among His people’s praise (Psalms 22:3). When prayer lifts His name, it sets the right atmosphere for the Spirit of God to descend and dwell among His people. After praise and thanksgiving prayer, confession prayer of specific sins (be specific and not vague), thank him for the blood, empty yourself, and allow cleansing to take place as 1 John 1:9 said: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” This is all in outer court prayer, the first part of the tabernacle prayer. Secondly, inner court prayer consist conversation, involving both talking and listening to God. Pray in tongues whenever the Holy Spirit moves, then listen for rhema word. People’s prayer should be bold in the authority of God. Call on His Name, and continue praising His Name. Praise His character over one’s situation and need. When you need wisdom for the matter, call on His Name—my Wise Counselor. When need protection, praise the Father’s Names—my protector, my refuge. that bold prayers honor God and God honors bold prayers.

Sat in prison knowing the principalities of darkness were trying to attack her children without their mother home, with all her might and strength, the woman defended them, not by begging the bully to leave her children alone, but instead with the authority of a parent and daughter of a commander-in-chief, she commanded the attacker, the spirit of fear, insecurity, chaos, rebellious, depression, or confusion, to leave her children alone. She’d taken every right and authority of a child of God to defend and protect her daughters in the Name. Prayer with authority to defeat the acc is the same way using the authority of a parent to defend and protect a child from the bully. Pray with the authority of the Father and defeat the problem with the power of praise and the Name for every needs. Power of prayer should charge the enemy with the power of the Blood and the Word (people’s sword). Plead the Blood of Jesus, the power of the cross that will put dead to what is evil, what is not of God, and plead that same Blood and the power of the cross to resurrect dead situation to victory. Prayer in tongue also confuses the enemy and allows him/her to see new things, new ways to face the enemy, the way that does not come by brain power but by revelation from the Holy Spirit. When people pray in tongues, (in the spirit), they speak the heaven language that neither they nor the devil understand. Since the devil doesn’t understand the plan, he can’t spoil it. Also, when you pray in the heaven language, the languages spoken are not bound by natural earthly understanding or bound by the natural law of the universe in three dimensions but by the supernatural law of heaven. Supernatural law always trumps natural law. God’s law always triumphs over man’s law. The power of the Holy Spirit always triumphs over the power of man. Thirdly, innermost court prayer is the most intimate with God when sitting in total darkness in helplessness at His mercy, feeling His presence and His caress and His secret is revealed. At the merciful seat, God’s DNA (scriptures) is decoded and translated through revelation. Be aware that revelation might not be revealed every time when sitting at the mercy seat with God. It is up to God to reveal it or not. God is not like a vending machine wherein if I put in fifty cents, I will get this for that. By now, the woman was convinced that the power of three is an unbroken cord, a symphony that harmonizes to heaven as it is written in Ecclesiastes 4:12, “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”

The wand of power is always moving in a relationship of three: the mind works powerfully by the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind as one entity, the brain; one is truly blessed when he is physically healthy, mentally peaceful, and spiritually holy. In the power of three, prayers are powerful when they are under the authority of the Father, by the power of the Son, and in the revelation of the Holy Spirit. Over the horizon, there is majesty and mysticism in the mountains of West Virginia, the mystery of why the women were here. Horizons are not boundaries. Why did the woman try to rise? Because she knew what was waiting for her? Or because she had hope that there might be more to life than what she already knew? The day of the grave dream, her self-surrender to Alderson, was worth not forgetting, but moments of living in prison to know the power of three, to develop the company of 3andMe, and to rely on it to find one’s identity rather than 23andMe, to become powerful DNA whisperers, and to know the unknown were unforgettable. “You are almost at the end of your journey,” said the old king. “I congratulate you for you pursued your personal legacy.” “And you’ve done nothing about my conviction. I’m still here until now,” said the woman. “I thought you were going to teach me some of the things you said. A while ago, I studied through your book with a friend who had knowledge of your promises, and she said that I will learn of your deliverance.” “There is only one way to learn,” the old king answered. “It’s through action. Everything you need to know, you have learned through your journey. You need to learn only one thing more.” The woman wanted to know what that was, but the old king was silent as she was searching the horizon, looking for the language of omens. Quietly, she waited. As the morning light softly dissolved to dark, she knew sunrise was close at hand. The thin clouds that floated along the eastern horizon were beginning to change colors. The gray tones slowly gave way to pastel shades of pink and orange.

“Why are you operating in three?” “Because that’s what I am.” “And what went wrong when people tried to operate in 3andMe and were unable to do so? They were looking only for promise,” the old king explained. “They were seeking the treasure without wanting actually to live out the personal legacy.” “What is it that I still need to know?” the woman asked. But the old king continued having her scan the horizon with nothing written in the pastel pink and orange sky. And finally, the raven returned to the sky with there being apparently no pattern. “I’m the Trinity because I’m the Trinity,” he said as she was observing the raven circling the sky. “The raven flies because it is designed to fly, not to walk on the ground. Ravens circling the sky can’t be understood by reason alone. “My people are the lamp. The lamp is designed to light. Desire lights the fire, but duty keeps it burning. Keep your lamp burning. the lamp of the Genie—one lamp, three wishes, infinite possibilities. “This is what was written in the book of law, a direct age to the Soul of the Universe,” the old king continued. “The wise men understood that the natural world is only an image and a copy of the supernatural world. It is that through the visible objects of the world that people can understand his spiritual teachings and marvel at his wisdom. That’s what I meant by action. “Perhaps, if you continue to keep your lamp burning on the mountain, this would be the right time to study the best way to claim your promise and find your treasure. One lamp, 3andMe, infinite possibilities. You are on the mountain. So immerse yourself in it. Your journey will give you an understanding of living and the world’s infinite possibilities.” The woman listened to her heart and immersed in the mountain. “The heart knows all things, because it is where the Soul of the Universe resides,” she sighed.

Who Am I? (Isaiah 51:12)

I know that I’m harder to love sometimes, Like the dreamer boy, Joseph, Trotting in a beautiful multicolored coat. I thrashed out blindly in my dreams, And excited like nothing else needs waiting. Though I’m not bananas for You yet, But God, You know we are not through, And love you I do. Even through the days, When I played the harlot And loved my own ways, With the blessing of success in the world, I dared waste my call And fear of Your truth, I do. So I clung to the people of God, Hoping for contagious protection And household salvation, Faith by a hanging rope.

Now the day came to On the way to the desert. You brought me out of my comfort. Desperately, I snacked on manna all day. Oh, what breath! My new life’s taking my toll, But one thing surely, I’m on a roll. I must keep traveling ’Cause it’s hard to keep my feet from moving. When the sand gets so hot And it’s getting so hard, Though I know I’m heading toward the Promised Land, I find myself looking back to my Egypt, Where it feels safe and secure. The way I used to know, But know Your law, I do. Try to walk the road of holiness To triumph over sin. One battle in the holy war, I try to fight for You. As each day es by, I get so weary, worn.

Tossed around in the storm, My eyes are dry; my heart is numbed. Though my faith isn’t cold, My prayer is old. But I know You call me here, To the West Virginian mountain and alone with You, Inside the belly of a whale. Sit where they sit, and it’s plain to see. Alive to You, and dead to me. I better not fight another day, For the battle belongs to the Lord. Who am I that I should be afraid Of a man who will die or the son of a man, Who will be made like grass? I am Your beloved bride, Daughter of the Most High. It’s because of You my enemy smiles at me. What I have not been told, I see. What I have not heard, I consider. It’s because of You. Is all this real or a dream?

I feel so free I could scream. You put this eye in my ears And these ears in my heart. Well, I know the fear I had before Is gone now; I’ll never feel it anymore. For Your grace, by which I stand, Releases me from my prison beyond Alderson.

Chapter Twenty-THREE

Story Behind—Art of the View

Sometimes the best pictures happen on the periphery of the main attraction. You have to develop a sixth sense for when something special is about to happen and be ready. Anticipating and capturing that sense of “moment” can turn ordinary solutions into extraordinary images. —Bob Krist, National Geographic photographer

There’s always a story behind. Can people live to catch the story behind, the periphery of the main attraction, or can people stop being and living and let things by in dismissal? The woman lived the mountain for another day in silence inside the One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest convalescence, but then she saw a group of women in brown and tan khaki uniforms running through a flock of pigeons one afternoon, sending the birds exploding into the air. She stood right in the thick of it. How she wished to take its picture that gives the shot immediacy, energy, and a feeling of participation by the viewer—the periphery of the place. It was a sunny, breezy spring afternoon, and the woman was standing at the steps in front of the Waldenberg Building (recreation center) and saw an herd of women that spread like an apron from the foot of the lower to the upper compound, the “Camp Cupcakes.” She watched the women still talking about changes going to happen that the camp would be closed and all the women would be released home with ankle monitors soon. The “Inmate.com fake news” she’d heard since first arrived the place. People looked stressed and depressed. One of the main un-attractions about Alderson women that would wear people down if they were not careful to distance themselves from whom and what they should listen to.

On the other hand, the recreation center was filled with laughers, tale bearers, and noisy conversations, swarming with fans and their boos, Alderson basketball teams and players, which at that moment were playing Alderson Women Basketball season. The crowd was wild and filled with prison talks and profanity. At another time, she would have grasped a seat and ed the pandemonium. However, she was in varied readerships when she leafed through a copy of Travel and Leisure, Discoveries edition. She thought of her prison road and those Alderson moments on the periphery of the main un-attractions reflecting the many interests, personalities, and destinations of its images. As a photographer needs to develop a sixth sense to capture that sense of “moment” for a story behind the shot, so she wanted to develop sensitivity to the Spirit and anticipate to capture the vision behind the road she traveled that would turn ordinary circumstances into an extraordinary destination. According to Fortune Magazine, it stated that today, human capital is the most valuable capital in every company, no matter what industry it is in, and she inclined to agree. The prison industry must be a culture where human capital, the inmates, is the most valuable capital like any other industry. Federal prison in America is an industry, a ludicrous industry indeed. Unfortunately, unlike any other industry, a federal prison culture that values the prisoners and their contributions is minimal with a below-standard work ethic, minimal skill required, and out-of-date programs available so that oftentimes, the prisoners can’t rehabilitate back into the society as they should after finishing their time but have to return to doing the same thing that they did before to make it and end up reentering prison. The returning cycle seems to benefit the federal prison industry, and it became the human capital that the Bureau of Prisons valued, one other main un-attraction of the BOP. Finding herself immersed in the periphery of the main un-attraction, the woman took a deep dive into the church culture in Alderson originating from the chapel and a few good men and women: the chaplain, religious assistant, drug treatment specialist, volunteer men and women ministers, and some Alderson women. She also woke up to another periphery of the main un-attraction in Alderson, a view of the mountain capes from the walking ramp departing the chapel one day in the sunset; it hung like a perfectly framed painting. Walking the prison’s hilly paths daily reminded her of wandering through a history museum. Everything was exhibited, the beautiful and the ugly. She sensed God looking into her eyes and telling her to confess things she hid. Every life has a history of war behind it. Exhibiting only the beautiful sights of the history is like eating candy all day

long. Soon, people want something more savory, even spicy. She began to exhibit her internal war before God, confessing every sin she ed: bitterness, hypocrisy, unforgiveness, anger, loving money, harlotry, and deceitfulness. She felt tons of heavy burdens unloading off her. A freedom design is within reach to every believer through confession. Prayer became part of her and many women’s DNA on the mountain, because they were approaching the area where the most violent battles of the mind were being waged. As people moved along, the woman tried to listen to her heart. It was not easy to do so; in earlier times, her heart had not always been ready to tell its story, but lately, that wasn’t true. There had been times when her heart spent hours wandering in its sadness, and at other times, it became so emotional over the mountain sunrise that the woman had to hide her tears. Her heart beat fastest when it spoke to the woman of the road to fail better and slowly when the woman stared at the endless horizons of the mountain. But her heart was no longer silent, even when the woman and the old king had fallen into silence. Her heart was no longer deaf to the sound of silence. Why do we have to listen to our hearts? the woman wondered, when she stood on the steps of the Waldenberg Building observing the periphery of Alderson. “Because wherever your heart is, that is where you’ll find your treasure,” the old king’s voice whispered to her. One of the best pictures that happened on the periphery of Alderson was another story of a circle of friends and Jesus culture in the place. The ionate prayer was in many women’s DNA. Stacey, Michelle, Ms. Johnson, Christine, and the woman often gathered at the top of the upper compound, looking toward the visitation and the gate in the dawn and at the sunset, lifting their voices in praise to their Father and prayer for one another. People could feel that their voices lifted to the Father’s Name to a distant land with no limit, no boundary, and with ion and authority. The woman’s heart was agitated. It had its dreams, it got emotional, and it became ionate over women of the mountain. It asked of her, and it kept her from sleeping many nights when she was thinking about her husband and daughters. Well, that was good. Her heart was alive. She kept listening to what it had to say. An unconventional and mysterious story behind the periphery of the storm is architecturally designed to mix the future and present in remarkable ways. She

arrived at the idea of penning the “reality show” story behind prison in a manner contradictory to the Texas’s reputation for flashiness. The outsides of houses are always glamorous in Texas, but the insides are always disappointing. In the same token, many books tell glamorous, flashy fiction or nonfiction stories, but the aftereffects are often disappointing and destructive to the mind and spirit. Why not do the opposite? She wanted to tell people a story about a place totally unflashy, unglamorous at first sight, prison. But behind the prison, she discovered a secret garden with a surprise inside. As many women not only selfsurrendered to Alderson Federal Prison but self-surrendered to the Soul of the Universe, they wandered deep into the tree shade of faith and found the doors to the periphery of their main un-attractions—entrepreneur, evangelist, paralegal, cosmetologist, electrician, plumber, carpenter, writer—but most of all, the prisoners had been set free. The “free indeed” now turned prisoners of Christ, the unfathomed periphery. What appeared to be the story of a “felony” was only the front door that actually swung open to an predictably unpredictable relationship with the Soul of the Universe, where people could listen to the language of omens and let the tour guide, the Language of ion, show Alderson women the way in the place beyond. To her, the story behind was what she was destined to write, to reveal itself. The story comes with people as they live. What kind of story do people want to leave behind? The story is only as powerful as people live it. She understood she’d gotten to live it to tell it. She was in prison to live it to tell the story behind it as she discovered her personal legends: prostitute Rahab hanging on faith by the rope to save her life and her family; little no-name boy with two fish and five loaves of bread with the ion, discovering God’s mathematics; the zealous and tempered apostle Paul who thought he severed the Lord by persecuting God’s people; the temperamental Moses with stammering lips having to carve his own stone tablet on the mountain so God could inscribe His message on it; and the poor blind Bartimaeus begging on the side of the road until he heard Jesus ing by, and he refused to let Jesus just ing by, so he cried out to His Name and fought to get near the Name despite everyone scolding him not to bother Jesus, and he received his sight. She saw herself as a gardener planting generational seeds on the mountain for her daughters someday. Like a travel photographer developing her sixth sense, she learned to capture that

sense of moments when Jesus was ing by behind the shot with the pen. Alderson prison and the contradictory BOP couldn’t keep her in bondage, but faith was her lens with a wide angle to zoom out all distracted, unwanted objects and zoom in and focus on a distant blurry image (promise) to an up-close-andpersonal vision (picture). Felony and prison were her negatives. Yet the negatives must be developed for a beautiful image to come to present. Also, the negatives must be developed in the dark room with absolutely no light to bring about the snapshot. To the natural world, money is the currency man uses to get what he wants. To the spiritual world, faith is the lens the photographer uses to mix the future and the present to develop the negative into a beautiful image. Authentic faith living with realism is the currency that enables man to see the snapshot of the story behind his main un-attractions and bring it to existence. What good is it to bring what already existed into existence? As it is written…

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1)

So that the things which are seen were not made of the things which are visible. (Hebrews 11:3)

And calls those things which do not exist as though they did. (Romans 4:17)

In other words, faith is not magic. It is art of the view!

Chapter Twenty-FOUR

De Facto Family

You have to get to the point when going for it more important than winning or losing.

After arriving at the camp, the woman was getting much better at “going for it,” a mechanic replacing car tires with the hydraulic system for the first time ever after observing the garage boss teaching garage workers twice, a solo chef running staff at a dining café without any culinary experience before prison, a stammering lips communicator turned GED teacher aide, then art instructor, poet, and writer. There was tension, a lot of undercut, backstabbing, and entitlement among the prisoners in each department at every work detail. People would think Alderson women would be more humble and have more comion toward their neighbor because of their own brokenness and heartache in prison, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. People would smile and greet others, even some Christians, with their religious title worn like sheep’s clothing, and underneath they were the snake biting those standing in their way, spreading the venom of gossip, rumor, and a smear campaign against others. Prisoners organized themselves into somewhat formalized “society” relationships with other prisoners, motherdaughter pairs, the gay crowd, and the churchgoers’ clique. There were a lot of little clans at Alderson. The women relied on each other in the “society” relationship for attention, commissary food and crochet materials, laundry and clothes alteration businesses in the laundry department, affection, and advice. She was never quite getting used to socializing in prison, having a girls’evening-out prison party under the pavilion in the upper or lower compound or a microwave pizza party in the TV room in A2 housing, but she was much becoming an expert at microwave cooking, her signature infamous spring roll

and fried rice for her de facto A2 family, who had acquired a taste for Asian food. Her de facto prison “socials” revolved around bible study and a prayer group. It exemplified the simple ways that Christian family trees grow behind bars, like Joseph and the king’s butler and baker and Paul and Sylas trained into their destination in prison. Her immediate “sibling” in Christ was Allie, a Minnesotan and the actress in New York who was gifted with prayer like Hannah of the Bible, and Kim, the pro basketball player in Europe with the aura of authority like Debra in the book of Judges. By the automatic “woman” extension, like the effect of Mary Magdalene and other women at the empty tomb, Kim and Allie’s buddies became other siblings. The Bible study and prayer group grew more “disciples” throughout the camp, including quiet Ebony, the culinary lover with a dream of owning her food truck business after prison; the even quieter “Sweet” McConnell, nicknamed by her grandmother and aunt for her sweet, quiet aura; the voluptuous Puerto Rican, Dianna, a prayer-in-tongues warrior; Ms. Crazy Sense of Humor Jasmine, a walker who came a long way from barely walking when she first arriving the Camp to using a fast walker with a cane to becoming a caneless walker after twelve-plus months of praying; and finally, the Spanish-speaking with minimal English fluency and a wild laugh, Janet, who would grab the woman to pray with her any moment for her bone and breast cancer, from the chapel to the yard, during their fasting lunchtime. Janet was a nonbeliever until she came to Alderson and was often attacked by the “mocking laugh” spirit during her Spanish Bible study and prayer. Janet often laughed uncontrollably during the Bible study, and the woman would pray in tongues silently along with trumping on the guitar the praise song, “Hallelujah,” softly as she pleaded the blood to cast out the spirit of mocking God within her. Janet would immediately stop laughing every time. Dianna, one of the leaders in the Spanish-speaking Bible study and a well-versed English speaker who invited the woman to her Spanish group to pray with them, was amazed at the power of the blood and the power of praying in tongues that casted out the evil spirit. The woman took a particular fondness of Janet; they called each other “the sisters from another father and mother who never really understood what the other said.” All Janet ever wanted to be with the woman was to pray together for her bone and breast cancer healing. Janet prayed in Spanish, the woman prayed in English, and both started to pray in tongues when they ran out of words to pray. Janet would often described the vision she saw while praying, and the woman would sometimes share what she saw out of interpretation of the vision and prophesize over her friend.

Medical hold in prison was the worst nightmare of Alderson women but also a force of nature, adding people to her prayer circle, and Janet was one of the new disciples. Janet was diagnosed with breast cancer just a few months before her halfway house date. She had three diagnostic tests, an X-ray, a mammogram, and an MRI, which said she had a black mark on her right breast consistent with a breast cancer diagnosis, so she was placed on medical hold. She was recently taken to the hospital for outpatient biopsy procedure to definitively confirm her diagnosis of breast cancer and expected the result in two weeks. She had been meeting with the woman and Ms. Jasmine to pray for her healing and for her medical hold release every day during lunchtime in the chapel and in the evening at the pretty spot in the upper compound for quite a while. It was a hot summer day on the mountain, August 14, 2016, when Janet rushed to get Ms. Jasmine and the woman to pray with her at lunch before she was to report to the Health Service Unit (HSU) for the result of her breast biopsy. It was like sudden death to her because her halfway house date was in the next couple of days, August 18. If the biopsy confirmed positive, her medical hold would be inevitable, and she would not be released home to the halfway house on her scheduled date. Only God knows how long the BOP would keep her on medical hold as it was their license to keep people in prison as long as they determine it fit once one has a cancer diagnosis, despite the fact that the BOP’s health service is one of the worst healthcare providers to the people in the nation. The BOP doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, and dentists are not by law required to hold their current active medical licenses nor are they required to hold state license for the state they work, meaning that even when their medical licenses get revoked, suspended, or if they never the state board exam that is required for health care providers to practice in the state, these healthcare providers would still qualify to work for the government in federal prison and be hired by the BOP as licensed doctors and healthcare providers to the prison population, the less-than-human class of people. During their prayer, one hour before Janet’s appointment to the HSU, the Spirit released words flying out of the woman’s lips freely with scriptures on healing and deliverance. “God has cleansed you and removed what did not belong in this body and mind,” the woman declared, “the temple of the Lord. He asks if you are willing to be made new, to make a complete turnaround.” “Yes, Lord, I am.” Janet broke in tears as she replied decisively a short answer then continued praying in Spanish and in tongue. Suddenly, there was a force

grabbing the woman’s left hand and slamming it to Janet’s breast—pow!—as a hammer smashing the black mark on Janet’s breast into tiny millions of microparticles to be excreted out of her body by the blood. “It is gone!” declared the woman. “The black mark is gone. He cleansed you, and it is finished. The Son sets you free and free indeed, in the Name of Jesus! Now go on to the HSU and get your medical hold released. You’ll go home on your scheduled date. Jesus has done it for you at the cross two thousand years ago and today.” She didn’t know why or plan to say what she said in the prayers. She didn’t plan to use her hand and smash Janet’s breast with a “slam dunk” like that. It just happened. “Do you know that last night, I had a dream seeing a hand hit my chest like that during my sleep?” asked Janet to the woman as they were both in awe about what just happened in the prayers. “I didn’t understand what that dream meant, but all I could is a very large hand just slamming at my chest like what you just did.” Silently, the woman and Ms. Jasmine stared at each other in awe for a moment, knowing it is God who blesses some with vision, some with words, and others to interpret them. “Well, that’s good. Your vision is alive. Keep listening to what God shows you,” said Ms. Jasmine to Janet. During the next hour, the two friends, Ms. Jasmine and the woman, sat on the steel bench by the pretty spot waiting for Janet to see Doctor at the HSU, and watched the horizon. The woman’s heart began to speak of fear. It told her stories it had heard from the Soul of the Universe, stories of people who sought to find their treasure and never succeeded. Sometimes it frightened the woman with the idea that Janet might not find her healing or that she might remain in prison for treatment. At other times, it told the woman that it was satisfied: it had found love and surety of tomorrow. “My heart is a treason,” the woman said to Ms. Jasmine, when they had waited for an hour to hear from Janet from the HSU. “It doesn’t want me to go on in this place at times.” “That makes sense. Naturally, it’s afraid that in pursuing your faith, you might lose everything you’ve owned,” Ms. Jasmine answered, when Janet ran as fast as she could from the HSU to meet her two friends waiting at the pretty spot.

“It is gone!” Janet exclaimed ecstatically with a Spanish accent as she breathed heavily from the run of her life. “My breast cancer is gone. God did it for me.” The three friends high-fived and rejoiced together at the good news and sang “Hallelujah” praise until it was time for them to return to their respective housing unit for four o’clock standing count. The woman had seen a number of her de facto family coming to her for warriorlike prayers throughout the time living in the camp. Oftentimes she was scared because she had not much experience praying for herself or others for healing when in the outside, much less to be a prayer warrior for others now in prison. To her unexpected surprise and what God would do, she was already in prison, and what more could she lose if she would just go for it? Go for everything that God said He would do. Go for prayer. Anyone who came her way and asked for prayer, she just took a step of courage and prayed with them. She got to the point where praying for people was more important than a good prayer or a bad prayer, an answered prayer or an unanswered prayer.

*****

Why does God allow us suffer? The woman thought of the popular question that people in the outside, the prisoners, and believers and nonbelievers face at some point in their lives. Everyone was struggling in search for the satisfied answer to this question, and millions of people, like her, were left unanswered and with bewilderment. Nothing remains undiscovered, but there are neglected believers, as an anonymous antiquary stated, “Ninety percent of everything mankind has created over the centuries is being overlooked.” It is how easy and often for man to overlook 90 percent of everything God has done evidenced in the history of man two thousand years ago in the Bible through today. Unfortunately, like many, she overlooked 90 percent of her vision until there was no going back. Sitting where the prisoners sat, suddenly there was no going back for her. She could see with a clearer picture the type of faith that denies the productive role suffering plays in people’s lives, especially in so many believers in the camp and in the society today.

Four days later… After saying goodbye to Janet and watching her walk off the compound, Ms. Jasmine and the woman stood by the rock at their usual pretty spot and were quiet for the entire time until the BOP van taking Janet to the train station exited the prison parking structure and disappeared behind the right-turn curve to the street. The woman’s heart began to tell her things that came from the Soul of the Universe. It said that all people who are happy have God within them and that happiness can be found in the curves and crevices and the sediment of the rock of the mountain, as the rock climber said. Because studying the curves, the crevices, and the sediment of the rock was the only way to create new routes to the top, and the universe has taken millions of years to create it. And it also told people to rejoice in suffering because it’s good for developing their character (Romans 5:3–4). “Why did the Soul of the Universe tell us to rejoice in suffering, and why should we listen to it?” the woman asked Ms. Jasmine. “Because we will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if we pretend not to have heard what it tells us, it will always be there residing in us, repeating to us what it is thinking about life and about the world.” “You mean I should listen, even if it betrays my heart?” “If you know your heart well, it will never be able to betray the Soul of the Universe. Because the Soul of the Universe knows your dreams and wishes and will know how to deal with them.” “I guess my heart will never be able to escape from the Soul of the Universe. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say. That way, I’ll never have to fear an unanticipated blow like I am right here now.” “People all want character. In America, many people want to have character, though few are willing to go through suffering. The difference between American Christianity and Christianity in the rest of the world is believed to do with how each views suffering to be lifted from their backs. American Christians pray for the burden of suffering to be lifted from their backs. In the rest of the world, Christians pray for stronger backs so they can bear their suffering. That may be an oversimplification, but there’s a lot of validity to it.”

At Alderson, most prayers took place by asking God to deliver them out of prison rather than asking him for strength so they could walk through prison. It took the woman eighteen months to realize this reality, and she gained a different perspective about prayer. Surrounded with empty horizons, deceptive mirages, and shifting sand, the woman stumbled her way through the trackless desert of prison and encountered plenty of people who pointed out directions, which led to more confusion. The only thing for her was keep it moving and looking forward and looking up, away from every immediate circumstance in front of her. As tough as it could be for a Christian to walk the narrow street, it was also harder for prisoners to walk according to the Word in prison among the crowd of professional con artists mixing with the Washington DC swamp of the BOP. She asked the old king, “Do the scriptures, 2 Corinthians 1:3–4, say that the good which comes out of the suffering is the reason for people’s suffering?” “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of comion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4). If people believe this, then they confuse something more than results and purpose. They confuse God’s character and turn things around there too. He then becomes not the Father of all Comion and Mercy but the Father of all Judgment, not the God of All Comfort but the God of All Chastisement, who troubles his children in their comfort. The understanding of suffering was so important to the woman. It affected how she viewed God. And how she viewed God affected every area of her life, from how she worshiped, how she handled her incarceration and her storms, to how she helped her husband raising their daughters while in prison. The woman continued to listen to her heart as she examined her incarceration, crossed the hills and valleys, and studied the mountain. She came to understand her heart more, its dodges and tricks, and to accept it as it was. She lost her fear and forgot about her need to obtain a “get out of prison” free card, about her need to go back to the oasis because those afternoons praying with Janet and then saying goodbye, cheering on her breast cancer, departed her as she was leaving prison on her scheduled date. Her heart told her, “Most people are afraid of dying. I am afraid of not living. If I live a risk-free life, then I’m afraid that I don’t live,” and it was happy.

God willed the world that is as mysteries as it is majestic. She believed the old king ruled over that world, but she no longer believed he gave her prison. He only allowed it. Why? She didn’t know. She didn’t know the purpose of her suffering. But she did know the results. When she compared the woman preAlderson and the woman post-Alderson, there was no comparison. She used to see everything black and white; now she saw the shades of gray in between. She used to be dogmatic and thought there was an answer for everything; now she realized a lot of things didn’t have answers until the day Jesus returned and people would know when they are with him. She used to think she could fit God into her plan; now she knew she could only fit her plan into God. She could never put God in a box. His ways are too deep for any box to contain, too high for any plan of hers to fit and be deceived. She will always be discovered and exposed, and she will reap what she sows. She used to be selfdependent; now she depended more on the omens. She used to be preoccupied with her own needs; now she learned comion for the needs of others. She used to view Christ’s death on the cross as salvation for sins only; now she viewed it also as the power and authority in the cross to victory by obedience, not rebellion. Through prison, she had become more aware of His love. And she loved Him more as a result. Why does God make us suffer? There was no great revelation needed to convince her that she is a sinner. To the woman, the issue was no longer whether she had sinned to be put in prison or whether she had enough faith that brought immediate release for her to walk out the gate before what man said. The issue was not men’s character but the character of God. Is God the kind of God who gives people tumors when they sin? Does he strike man with sickness or calamities when he fails Him? Say, maybe glaucoma because people lust or coronary artery disease because people hate. Job’s friends thought so, according to the Bible. Job’s three friends tried to counsel Job with the wisdom of man, insisting to Job that he must have sinned, therefore the just and righteous God would allow these calamities to befall him. But God responded differently and in anger with the three friends’ foolish advice and said to one of Job’s friends, “My wrath aroused against you and your two

friends, for you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has” (Job 42:7). Let’s look at evidence from the Bible, for example. Jesus’s disciples were thinking like Job’s friends. When they came across a blind man, they asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus responded by saying, “Neither,” and then proceeded to heal the man (John 9:1–2). In moments of comparison like that, Jesus mirrored the picture of God revealed in Psalm 103:10–14:

He does not treat us as our sins deserve Or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, So great is His love for those who fear Him; As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father has comion on His children, So the Lord has comion on those who fear Him; For He knows how we are formed, He re that we are dust.

Is that the picture of a father who takes a rod to his children when they lose a jacket or gets a D in English? Is that a picture of the God who would keep you in prison longer because you don’t have enough faith? While all the thoughts about the madness of suffering were endlessly floating in her brain, well, a story from The Shack circulated, and she was reminded of what it said. He knew it didn’t matter whose fault it was, and you don’t play a game or color a picture with a

child to show your superiority. Rather, you choose to limit yourself so as to facilitate and honor that relationship. You will even lose a competition to accomplish love. It’s not winning and losing but about love and respect. Prison to the woman was not about whose fault it was but to facilitate and honor the relationship with her king and other women, about love and respect to her fellow women and their womanhood, her de facto family.

Chapter Twenty-FIVE

To Fail Better—Cheers to the Fall

The fiery red maple and amber gold sycamore leaves were already falling, coloring the entire chapel back hill and throughout the lower compound, which thrilled the woman with the promise, “Cheers to the fall” and “Change.” Cheers to the fall in Alderson was not exactly uncorking a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon to the autumn season as many people might think, though she did find fall was her favorite season, and one of the reasons was change. Color changes, temperature changes, and dying before new life springs up in the spring. Alderson, though, was not a dream vacation yet her “vacation” of a lifetime as she took off via penning, like flying the plane so low over the Safari desert she could really see the tigers, elephants, lions, and giraffes, each giant in the land beneath and in view vividly—her own giant “self,” greed, pride, impatience, unbridled tongue, and temper. In other words, prison was a freefall of her life. “How could you have ever experienced God catching you if it weren’t for the freefall that led to here, His arms opened wide? And how could you have experienced the freefall without the bottom dropping out of your life?” She was reminded of these teachings during Bible study at her church a while ago, and today, she lived it. Facing her imprisonment, the woman and her husband were feeling the enormous ache in their hearts for the sudden setback, the sudden change. They had missed the time with each other so much. For some time that brought them to now, they had sensed their relationship was growing farther and farther apart because of her co-dependent factor on everyone but her family and her stubbornness. To get through prison, she was determined not to let her five-year journey turn into a forty-year wandering in the wilderness like the people of ancient Israel with complaining and grumbling. “Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits behind his failure,” her heart said.

“We, people’s hearts, seldom say much about those treasures because we are afraid that we will have to suffer in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed in its own direction, toward its own fate. And unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them—the path to fail better, and cheers to the fall.” From then on, the woman understood her heart. She asked it, please, to never stop speaking to her. She asked that when she mumbled and grumbled her way out of the destination, her heart would press her and sound the alarm. The woman swore that every time she heard the alarm, she would not turn a deaf ear as she had done. To fail better. To what extent did she grab hold of the power, the breath, the amplitude of these words until she came to prison? She looked up the index at the back of her black leather book and searched for Scriptures about pain and suffering and failure stories of the Bible heroes. Came these verses that caught her attention and convicted her like no other before: “Let us run with perseverance the race marked for us” (Hebrews 12:1). “Endure hardship as discipline” (Hebrew 12:7). “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (Hebrew 12:11). God didn’t say hardship was discipline. It didn’t say God was leaving his children in the boat in the middle of ocean and without food and water to get them stronger, better survival skills. It said to endure hardship as you would endure your parents’ discipline. And how do people do that—it is by cheers to the fall as it is written: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance” (James 1:2–3). Prison, cheers to the fall, as it became the gate to discovering living less is more: innovation from minimalism, innovate to live and live to innovate. A while ago,

she ed that she felt the need for Urban Decay eyeshadow or Lancôme anti-wrinkle cream or True Religion pair of jeans, and she wondered how she was going to survive in the dry heat and the brisk winds of the mountain with barely minimal “woman necessities” in Alderson. The place was bare. All the convenient woman necessities while she was in the street emptied out all of a sudden. The flow of continuous wants seemed to stop abruptly. A life full of wants will be a life empty of needs; a life empty of wants will be a life full of needs. Recently, “Negative” Debbie, a depressed middle-aged coworker from staff dining, whose husband had left her as soon as she went to prison, complimented her skin and asked her, “What do you use on your skin to keep it looking fresh and wrinkle-free?” Other friends were curious with rumors that she indeed had some secret “Asian” skin care that withstood the stress, the heat, the wind, and the harsh water of Alderson. Her answer was simple. A simpler life: simple face washes with cold water every morning and night, a simple sugar scrub every three months, simple commissary vitamin E oil twice daily, and simple sunblock before leaving the housing unit every day, routine mealtime, and bedtime in prison. But the best anti-aging, anti-wrinkle skin care product of all time was simply prayer life. The brokenness and the need to overcome five-year grave sentence developed her into a prayer warrior. Prayer: the air she needed to live, the oxygen she needed to transform her food (manna) to energy for body function. Prayers kept her from negative thoughts. Without purpose and vision, life in Alderson would be a waste of time and a dead chapter to any women’s life. That day, she told all of her “anti-wrinkle” secrets to Debbie. And the coworker understood that the woman’s heart had returned to the Soul of the Universe, and she was curious. “How do I stay positive in a place like this?” her coworker asked. “Continue in the direction of the Pyramid,” said the woman, as she thought of what The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho said. “And continue to pay heed to the omens. God is at the top of the Pyramid. Man and his dream are at the base of the Pyramid. The closer man and his dream are to God, the closer he is to his dream as they’re heading toward the top of the Pyramid. Your heart is still capable of showing you where the treasure is.”

“Is that the one thing I need to find?” “No,” the woman answered. “What you still need to discover is this: before a treasure is realized, God tests everything that was learned along the way. God does this not because He is evil but so that we can, in addition to realize our treasures, master our failures better and discover that treasure along the way. That’s the point at which most people fail because we hold on to negativity and the past. It’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the mountain climber, one ‘fails to reach the mountaintop on the horizon when his head kept looking down.’” “How do we keep moving forward while our heads keep looking backward?” “Every search begins with beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victor being severely tested.” The woman thought of the wisdom from The Alchemist and the Bible she had been reading. It is called the principle of favorability and character development. When a person plays cards the first time, he is almost sure to win. Beginner’s luck. Because there’s a force that wants him to realize his personal legend; it whets his appetite with a taste of success. Then as he continues to find his personal legend, he will be severely tested. It does this not because it is evil but so that he can, in addition to realizing his dreams, master the lessons he’s learned as he’s moving toward that dream. That’s the point at which most people give up. He who does not give up at the midnight hour will see the break of dawn. When it said that God shall help her, just at the break of dawn (Psalm 46:5), it also meant that the darkest hour is inevitable just before dawn.” On the following days of Alderson, the clear sign of “cheers to the fall” was the longer the stay in the Camp, the more stories the design behind revealed. It was like entering a gate; the gate led to a door, then the door opened up to another door that she’d never suspected. She was not to turn down the adventure or challenge ahead, as she could never be quite sure when the next good opportunity would be presented. The prospect of the story designed behind prison for the woman appeared like the story of David in 2 Samuel 12. David betrayed God after God blessed him to become king of Israel. He committed adultery and impregnated Bathsheba with a son then murdered her husband, his top general, to cover up his sin. God rebuked David through the prophet, Nathan, and said He would strike David’s son with a

disease and the son would die. David fasted, prayed, and cried out to God night and day for his son’s life. But his son still died. After the son died, David got up and “cheered to the fall,” praising God and confessing his sins. David blamed no one and humbled himself before the Great King. God restored David and gave him another son with Bathsheba, Solomon, who became the wisest man on earth and blessed king of Israel following his father’s footsteps. David found his treasure along the lessons he paid that brought him to write Psalm 51. To fail better, David became a real good mood swinger. One chapter in the book of Psalms, he’s all depressed about life and the hardships he faced and would rather die, then the next Psalm, he’s all jovial like a young teenager in love. But the moment an anxiety attack came, David immediately swung it the other way by turning his heart to delight in God and praising Him. David knew he couldn’t deny his failure, and he couldn’t run and hide from it. But he could always count on the friendship he had with God “to fail better.” He needed to fail better with positive thinking by bringing God on board with him, much like when the disciples got Jesus on board with them on their boat and the storm subsided immediately. David didn’t overcome darkness with darkness but with light. Because the moment light turns on, darkness flees. It is written:

Do not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:21)

The story of David convicted the woman as if God manifested Himself through it. The woman and God continued across her incarceration. With every day ed, her heart became more and more silent. It no longer wanted to know about things of the future; it was content simply to contemplate the mountain and to pen the story designed behind from the Soul of the Universe. The woman’s life before Alderson was wrapped up in podiatry. Her life as a podiatric surgeon was wrapped in her hand. It wasn’t long before that hand gained the attention of the patients, hospitals, and Metro Detroit communities. When people chose a doctor to operate on their foot, she often was the one patients wanted, also for their families and friends. They wanted her for these reasons—her hand, her bedside manner, and her being a female doctor. It wasn’t long after that hand caught on, busy making money, and that doctor

title attracted the attention of different medical communities, the Vietnamese American community of metro Detroit and her church community, and that part of her that was her hero-hood became her livelihood, which turned her to prison. The ability to provide for her family and help the community was her goal foundation on ego instead of humility. It was based solely on what her hand could do given the need or the opportunity. The more surgeries that hand could perform or the more the community needed that hand, the more she felt worth. The more helps that arm lent, the more people wanted her on their side. When people came to her, this was the center of conversations: “Dr. T, could you please call to the pharmacy to refill my mother’s prescription for Motrin?” or “Dr. T, please allow me to have fifteen minutes of your time this Thursday to bring lunch to your office staff and introduce to you our new innovative minimal incision fixations for bunion and calcaneal surgery,” or “Dr. T, my mother got a prescription for her blood pressure. but her insurance didn’t cover the medication. Could you help my mother?” Podiatry was to her what an arm is to a tennis player, what legs are to a ballerina, what feet are to a soccer player. It was what people respected her for, for which they tried hard to earn her business. It was what made her valuable, what gave her worth, at least in the eyes of the world. Suddenly, podiatry was gone, like her arm had been amputated after she was convicted at trial and having to come to federal prison. Prison life was sure beyond her wildest imagination. How much of her had gone with it? How much of what people thought of her had gone with it? How would she ever make it through? She didn’t know, but she knew this: she should have grieved over the loss of her practice, her right arm. It would have been a natural thing to do. But she didn’t. Instead, she had a cavalier attitude about it. She smiled about going to Alderson and waved the arm in the air, saying goodbye to everyone as if she was going on to a vacation. Her humor was partially to keep her husband and daughters and her church family not too sentimental over her departure and partially a form of denial. She was afraid to face how she really felt about going to prison. All the people she had been so critical of for denying reality—the faith healers, the positive thinkers, the sunshine-all-the-time Christians—how was she any different from them? In time, her grief would surface. But in the beginning, she buried it deep inside where nobody could see it, so deep not even her could see it. There was a sense in which it was relief to have gone to prison. She had been in such pain over the

three-year period, the indictment to trial to sentencing to prison, and all the mental and financial drain had done a number on her. She was so weak and weary from it all that having her finally gone to Alderson was like dropping a ten-pound backpack after a twenty-mile hike the Grand Canyon. She felt released immediately. She also felt apprehensive and wondered how her daughters would react without their mother. How would they react when they see her for the first time in prison? Would they be afraid? Would they feel sorry for her? Would they have distance? Would they be embarrassed when they come to Alderson? How would her husband feel? What would he think about a woman with a felony record who lost everything and left with only empty handed and humble heart in brokenness? Would he still find her attractive, or would he be repulsed to see her in her tan and brown khaki uniform, in her naked self with her carved-up life? When her husband and two daughters came to visit her for the first time, she realized that all Grace wanted was to hug her mother. All Star wanted was to swing on a swing set with Mommy and play hula hoop on the lawn. All her husband wanted was to have his wife back. They didn’t care whether she had a prison record or not, whether she had her practice or not. As important as it had been to her professional life, her doctor title meant nothing to the people in her life who mattered the most. It was enough that she was alive and healthy and that she would be home again. She had a lot of adjustments to make to fail better as her life was designed beyond reach in prison. One positive adjustment—she didn’t have to talk or give orders and be in charge anymore. Instead, all she needed to do was listen and follow the orders. Following orders in a restrained tongue with precise schedules was her daily regimen. She ate on schedule, brushed her teeth on schedule, and wrote as part of her schedule. She was surprise how quickly she adapted, especially writing. It surprised her she didn’t get more frustrated than she did as switching over her left-hand occupation—penning and culinary. The woman and her heart and time had become friends, and neither one of them was capable now of betraying the other. She found she can do pretty much everything she didn’t think she could and loved what she thought she wouldn’t at

first sight. It just took some time. To fail better is to accept the challenge of defeat and not to despise the days of being small. Failure is only a setback to slow down, gather your strength, and build your endurance toward what you love to defeating what you don’t like. When her heart spoke to her, it was to provide a stimulus to the woman and to give her strength, because the days of silence there in the prison were wearisome. Her heart told the woman what her strongest qualities were: her tenacity in having not given up the promise God has for her and in trying to live out her personal legacy—to fail better—and her enthusiasm during the time she searched the “sixty-six books” bookstore. And her heart told her something else that the woman had never noticed: it told the woman of a new kind of faith she had not perceived, a functional faith. Her heart reminded the woman of the day when she believed in beginner’s luck and trusted in things that are “too good to be true” because she thought she had faith. But today, her heart said the opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is only trust in the natural, the possible, the outcome, her security, her home, or her job. It then reminded her of the story of a man with a shriveled hand who responded to Jesus’s call to stretch out his contracted hand, and immediately his shriveled hand was restored (Mark 3:4–5). “Notice how this man with the shriveled hand responds before he is restored?” her heart asked the woman. “Faith that waits until you can see the outcome before you act will activate nothing to happen. But faith that believes and responds will activate the manifestation of the outcome. With man, you have to see first before you believe, but with God, you have to believe first in order to understand and see. Prayer is the catalyst that actives God’s answers, not what changes God’s mind. When your prayer asks God only what is possible to you and your faith depends on the outcome, then you operate in the natural law and you insult God. God is supernatural, and He operates on the supernatural law. Do you have functional faith that bases on the outlook and not the outcome, that lasts from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday through Sunday, twenty-four seven, amidst prison you face? God specializes in turning what you went through to a silent sermon and wants to partner with you to write the story design behind and beyond. Are you willing to partner with Him?”

*****

No situation, however wretched it seems, but has some sort of comfort attending it. (Goldsmith)

Writing was an attempt to see herself more clearly as she was traveling through the road to fail better. She was here temporarily for a break of a busy life, far from her Detroit City suburban home. Changing her name to “Prisoner” had been a formal rite of age that was something she didn’t really feel comfortable acknowledging until eighteen months later. She did not realize any of the surviving notes dated from the first days of her incarceration, in which she was then describing the right note for the much later “rhapsody in blue” for her book, the project of the story design behind and beyond prison. From then, it appeared that she had a better vision. From a very early moment in prison, she could draw impressions and visions with words that read as if they were moving or alive—and the perspective was hope. But nowhere in her imagination was there a single line drawn in obedience to an idea or knowledge in literature, however raw, of limiting to natural law. There was action, silly, innovative, but there was not even the germ of a feeling for design, and there was a shocking ignorance of common sense. Alderson appeared as a city on a hill with a wooden sign stuck on posts pointing to the road leading to Jesus, the road to fail better, and there was nothing to show that either she or any prisoners knew the direction of any road in the city where they traveled daily. This absence of common sense was the beauty. Now that she came to think of it, it was characteristic of childhood. That was the first truth she ever learned in prison. What the world failed to do, the Language of the Universe did. It made her aware of the world, not indeed as a storehouse of forms and colors but as something beyond—dewy, fresh, mysterious. She did not think the impression was very important at the moment, but it soon became important in memory. As long as she lived to fail better, the vision of her prison would reveal something of an artist painting her art, and a mishap occurred. But instead of being consumed by the error of the painting, she viewed it as something to be developed into the painting of her art, and by the time she finished it, people would see only how alive the story in the painting was and not even notice the mistake that occurred. The vision of her prison was different than merely being incarcerated and a big failure at this stage

of her life. What mattered was seeing, the ability to apply the imagination in the Language of the Universe to almost any situation. As long as she lived in the contradictory and corrupt BOP environment, the absence of common sense was the beauty of the kingdom of heaven released on earth, which would retain something of God’s principle, the supernatural law of “the little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” A child does not yet develop much world common sense to bind things of the world. Since the children can lose things on earth, God can lose in heaven as it is written:

Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthews 18:3–4)

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you lose on earth will be loose in heaven. (Matthew 16:19)

Every day, there was what she called “city on a hill”; that was the remnant of a handful of women in prison whom she noticed unpopular and unattainable. They were not very far off, but they were, to unbelievers, quite odd. They reminded her that her real life—or what memory reported as her real life—was increasingly one of solitude. She had indeed plenty of people to talk to: her family, her friends, a few of the prisoner staff who showed her grace and mercy because they themselves knew the Soul of the Universe and understood the Language of the Universe, but solitude was nearly always at her command, somewhere in prison or somewhere at home in Michigan. She had now learned to express her solitude through the pen. What drove her to write was the extreme vocal clumsiness from which she had always suffered, and it was one hard lesson. She learned one of the prime reasons that brought her to prison was her sincere conversations with “eager to please” persons, with her business associates and the federal government. She attributed it to a physical limit which she had inherited from her father; she was

too direct and not politically correct enough. But whatever the cause, nature had laid on her from birth an utter incapacity to get much anything in life with her lips. Today, sitting in prison, it was pen and paper that became her tongue. She could still speak the Word or pray as good a lay clergy as ever in a small group, but with the church establishment or religious elite, she had always been unattainable. She longed to show the world that the Language of the Universe as alive and real as the oxygen people need to breathe although they don’t see the air. Many attempts of speaking the Word without compromise she’d pursued, only to turn into hopeless disappointment and her in tears. As a last resort, she was driven to write instead, about the reality of the world beneath the Word wherein she was being itted. “People can do more with the Road to Damascus in a story than with the best speech about the Road to Damascus that was ever spoken in a large crowded stadium,” her heart said to her. She soon staked out a claim to Alderson and made it her writing hub. Pictured with her pen and papers and books always at hand, like a travel photographer with his camera, film, and flashlight, there she nailed the scriptures on the roads to fail better. And she ed staring at her prison in disbelief. Could it be that even after all that had happened, she still thought only of herself? Was she still treating the Word of God like she would treat a good sermon to be preached, to ask God to do things for her yet be only a hearer and not a doer of the Word? For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror. For he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks unto the perfect law of liberty and continues in it and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the word, this one will be blessed in what he does (James 1:23–25). Perhaps Jesus didn’t rescue her from prison so the greatest sermon of her life would be what she went through. What she went through proves the power of God—the silent sermon. Would she make Satan sit by her respond to God’s Word as what she went through, becoming a doer and not a hearer only? The road to fail better was a perfect opportunity for her to be a doer of the Word and test how it was the perfect law of freedom to make her into a photographic

novelist of the story design behind and beyond—the silent sermon. In electroacoustic pop, rock, and other kinds of music, a loop is a repeating section of sound material. Short sections of material can be repeated to create ostinato patterns. Longer sections can also be repeated: for example, a player might loop what he plays on an entire verse of a song in order to then play along with it, accompanying himself. When her life was stacking the loops from August 2, 2011, to Easter of 2015—indictment, a guilty verdict at trial, sentencing to prison, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeal ruling—her conviction and sentencing remained “stayed,” and there was no retrial or resentencing as the appellate judge decided that the trial judge’s error was minor enough and her sentence was already below the guideline. The woman got panicked. Five years of prison was a surety now. Her case was dead. Her appeal was finalized on April 28, 2015, her first prison Easter. From that moment on, she was determined to stop the loop and became mum. But God gave her the new loop: prison to praise—the road to fail better. God might have started the new loop but she got to finish it. It meant that the heart had gotten to do best what she could and while it could. It was the sermon she taught to herself that finished the new loop, not the sermon she heard loud and clear every morning or every Sunday. It was the silent sermon of beginning the new loop she never knew—freedom in the Word, the perfect law of liberty. “But he who looks unto the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the word, this one will be blessed in what he does” (James 1:25). “What more facility can fall to creature than to enjoy delight with liberty?” A quote by C.S Lewis that she delighted to agree with, and there it shaped her freedom in the perfect law of liberty—the Word. Here, her silent sermons were written and illustrated with enormous expected pain yet not without unexpected joy. They were an attempt to combine two chief literary pleasures: picturesque reality and knights in armor of God. It would be clear that at this time, at the age of forty-three, forty-four, and forty-five through forty-seven, she was living almost entirely in her vision, or at least that the visionary experience of those years seemed to be more important than anything else. Thus she ed over the days in prison (of which, nevertheless, she retained very painful memories) as a thing of her ; if it could be cut out of her past, she wouldn’t be almost nearly the woman she is. But vision was a vague word, and she must made some distinctions. It might mean the world of reverie, daydream, and wishful filling

fantasy. Of that she knew more than enough. She often pictured herself cutting a superhero growing up. But she had to insist that it was a totally different activity from penning To Fail Better. To fail better was not a fantasy at all. It was not about the characters it contained. It was about the Soul of the Universe and not her stories but His-story. You cannot amputate your history from your destination. How much she delighted in the vision that came by the quote from Beth Moore, an evangelist and the author of the Esther Bible study course titled, “It’s Tough Being a Woman.” A vision is essentially different from a daydream; if some fail to recognize the difference, that is because they have not themselves experienced both. Anyone who had would understand her. In her vision of prison, she was training to be a “fool” journalist, not like the “savvy” mainstream media journalists from CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, etc., who report only the narrative they want to push on the American public, filled with deceiving headlines from either facts that are twisted out of context and far from truth or from their mysterious unnamed sources (most later proved to come from madeup, imaginary sources) which all constitute of deceiving people from the truth, creating division, and spreading hatred—fake news. Note well, a journalist, not a novelist or a poet. Her visionary world was full of interest (even in adversities), humor, parable, reality beyond, and character, although there was some poetry but no romance nor designed by drama, in it. It was almost astonishingly a documentary as raw as a reality show. If people use the word vision in a third sense, and the highest sense of all, this visionary world was not imaginative. But certain other experiences were, and now the vision had been much better done when she looked into the Word, the perfect law of freedom that allowing her to live what she could see and continue in it. Everyone must tell his own story. And she now tried to record them. The first was itself the promise that came in a vision in the Language of the Universe. She stood beside a winding ram by the chapel on a fall day, looking down the golden orange-red landscape spreading down the slope across the river and the railroad, freely climbing up reaching the abundant, distant hilly meadow to the horizon, then it suddenly arose in her without warning and as if from a depth not of years but centuries, the truth of that earlier day at the old house when Abraham saw a vision and brought it to reality. Abraham believed in the Lord and went outside; he looked to the horizon toward heaven and counted the stars. Whatever he was able to see and number, they became his as promised by God (Genesis 15:1, 5–6).

The woman watched the exchange between the Word and its perfect law of liberty that brought the vision to reality with fascination: Abraham and his descendants, Joshua and Jericho, Jacob in middle of nowhere, empty-handed, to “now here” in prosperity and posterity. “Your eyes show the strength of your soul,” her heart said to her. “You’ll dominate those stories by the pen with the way you look at them.” That’s true, the woman thought. She had noticed that in the midst of the multitude of warrior women at the Camp, it had been difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over her. An “enormous bliss” of Eden came somewhere near it in the vision—the clumsiness of her tongue was rearranged to the pen of a ready writer. It was more than a sensation, of course, of desire, but desire for what? Not, certainly, for just writing a number-one bestseller book, nor even (though thought came into it) for her own future—and before she knew what she desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. It had taken prison, and in certain senses, everything else that had ever happened to her was insignificant in comparison. The enormous bliss of Eden was possible because of the vision birthed by the perfect law of liberty in the Language of the Universe. To experience the perfect freedom, one has gotten to continue in it, continue to live out the Word to see. It is about penetrating the Soul of the Universe and discovering the treasure that has been reserved for her. When continuing in the Language of the Universe, it was like entering a gate that opens up to a door, then the door opens up to another door that leads to freedom to translating the Language of the Universe to vision, which transforms to reality, like an alchemist transforming lead to gold. With man, you would need to see before you can believe, but with God, it is contrary. You’ve got to believe and continue in what you believe, then you will see and be transformed. Without believing, you will never see. Everything in the universe evolves. Without faith, there’s no vision, and without vision, people perish. Therefore, without faith, people perish. Without faith, she sure would perish facing prison. But with faith, prison to promise became the destination she was working from. “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint” (Proverbs 27:18). The second glimpse came through the relevance of the Language of the Universe and through it only, though she loved to record the story, the emotion, and the

imagination. But the true inspiration of the book was merely its undeniable realism and applicability of the Word and its perfect law of liberty to whichever circumstances people were going through—silent sermon. She’d not want to describe the book as an idea of the autumn. It sounds fantastic to say that one can be enamored of a season, but that is something like what happened, and as before, the experience was one of intense desire. And one went back to the book not to gratify the desire (that was impossible—how can one possess autumn?) but to reawaken it. And in this experience also there, was the same surprise and the same sense of incalculable importance. It was something quite different from ordinary life and even from ordinary pleasure; something, as they would now say, that was in another dimension, the work of supernatural law by the Holy Spirit. The third glimpse came through photography. She had been fond of an Italian novelist photographer, Sergio Larrain, whose grace transferred through his camera style as a traveler. Every photograph of his has a story. It was Larrain’s graceful way for the stories and the rhythms of his photography. Like Sergio Larrain was fond of his camera, so was the woman to a pen. She became a novelist photographer through a writing instrument, trying to capture silent sermons as what she had gone through for the book project, “To Fail Better.” Her vision of this book came from a state of grace according to the perfect law of liberty that would leave the readers from all different walks of life, spiritual and nonspiritual, Christian and Muslim, Buddhism and Hinduism, atheist and agnostic, the experience of traveling somewhere in the stories as they read it. They would soon find that reading the series of silent sermons, “To Fail Better,” would be like reading their own as what they went through, and like traveling somewhere once can be wonderful, going to a place again and again allows people to have a deeper experience. Travel not only inspires creativity, but it also enlivens people to share their discoveries with others. She wished to leave the reader of the book with the experience of travel in it. Unlike Larrain’s rhythms of his photography, quite different from such pleasures, and like a voice from far more distant region, the heaven, there came a moment when she idly turned the pages of her writing and found the unrhymed photographic translation of “To Fail Better.” She knew nothing much about photography and writing, but she was uplifted into the huge regions of northern sky. She desired with almost sickening intensity something to be described—the reality show of faith that unleashed the story designed behind and beyond failure. The woman found herself in the very same moment of failure the unexpected joy of farewell to fear of failure and the welcome to fail better.

The reader who finds these three episodes of no interest need read this book no further, for in a sense the central theme of the journey is about nothing else. For those who are still disposed to proceed, she would underline the quality common to the three experiences: it is that of an unsatisfied desire, which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. It is called joy, which is here a reality and must be distinctly distinguished both from happiness and from pleasure. Joy has one, and only one, characteristic in common with them—the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, joy, unlike happiness and pleasure depending on external stimulus or circumstance, has in its quality as being unchanged almost equally well even in unhappiness or grief. Anyone who has tasted it would ever, if it was in one’s power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then, joy is never in men’s power, and pleasure often is. Joy is in His power. The woman soon had the shock of discovering the one principle of hell was “I am my own” (George MacDonald).

*****

The fields, the floods, the heavens, with one consent Did seem to laugh on me, and favor my intent. —Spencer

Seated at the crossroads of a criminal city or Jesus culture, it depends on how desperately broken and needing a Savior other than “I am my own” one is. When eyes had crossed the mountain range that extended along the entire horizon many moons, they said that Alderson was the historic personal legendary landmark where women experienced a wild ensemble of their most ironic, true essence of spiritual awakening. For the woman, however, destined to prison apart from podiatry was a different one to grab. But finally, a reality she faced, she felt no reason to blame anyone or

the circumstances. Because though life is not men’s choice but God’s, living is theirs. Every day, people face decisions they have to make to live their lives. She knew that she was not the product of circumstances; she was the product of her decisions that leaded to prison. Now living a life in prison, she felt no regret thinking of podiatry because she’d not taken her blessed professional career for granted. Yes, practicing podiatry was put to a halt for her now, but that career was fulfilled the first day she put on doctor-patient relation and dressed in a white coat and surgical scrub. The rest—the Peru to Kenya short-term medical missions, the Metro Detroit Rescue Missions, the Metro Detroit Senior Citizen health fairs, the annual Vietnam Veterans “Thanksgiving” Fundraising Dinners, and two Vietnamese church plantings in metro Detroit all fulfilled her professional career throughout fourteen years practicing medicine. To understand some of the relief that began to come into her life amidst prison, she would need to take the readers back to the time of her pre-Alderson. She couldn’t really grieve when she heard the news she could face prison should she decide to take it to trial and get convicted. Frankly, she didn’t think either she or her husband knew how. It took time to grieve, time to let the reality settle in, time to let the memories float to the surface and do their work. But between preparing for trial, continuing work, planting church, community activities, and family, there was no time. Another reason there was no time was because their lives became more public in their community and the church community after her indictment. And with that territory came a certain amount of chaos. Her husband and she were not people who do well with a lot of chaos around. He was very organized and meticulous. He liked to be on top of things, to be in control. She was not good organizing, but she did like things neat and in order. During two years awaiting for trial, besides her routine work schedule, she had no routine, no well-organized schedule in her life. She was overwhelmed by the phone ringing in the handbag and by the activity that came pouring in from all directions. She found herself swamped with all sorts of requests. A church brother would ask her to come to the hospital to pray for his healing from cancer, and she’d somehow fit it into her schedule. A member from her community would ask her to a cause she was promoting, and she’d feel she had to say yes. She felt pulled in four different directions. It was like being drawn and quartered by all these wonderful opportunities to do good, but they were also opportunities to keep her busy enough to not have time to grieve about the

federal indictment ordeal. She just couldn’t say no to people who needed her help. To handle all the demands on her life, she put herself on a go-mode. Getting the house ready for church small group gathering, eating on the run, rushing to the Bible study at church, meeting this person, answering that phone call, etc. Go, go, and go. She was constantly on the move like a revolving door. But people can only go like that for so long before it starts to take its toll. And they are digging into their emotional pits, paying that toll by time. When people are under a lot of stress, they become oblivious to the hurts of those around them. And there were people right under her nose who were really hurting, her husband and two daughters. Her husband was going through a traumatic time because she had taken in most of the works of the church, had even taken in a young woman, Vanessa, a church sister needing help with a place to stay, but living under the same roof together strained the relationship. Her husband felt smothered whenever he was at home. She did ask her husband; she told him God put it on her heart to help Vanessa. But she didn’t take his feelings into consideration or think about the amount of pressure he had been under. She just did it thinking putting God first in everything is good. She saw a church member who needed help and figured they were the ones to give it. Josh saw differently. She couldn’t believe how long the moment of her self-righteousness had gone on until something great in her life had to die, a successful career had to be stripped away so she might cross over the thoughts and ways of self to total dependence on God and wait on him before acting on her own. By the time she was through with the first year in Alderson, she had been worn out completely. During this time, her husband had to carry the load for both of them, doing the role of both father and mother to their daughters. She tried to make his load lighter. Since she liked to care for her family and see things neat and orderly, she would get frightened when she heard all the overwhelming difficulties and issues in the house minus Mom. To keep her from worry to death and having to be in charge over things in the outside that she had no control, she would have to turn to the Word and prayers to look for ways to fail better.

No matter how busy she kept herself throughout the day, worry still seemed to find its way to creep into her mind. She thought it had something to do with the lack of control she had over her life. The three Cs of being a successful doctor are confidence, concentration, and control. As a foot doctor, it was her job to control the patient’s diabetic foot infection, whether it was an empiric antibiotic therapy or a radical incision and drainage surgery. It was also her job to control the tempo of the operating room (OR), the serenity of the OR staffs and patient. If she was struck in an open mission field, in the middle of nowhere in Kenya, she could do it, no problem. But suddenly, for the first time in her life, she had no control. And it scared her. That was why she prayed harder. The overwhelming challenges at home that her husband had to carry alone was too painful a reminder of the issues in her life that she couldn’t control. It was as if her life was a series of reconstructive operations, one trauma after another. There was no groove to lock in to. And there was no recovery room to take her out of the OR (operating room). Had it not happened, her residing in prison for few years, she wasn’t willing to give total control of her life to God. Was it the peace of God which sured all understanding that she experienced during these years in the journey of isolation? Or was it simply the pain suppression, or the justification? God had stood with her so miraculously from the early teenager days escaping the communist regime of Vietnam to become a legal immigrant with her mother and three siblings to America with one hundred dollars to their name to a successful podiatrist of fourteen years in private practice to a blessed married woman to a faithful husband and two blessed healthy and wonderful daughters that she cherished, but the most miracle of all was her born again Christian in 1999. And now He seemed to be withdrawing, abandoning her in prison. What was he doing? She never had the answer until after hopping to prison and continuing in it in the Language of the Universe. There it came the discovery of penmanship, a visionary writer of His story. Sometimes the thing people go through has nothing to do with what they do wrong but has to do with will they do right? What’s next? What will people response? What happen is not the devil but the decision. What decision is she

going to make for what she is going through? Is she trying to make sense of things by reason? People can’t fight the devil with reason. They can’t get to their destination with reason. The haters are going to hate, hate, hate like when the snake comes out to bite apostle Paul in the midst of the fire and people tried to reason why. Maybe it is because Paul is evil and a murderer. It is written: Paul gathered a pile of brushwood, and as he put it on the fire, a viper, driven out by the heat, fastened itself on his hand. When the islanders saw the snake hanging from his hand, they said to each other, “This man must be a murderer, for though he escaped from the sea, justice has not allowed him to live. But Paul shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects” (Acts 28:3–5). Here’s the question to ask about one’s decision when facing the storm, the fire, and one’s own failure: does he operate by reason or by revelation? What’s his decision going to be? The woman had gotten to remind herself, “Don’t operate by reason. Operate by revelation.” Operating by reason, Abraham slept with Hagar, Sarah’s maid, and begot Ishmael, who ended up becoming one of the desert people living in the desert. But operating by revelation, Abraham became a father at one hundred years old to Isaac and a father to all nations. Operating by reason, the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for forty years and never entered the promised land until Moses was dead, but operating by revelation, Joshua led the people to the promised land and took down Jericho wall. These were fascinating stories to the woman, partly because they were so often reflected and relevant in modern day lives. They also intrigued her because people know so few of themselves by reason until their “Moses” must die before they can begin to operate by revelation and enter the promised land. So did she all these years until God stripped away her success and replaced it with prison that she sat where they sat and began to operate by vision instead of reason. And until then, she learned a bloody truth: sometimes we don’t need a reason as to why we go through the storm, but we need reassurance that God is still on the throne. And when something evolves, everything around that thing evolves as well. She didn’t really know why must she go to prison, but she was sure it wasn’t the devil.

It was the decision! Could God love her that way, even when she stumbled all the way to the bottom in prison? She loved how C. S. Lewis described that God loves us like the way a father loves his toddling child. Watching His toddling child having the will to walk yet falling again and again, not only is the father pleased with His child’s will but also its progress. It’s never about people’s failure; it’s about people’s will and progress to fail better.

*****

Feeling so inadequate in prison and in the face of her family’s extreme suffering propelled the woman turning to the Bible earnestly. And there she learned there are many languages spoken by things, but there was only one Language of the Universe that speaks all things. Language is not designed so man can read; it is designed so people can communicate. There was a time when, for her, the Bible was nothing more than God’s language that teaches His children His will and His ways. Then sitting in prison, it was plain to her vision that the Bible is not God’s language for her to read and know about God. It is the language for her to communicate with God. The Bible is not for man to read through but to pray through. She had only to close her eyes to see if she chooses, sometimes whether she chooses or not, a vision of joy as C. S. Lewis described would appear before her: The phosphorescence of a ship’s wash, the mast unmoving against the stars through the water is rushing past us, the long salmon-colored rifts of dawn or sunset on the horizon of cold gray-green water, or the astonishing behavior of land as you approach it, the promontories that walk out to meet you, the complex movements and final disappearance of the mountains further inland. Finally, there was hope on the horizon. People’s life is the ship’s wash. Trial and tribulation is the water rushing past them. Trouble that came is just the ebb and flow of life, which is not to last forever, but it will . No matter where they go or how far they are from the shore, God’s eyes always watched over His people. Nothing people can do to stop His promise for them just as the mast unmoving against the stars. And as

one keeps moving while fixing their eyes on the Promiser, Jesus will show up and meet them just where they are. The further they continue deeper in the present, not the past or future, their mountains will disappear, and finally, hope on the horizon arrives as they’re ashore. Certainly, the vision of joy was demonstrated as a result through relationship between man’s will and God’s love and faithfulness. As she pondered upon vision of joy and relationship, the woman realized she’d always thought that anyone who read the New Testament in the Bible should have realized how great faith the apostle Paul must have had and what an insurmountable love he’d demonstrated for God that he was willing to go through so much suffering for Christ that brought forth most of the New Testament. Today, sitting in prison, a vision of joy awoke her. She realized Paul was not the subject of love here, but Jesus was. What Paul had was the will to walk with God. God chose him to be the apostle, but God did not make him. It was Paul’s free will once he heard God’s voice calling to him on the road of Damascus. So where does God as the subject of love exactly fit in this picture? Jesus loves Paul so much that He sees him beyond his action. Jesus does not choose Paul because he’s the saint. Rather, it is quite contrary. Jesus meets Paul where he is at—the zealous hater of Christians and the powerful persecutor and murderer of God’s people on the road of Damascus for that very mission. It wasn’t Paul who was faithful, but God was. Not only did God choose Paul, but He also gave him the gift to fight a good fight, to run a good race of faith. Who could chose an undeserved person like Paul to be the great apostle but Jesus? Why? Love is the reason.

*****

Though her relationship in prison began from an identity of taste on a particular point, Alderson women and she were sufficiently hunger for the vision, hunger

to fail better to help one another. In the beginning, there hung over this image an atmosphere which she disliked as much as she ever breathed, a blend of the macabre and the weakly, wretchedly, and hopelessly pathetic—the dreary miasma of the pagan Hades. Alderson’s life was the opposite of her home. Nevertheless, her life in prison was almost as silent as her life at home was busy. The very qualities, which had previously deterred her from prison taught her to embrace as its charm. Hitherto, her feelings for nature had never been more romantically appreciated. She attended almost entirely to what she thought inspiring, wild, or eerie, and above all to distance. Hence mountains and clouds were her especial delight; the sky was and is to her one of the principal elements in any landscape. Such were her outdoor delights before she came to prison, and all these here it shared and confirmed. And in her search to fail better, prison taught her to see other things as well. She said to Alderson, “You shall have me on a certain date, not after. I will die in your wars if need be, but till then, I shall live my life. You may have my body but not my mind. I will take part in battles but not talk about them, about people, things, or what I will do tomorrow except about revelations. She had seen enough of the self-torturing temperament in prison. Prison may have my battle, but God is my commander-in-chief, she exclaimed. No doubt that a boy who is unhappy at school inevitably learns the habit of keeping his future away. She could hardly regret having escaped the appalling waste of time in Alderson, which would have been involved with talking about people, about things, about the “prison war” news, or taking more than an artificial and formal part in conversations about the war. To speak without full armor of God or good map s of fighting, which were distorted before they reached the unit head and further distorted before they left her and then “spoken up” out of all, recognition by “inmate.com” (fake news from inmates), to strive to master what will be contradicted the next day, to fear and hope intensely on shaky evidence, is surely an ill use of the mind. Another ill use of the mind seen in today’s America among nonbelievers and the liberals as well as, sadly to say, among cardinal Christians will be demonstrated through the “Tale for Success” article, by Steve Forbes, an editor-in-chief of Forbes, a business magazine. Society today promotes perception as reality, feeling as truth—a prescription for

catastrophe. What’s the tale of success in today’s America? One of the most pernicious ideas polluting society understanding and policymaking is that society is a mechanism, like a computer, an automobile, a train, or a power plant, something that can be manipulated, guided, or driven. Commentary is littered with such phrases as the society “is overheating” or “needs to cool off” or “is tired” or “needs a jolt” or “could use some stimulus.” The steering is bigger government—more government regulations, more government-controlled media, more government-controlled healthcare to control the economy, making sure it hums along at a controlled speed, going neither too fast nor too slow, neither too conservative nor too independent. It’s all preposterous. It’s a principle of socialism. And this is what Herbert Spencer, an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist, had to say about socialism: “All socialism involved slavery. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another’s desires.” The result of interventionist government policies does harm, and the question is, How much? Societies aren’t machines. Societies are made up of people, a collection of individuals, working singly or in organizations in free will. You can add up—or at least try to do—what they turn out, in of products and services and trends. But that hardly means you can control what all these people—billions of them—are going to do. What government wants to do is influence the environment in which this hum of activity takes place with the key variables: taxation, monetary policy, government spending, and regulation. In almost all instances, the best prescription for the health of our life is “less is more.” So is our economy. So is our quality of life. Catastrophic deception by overpowering government’s ideology of the Democrats elites today poisons the society and skews the people’s liberty and the freedom of speech as happening spectacularly under a politically correct era and the swamp of DC corruption. The Democrat lawmakers have treated the ups and downs of a society, of an economy like an illness, something to be cured instead of like a free market’s normal ebb and flow, where what people might want is created and what people don’t want is destroyed, and have treated climate change like an air-conditioner to be controlled by man, instead of recognizing nature created by God, and only

God could be in charge and control of the nature, though men can influence it by making worse or help to preserve nature better. This Democrat’s tale of success based merely on deceitfulness, fear mongering, divisiveness, hyperbolic rhetoric, gender and racial identity politics, smear campaign, obstruction, and resistance at all cost for their power hungry and power grabbing—the principle of Lucifer since creation seen during Jesus’s time two thousand years ago, which led to Jesus’s crucifixion. Imagine if Jesus lives and preaches the same message and words as in the Bible days to America today, what kinds of accusations and persecution the liberal Democrats and the mainstream media would declare on him—xenophobia, homophobia, sexist, racist, intolerance, being mentally unfit, or even sexual assault with Mary Magdalene, maybe. Sat still in prison and watched two tales for success: the Trumpism—To Fail Better and the left-wing Democrat Party—Tale for Success, she was aweinspired by what a clear contrast between the two. Trumpism’s To Fail Better gave her a new hope and confirmation that it is God who protects and raises up those imperfect ones, the mocked at, and the laughed at who know the Lord and humble themselves before Him on the road of success by To Fail Better. Donald J. Trump, the forty-fifth President of the United States, had never held a public office in his entire life and ran for president for the first time against the queen of Democrat political elite, Hillary Clinton, against the entire political class establishments on both sides, Democrats and Republicans, and against the 90 percent liberal mainstream media with relentless fight and perseverance. From time to time, President Trump had made political errors that looked like his opponents could destroy his campaign and his presidency, but Mr. Trump continued to speak truth to power, humbled himself before God, and learned to fail better. Though Trump looked like he would lose at first, he always prevailed at the end. In this corner, prison took it to the max. Failure and setback seemed never end. Day by day, moment by moment, rejection by rejection, test by test, chisel by chisel, she didn’t know precisely what she’d look like when God was eventually done with her. But every setback settled in was another opportunity for her to fail better.

Chapter Twenty-SIX

Friends, Thorns, “Guacamole,” Future

Others may call them thorns. I call them my future.

Every day in the camp began the same routine: at seven thirty in the morning Alderson residents (who were programming or having job assigned) had their beds made straight and neat in military style and headed to their job assignments, then the lone correctional officer (CO) on duty would go around the housing unit for morning round checking every unoccupied cubes and for any in appropriate activities. At ten thirty, the CO at the control center announced on the PA, “Compound is closed for meal preparation.” Everyone who was in the e-mail room down the hill or walking in the yard would hurry back to their respective jobs or housing units before people could be released from where they were to the CDR for lunch. The food was usually hot and pretty good, especially considering federal prison food. Every now and then, there were special holiday meals on those national holidays, and prisoners would dress up in their altered best fitted grays, fix up their hairs, and put on bold makeup for the festive spirit. As soon as lunchtime was over and people returned to work by twelve thirty, the rest of the day at the Camp seemed to quickly as most prisoners had only two to three hours left to work in which they dodged work easily by g out for errands. It was clear why everyone always signed out for errands: as at Alderson Camp, e-mail and commissary and laundry were the way of the day that was guaranteed to duck out of work. After work and programming ended at three fifteen, people returned to their housing unit for four o’clock official standing count. As soon as by four thirty, after the four o’clock count could quickly, the compound would reopen to released people to the CDR for dinner and chill time for the rest of the day, and the housing units would be about half empty. People went back outside. Some exercised jogging and walking around the tracks of the upper and lower compound, some ed the boot camp workout taught by one of the inmates under the pavilion down the hill by the softball

field, some hung out in the Alderson “gay bar” (recreation center), and some would just chill out sitting on the benches and at the picnic tables, scattering throughout the yard, talking. A2 unit would remain peaceful for several hours until the sun set and people returned to their range; some women would start commotion in the TV room and by the two microwaves fighting for their favorite reality shows or favorite “Martha Stewart” microwave cooking. After the compound closed at eight thirty when everyone had returned to their units, usually other chaos of the jungle would continue fighting for “their” boos, “their” TV, “their” microwave. As for the woman, those commotions didn’t really bother her as if she was deaf and mum. All she wanted to do in prison was spending time with her lover, the old king, in her jogging and writing that occupied and shielded her from many troubles or unhappy thoughts. Everybody who loved her, her family and friends including friends in prison, wanted her to be home soon. But of course, that was not the case. She had fixed many microwave spring rolls and fried rice to say goodbye to all her prison friends at their farewell parties except two, Aeisha and Ms. Jasmine, who were still doing their time when she left. God, prison, and women in Alderson helped her to do a self-inventory better. All those years ago, she wanted to have an adventure of an outrageous “out of the box” entrepreneur, and the fact of it being a hero that she could help everyone in need made it more exciting to the woman. Mr. Patel, the pharmacy owner might have used her all those years, but she had been more than blind to what selfgratification was offering. And today, she had the most “out of the box” outrageous adventure with God, and women—her thorns-to-future. Glass is just like a woman. When you think you have understood something about her, you haven’t understood a thing, the woman pondered on a famous glass master’s, Pietro Sigmoretto, quote as she thought of herself and Alderson women. Alderson prison was quite a story for life she had ever imagined. The misery of being around hundreds of women twenty-four seven and the misery of those women surrounding her baffled her, as did the hopelessness in the humanistic BOP and the pointlessness of most prison programs at Alderson Federal Prison Camp. She looked across the compound toward the open sea of women and watched the

waves of new arrivals drained the sunlight from the day, her fellow penitents. Four recent arrivals at the Camp, Mimi, Tracie, Sharon, and Christine wandering throughout the camp in humiliation, uncertainty, and fear of the stigma of prison upon them. Like children lost in the jungle wandering in the search for their father, Mimi, a non-practicing attorney and Tracy, the CFO of a utility company in Virginia whose husband was a state judge, came to the woman. Of course, they were not hers really, they were His. The three of them quickly became close friends through a common prick of pain: fear of ruined reputation, fear for losing family financial security, fear for husband’s health as a single parent back home—their thorns. Nostalgia drew three friends together. Then Sharon and Christine, two other recent arrivals, ed the three friends for Bible studies and prayers many late afternoons under the pavilion in the lower compound by the softball field in the mountain breeze. It was their common enough friendship, and it felt natural, like the way things should be. As they approached closer and closer to Jesus in their regular Bible fellowship and prayer together, it also came to her that Mimi and Tracy became needier toward her for manna and prayers. A few months ed since the five friends sought God diligently each day at their Bible fellowship, and the Word and prayer flowed like a river among five friends, began from the woman’s lips to Sharon to Christine to Tracie to Mimi, and tossed them back to their hearts like the waves. Playful. As if it was alive itself. The woman was excited and filled with joy by the “iron sharpens iron” effect, yet at the same time, part of her felt uneasy, something missing and not quite right. However, the overwhelming joy between the work of the Lord and how her friends needed her for the Word and prayer, she was back to her own self and gave it all. Any time the four friends would social her out for Bible fellowship (they each lived in different housing unit and inmates were not allowed to enter into other’s unit), there she was full of energy and without reservation. But then the voice called to her, “Come on!” The silent voice was strong and clear like the noon day. “Follow me. You can’t go ahead of me. You can’t buy the anointing. Don’t be a hero and forget to follow me. Wait on me until I send you.”

She always ed that voice, the voice of disapproval. “Come on,” the voice said to her again. “Being a hero has brought you here. I’ll make you a fisher of men, not you.” The words were a mystery to her but a mystery that resonated through her, called her to a drop zone, and invited her into the mystery of stillness. But excitedly, one among the five Bible buddies, Mimi, said, “It must have come from God, from heaven itself…that we’re are able to have Bible fellowship like this in prison. We’re put together for this season.” A rush of excitement confirmed by Mimi, the woman reasoned to the voice, “I thought it’s a good thing to teach the Word. And shouldn’t you do it every time you are called to an opportunity to share the Gospel? Shouldn’t you make disciples?” The voice of disapproval kept reverberating through her, called her to wait and follow the omens. Be careful not to fall into the temptation of having the crowd followed. Get out of comfortable Christianity and get into the drop zone. She wasn’t sure exactly what to do about all that. She understood what the four friends and her needed in prison to keep time quickly, and she knew God was speaking to her in of the timing and the waiting on Him for the work of the Lord. She was brought to prison to slow down, to sit where they sit, and to discern the omens and follow them. It bothered her that she hadn’t kept quiet. At first, she didn’t understand why God had told her to be quiet when the Bible fellowship went so well. It didn’t make any sense at first. But as time went on, more people heard about the group and wanted to add to the five friends’ Bible fellowship. Jesus immediately reminded her that when He was doing His ministry on earth and His reputation grew, He had to start avoiding the crowds. He had stop teaching in some areas altogether. The fame wasn’t what He wanted. Popularity was His enemy. “What have I done?” she asked herself. Things were spinning out of control. Her busy fellowship among the five friends strangled her relationship with the old king. It affected her ministry in the chapel choir, which she later resigned. And

she knew she was partly to blame. “Temple, don’t be a hero,” said the chapel chaplain to her with a stern voice at one of their meetings after she quitted the choir. She knew it was God spoken to her through the chaplain, the familiar voice that she heard before warning her of prison. It was not a matter of what she was doing but when she was doing it. And it was not yet her time to do ministry until the Lord prepared her to come down from the mountain. Choosing the way of the kingdom of heaven released on earth was central to the message of Jesus. Losing and binding. Let go and let God. If there’s one thing Jesus made clear in His teaching, it’s this: following Him is costly. It always requires obedience. Obedience is an extreme sacrifice that required of man when following Jesus. Sitting in prison revealed the shocking truth, the inconvenient astonishing realism that if her Christianity cost her nothing but just the mountaintop experience, it’s not Christianity. “If we’re living a good, comfortable life, pursuing prosperity, popularity, and good reputation, we’re following something other than Jesus,” shared the woman at one of the last Bible fellowships among the five friends. Like many believers, the four friends seemed puzzled and in dismay at the news. They believed if people follow Jesus right, their lives would be blessed with a big house, a successful business, many people will follow them, and perhaps those prison days of theirs would be reduce to none quickly. Comfort Christianity and the “I, me, my need” frustrated her. Tracie’s story was a painful one to witness because the woman had seen a friend she cared about, people she loved, and a good woman and a good worker for Christ, get caught in the thorns. It was heart-wrenching to watch Tracie terrorized by the possibility of her husband losing his job, his good reputation, and their financial security, causing her on go on her knees begging God to spare them the very things He wanted to snip away, the thorns. God’s children are often all too willing to take thorns disguised as success, good reputation, and financial security this world offers. And it was not just other people who got caught in the thorns. It was her too. The woman got caught up in the seduction of popularity in her church and her community and the moneymaking machine of a successful practice; the thorns

took root and grew deeper in the prideful soil of her heart. So her story of success ended up in prison for quite a time. Now she was about to return to her same old self and was tempted with the socalled good deed five-friend fellowship—her thorn in disguise. Three months into the five-friend fellowship every day, oftentimes more than once a day at any time, the four friends would seek her out. It bothered her that she hadn’t kept her promise to God of staying quiet and waiting on Him. She began to shy away and avoided the four friends. Mimi was quite bold and persistent in pursuing the Bible fellowship to be continued by tracking the woman down, insisting that they should not stop the fellowship. Tracie, though not bold like Mimi, would tag along with Mimi to chase her friend down for Bible study and prayer. The duo, Mimi and Tracie, would pop up out of nowhere along the paths where the woman jogged every day, smile at her with a warm hello, and wave their hands happily, while she pretended not to see them and tried to look the other way, hoping that Mimi would get the message and give up. They’re like spies, thought the woman. But still, she found it odd that Jesus would use Mimi and Tracie to be the thorns in her flesh that kept coming. It was useless that she tried to discourage her friends by being distant and cold. It seemed the more she kept distant, the more they were determined to hunt her down. No matter how cold and mean she treated her friends, Mimi and Tracie continued coming back like Whack-a-Mole. But Mimi was too determined to let anything stand in her way to get the full dosage of Jesus. She had no idea she was going to transform herself into the Word through the separation. She wasn’t an alchemist. A few weeks ed. There was a major silence in the art room on the second floor of the Recreation building where Mimi and the woman worked. Mimi broke the silence and asked the woman to re them for Bible fellowship. A wave of relief washed over her, and the woman softly spoke some words that Mimi didn’t understand. “Don’t give in to your fears,” said the woman, in a strangely calm voice. “If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.” “But I have no idea how to turn myself into the Word.”

“If a person is living out her personal legacy, she knows everything she needs to know. There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: fear of failure. Or fear of what people think or say.” “I’m not afraid of failing. It’s just that I don’t know how to turn myself into the Word like you do.” “Well, you’ll have to learn—your life depends on it.” “That’s why I’ve come to tell you. It’s time to return to the Bible fellowship with us, me and Tracie. You have the gift of interpreting the Word, and God is using you in this place. We’ve been trying to come to tell you, but you treat us like Whack-a-Mole. Every time we tried to say hello to you, you just whacked us with a cold, no-response look and acted like we never existed. We didn’t want anything from you other than because Jesus drew us together.” “God is not blessing us this way when our relationship with Him has to depend and cling too much on people,” the woman replied plainly to her friend. “Spend time with God alone and you will find your personal legacy.” “But what if I can’t?” “Then at least you’ll die in the midst of trying to realize your personal legacy. That’s a lot better than dying like millions of other people who never knew what their personal legacy are.” “But don’t worry,” the woman continued coldly as the word of wisdom she took directly from her readerships and her own experiments of the teaching she applied herself in Alderson living. Usually, the threat of death makes people a lot more aware of their lives.

*****

The result finally worked. Mimi and Tracie stopped popping up in her jogging paths or looking for her. They continued pursuing Jesus, feeding themselves with manna, holding their own Bible fellowship and prayers.

The story of the seeds and the sower hit a little close to home in their friendship and their response to the gospel. The parable of the seeds and the sower illustrated not just the four ways nonbelievers respond to the gospel but the four ways Christians tend to respond to God at different points in their lives. During her time out in prison, stepping back from the chapel choir and away from the crowd of her Bible fellowship began to free up the woman to “Be still and know that I am God” again. She was humble, and as if the scales had fallen from her eyes, she began to see a little clearer about Christianity and herself. Sometimes her heart was stony, and she couldn’t receive the word she heard. She didn’t understand it. She resisted it. Sometimes the soil of her soul was like the fallow ground—her joy withered away during times of trouble and heartache and rejection, and her vision became seared by her circumstances and what she didn’t understand. Then occasionally, God’s Word sprouted up, and He showed her fruit that she bore through the difficulties, though she could hardly understand how. And yes, the parable touched her personally through their relationship with God and with one another among the five friends. At the beginning of each ones’, the five friends, journey in incarceration they had a portion of their heart rocky. They couldn’t see and receive what Jesus tried to tell them. They tended to think God would answer their prayer all at once, that their persecutions and troubles and prison days would end and they’d be able to run out of the gate like the saint got vindicated, rather than pick their way through the rugged wooded path among all the lurking snakes, pits, and damps as usual. But instead, she’d found that prison and their vindication was one prayer God prefers to answer little by little by snipping away one thorny branch at a time, often as it was reaching out for them from the murk. All too often, she felt like they were standing at the perimeter of a great hedge, praying not having to hack away at the thorns (good life, financial security, good reputation) that God was trying to snip away one at a time. She thought of Jesus talking about the thorns. The thorns had grown too high in their life. Then there’s another kind of thorn Paul describes that hits a little too close to comfort. To keep me from becoming conceited because of these suring great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. “My

grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:7–10). Here was what happened. To keep her from becoming conceited because of these suringly great revelations in sharing the Word to others, there was given her friends to reveal the thorn of her flesh: lack of mercy. Two friends kept coming to her because Jesus wanted to work on her patience, meekness, and mercy in teaching, rebuking, and making disciples. However, their needy and comfortable Christianity in high gear tempted her to throw in the towel. And she did. She gave in to the thorns of the flesh: impatience, lack of mercy, and humility. But something kept bringing them three back together. And it was not just Mimi and Tracie being her thorns. It was Sharon and Christine too. The minute she got caught up gazing at the praises for the Bible knowledge and how much others need her help, the thorns took root again and knowledge puffed up, weeds sprang up. Everybody loves popularity and praise. And so did she. But something felt not quite right. My story ended up with a prison chapter because of the seductive brambles of popularity, of “good” deeds and a “good” life. Do I want to repeat the same in prison? The woman pondered upon her life in prison. She was bombarded with praises and popularity among her Christian friends. The thorns of pride, pleasure, and lust began to take root again. But something arrived just in the nick of time to keep the thorns far enough once again.

*****

On the next five weeks, the woman walked to the pretty spot at the top of the hill of the upper compound alone again. The solitude allowed her to go, and she

could turn herself into the wind and follow the omens. She spent the entire lunch time every day looking up to the mountain and listening to her heart. The woman knew the mountain sensed her fear and loneliness. They both spoke the same language. The woman wondered how she could describe grace to someone who had never been able to experience the blood and the cross or “the thorns in my flesh and His strength that made perfect in my weakness.” How could people describe the love of God to a person who has never learned to believe? How could she describe the provision of Him to her friends, who had been so caught up and fearful of losing their possessions? The best she could hope for was to give hints and whispers of His inexplicable grace in the language of where she was in their Whack-a-Mole friendship, also known as the Guacamole story.

*****

On the sixth week, about two weeks before leaving the camp to the halfway house, “bold” Mimi called the woman to a meeting between the two and said, “Tracie and I have been wondering why we’re so blind. You kept whacking us on the head every time we came, and we kept coming back, like Whack-aMole,” half joking and half rebuking her friend for her blindness in lack of comion, Mimi confronted her. We didn’t come to you for materials like others. We just wanted to study the Word and pray with you. But you are too naïve and blind under other’s spell that you can’t see they are just manipulating and using your trust. “Guacamole?” The woman was baffled at the analogy without realizing that Mimi said “Whack-a-Mole.” Perhaps they were beaten and milked so hard in the discipleship process, like smashing avocado in the making of guacamole, she thought to herself. Mimi’s persistence and boldness in pursuing friendship of three arrived just in the nick of time to keep them apart, to keep the thorns far enough, and to snip away one thorny branch at a time during their own struggle with the Lord, that brought the ultimate and bigger reward to three friends who kept pressing toward

the mark, refusing to let go of Chris but pursuing Him at all cost. Supernaturally, through the six-week separation, Tracie and Mimi grew their own gift for the kingdom. Tracie developed into a prayer warrior of her own and had the gift of obedience to circle her own Jericho prayer daily. Mimi, on the other hand, was eye-opened to the taste of receiving the revelation of the kingdom of heaven directly from God herself and using her gift of reconciliation to the woman and among three friends, where their “guacamole,” also known as “Whack-a-Mole,” story turned into unbroken cord of three friendship. Three friends spent almost every evening of Mimi’s last two weeks together in corporate prayer, circling the compound along the leafy, winding, wooded trail under the moonlit night from the lower to upper compound for their own Jericho battle, and at the pretty spot in the dawn in praise and worship until their flesh was long retarded. It was a common enough prick of faith, and it felt natural, even after the “guacamole” friendship, as if it were the ways things should be. The woman didn’t exactly know when and could hardly understand how God’s Word sprouted up, and He showed them fruit that He was able to grow through their “guacamole” story to their future.

Chapter Twenty-SEVEN

Find Me Here

Even in the deepest suffering, there’s a positive possibility.

In a fast-growing society outside, she was sucked into the moneymaking machine, the domestic machine, and the power and fame machine, and she stopped questioning everything in life. Her identity was the mirage among streams of life. Today, she found herself in a position to sit down in prison, an island where she learned to surround herself with the things that matter most. The moment brought the discovery that the main things begin here, in the now. “Find me here no matter what you face or where you are,” her heart said to her. “By surrendering yourself, you find yourself.” Before the big plunge in her life, she had already decided to live her life trusting the Way. Now she was a little sheepish about her bird’s-eye view of Alderson prison on the West Virginian Mountain. “It’s a four-year course of my life,” she sighed. “We go through schooling to study just about anything in life, but no college teaches us life except life itself. Alderson will be my four-year college of life studies by the time I finish.” Her self-esteem seemed at less than none today. So how exactly had she gotten peace in her new seat of powerlessness? When she looked outside the south window from her cube, Alderson Camp was highly congested. The prison system and the prisoner’s conscience were highly polluted; it was highly unpleasant. So people were dealing with lots of different consequences of culture and society traffic. There were million urban people struggling every day outside just as women were in Alderson. The struggle of “Who am I?” To many, people are only what their profession is worth. They are what people think they are. Or they’re what their hip clothes, designed jewelry,

or seventy thousand dollars car feel. If people’s identity is foundationally based on materialism or circumstances, then no wonder she is doomed, and it is fair for people to already declare her life as over with the state of incarceration. No wonder Alderson women were so bewildered. Their image changed and shattered with people’s imable constant opinions about them as the current of life constantly moved. None other than the image of temporal things of the world many people are. What would it take to know who I am, to stay ahead as God designed men to be in the current ever-diverse, ever-changing, fast-growing yet temporal world? The more she thought about the quest for “Who am I?” after the big plunge in life, she was most convinced that what is seen cannot and will not define people but the unseen. Her associations and helping the crooked pharmacy owner, due to pride and ego and criminal thinking, as she tried to establish her name were the unseen, while the title of a nice and charitable doctor who was eager to help others were what was seen, which people adored. But things seen were outward and temporal, which quickly ed away after five years of associating herself with Mr. Patel, and things that were unseen hidden from within her own stupidity had brought her a forever mark, felon. What’s real is that the unseen is not the opposite of the seen but more like a crack in the side of it—a crack that might widen if enough wedges are driven into it. Rarely had she met someone who had lived without the fault lines seen running through somewhere. And often, the people with smooth, untested lives are the ones whose identity can be shattered with one giant hammer blow. Much like schooling, life involves a series of tests for a person’s own juices. A test is only a test when he has a choice. What test do people face; what choice do they make? People know they are real and alive when they’re tested. They also know more about themselves, and others learn more about them when they are tested. This is the best time to find oneself when he faces the test. Even Jesus is tested (Matthews 4:1–11). Some people turn stone to bread; they use their anointing for self-gain. Some, when faced with a test of provision, are so desperate that they eat stone and think it is bread. She did not want to be the one who was not careful and let the test take her and allow herself to be hungry enough that she would eat stone and think it is bread.

The blessing of facing the test is “Find me here,” in the midst of believing or obeying the Language of the Universe, not when demanding an answer or proof and not when trying to fight against the supernatural law. Supernatural law always trumps natural law. The word me means the One, the Great “I Am,” God. Until people find God and reconcile with Him, the little “me, I am,” is only a mirage of what temporal thing or people say he is. The words believe and obey are used interchangeably here because believing always comes with a degree of obedience. A person cannot truly believe without obedience. For example, if someone has never seen a chair in his life and was told to sit on a chair that is designed for one to sit without falling. The person says, “I believe you, but I won’t sit on the chair because I’m afraid of getting hurt if the chair will break.” That is not believing. People know that the devil is an angel who believes there’s God—and shudders. And he becomes the fallen angel. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder (James 2:10).

*****

There was Alderson, where the woman had lived for many months; despite all that time, she knew only a small part of it. Prison was seeing that her life was ruined. Her husband and mother-in-law, though they loved her, they often disapproved of her idiocy in lone-wolf heroic style, and they doubted that a “devoted Christian wife and mother” like her could ever end up in prison. But of course that was the case—her “guilty” conviction quickly disappointed them severely. “Oh, daughter, for heaven’s sake,” were her mother-in-law’s words out of frustration and at her wit’s end during one of the Alderson visits with her husband and daughters, which echoed in her heart vividly, “perhaps you should actually have conspired in the pharmacy scheme and profited a few millions as the federal government charged. Then it would have been worth to pay your time, and at least you could leave something behind for your husband and children. But instead, you go to prison for nothing. Don’t be an oak tree any more. Be the grass, and let it be if people walk all over you. At least you won’t

have to worry about people trying to take you down. The oak tree is strong and noticeable. People want to cut it down. Don’t be a hero. Just do your time, work on yourself, and don’t get involved. Go in, finish, and go home. to be careful and trust no one. Your goal is to come home as soon as you can to your husband and two daughters who love and need you dearly.” No one actually said she was a shame or a failure. They didn’t have to. She knew it. Gracefully, her extended family loved and worried about her and her family. Christmas 2013 in Seattle, the last Christmas with all the in-laws’ family before she surrendered to Alderson, was a unique and memorable one to the woman. It was the most peaceful and harmonious Christmas among five extended families, Josh’s brother’s and sisters’, including eleven minor children of the next generation that she ed. When it was time to say “goodbye,” each family member hugged her hard, their careful words voicing the best of luck to her and her family, while their sorrowful hearts spoke about how sorry they were for the things “seen” and the predictable “seen” that she and her family would face ahead. Although her extended family and friends she trusted took her “thing seen” as fatally dark, ending her career, the Word quickly reminded her of the character, hope, and glory to be produced through hardship, a promise to those who persevere and trust in Jesus. More than that, God also promises the eternal blessing afterward. The woman couldn’t quite grab what the “blessing afterward” was going to be, but somehow she knew concretely that God would never waste anyone’s time. He always invests in His people whether or not they see it. Within those months in Alderson, she had discovered insurmountable Bible material—the evidence that prison was the wedge driven into the crack of her life widen enough to gather things “unseen” clearer. It included a detailed story about the journey of “Find me here” to being on the road to fail better. Rather than identifying her career as dead by Alderson, there was the fourth day for Lazarus, so it was the fourth year for the woman. Her career was not dead, only sleeping. Anything less than four years in the tomb wouldn’t be a wedge driven into the wide-enough crack so she could see the unseen. Now the choice was hers to make while facing the test. What choice should she make? According to the thing seen or the thing unseen? There were some

startling conversations with her husband and with her still-reeling mother and mother-in-law. But it was her decision to make. The Holy Spirit negotiated hard and wisely on her behalf, and ultimately, she was brought closer to the Soul of the Universe. The woman looked out at the horizon. There were mountains in the distance. And there were heat, rocks, and plants that insisted on growing abundantly where survival seemed impossible. She thought of The Alchemist, which she’d read during her time in prison along with the Bible, and how the wisdom of both books were applicable to her road to fail better. What do you want here today? the mountain asked her. Didn’t you spend enough time looking at me yesterday, the day before, and the day before? “Somewhere you are holding the person that I love,” the woman said. “So when I look out over your rocks and valleys, I am also looking at her. I want to find her, and I need your help so that I can turn myself into the breeze.” “Whom do you look for?” the mountain asked. “A free raven soaring over your cliffs and valleys. Because for her, they are a beautiful vision, from which she always learns the wind and the game.” “The raven’s wings carry bits of me, myself,” the mountain said. “Every day, I care for her game, giving it sun, rain, at times even storm, and then I show her the name of each game. And I enjoy the fact that as she doesn’t give up. She always thrives on my surface. As she dives out of the sky, she also takes away what I’ve created.” “Oh, that’s why you created the game in the first place,” the woman said. “To nourish the raven. And the raven then finds you. And, eventually, the raven will find what it’s created to do.” “So that’s how the world finds you? I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” the mountain said. “But you can understand that somewhere in your mountain valley, there’s a person waiting for me. And that’s why I have to turn myself into the breeze.” The mountain didn’t answer her for a few moments.

Then it told her, “I’ll give you my meadows and my valleys to help the wind blow, but alone, I can’t do anything. You have to ask for help from the wind and ride it to see me in full view.” A breeze began to blow. The woman watched her fellow penitents from a distance, talking among themselves in a language that she was familiar with. The sun smiled. The wind approached the woman and kissed her face. It knew of the woman’s talk with the mountain valley because the winds are everywhere. They blow across the world without a departure and with no place of destination. “Help me,” the woman said. “One day, you carried me through this so I can find the person I love.” “Who taught you to speak the language of the mountain valley and the wind?” “Human experience,” the woman answered. The wind has many names. In that part of the world, it was called Alderson because it brought moisture to the eyes from the belly, not just the heart. “You can’t be the wind,” the wind said. “We’re two very different things. I am only ing by. You have to recognize when I am ing by and catch your ride.” “But I’m here now. Alderson FPC is attached to my name and numbers whenever they call me, whenever I go in here. And when I leave here, Alderson will also forever be with me like my destination.” “That’s not true,” the wind said. “The wind is not to stop the raven’s flight but to teach it to wait to and learn to ride on the current and soar the sky. “Alderson is neither your enemy nor your destination. Your destination isn’t where you end up. “Your destination is where you live out your life, not what you work toward but where you work from.”

*****

The wind blew that day as it had never blown before. For over forty months, the woman traveled in costume as a prisoner; maybe her misery was mashed by the hope in the unseen. Hope that the next morning, next afternoon, next evening, or even one day, she would standing tall with her fellow penitents and prayer warriors, Allie, Kim, Ebony, Dianna, Janette, Jasmine, Aeisha, Mimi, Tracie, and others who came and gone at different times of her journey, although pale and weary, in their tan or brown T-shirts and khaki pants uniform or their grays as they stood at the pretty spot looking toward where the visitation center and the gate was located. Looking onto the horizon in the early morning while the dew of the mountain was still heavy in the air and on the ground, she and two friends, Mimi and Tracie, stood still for few hours. Some days, the mist rolled in from the river by the railroad down the hill like gently twirling tendrils that climbed into the day, lingering as long as possible before the sun dissolved them away. All so temporary. But there, she choked out three words that sealed her fate: “Find me here.” “If we ever find ourselves in a position to sit down, know this, we never really sit down!” said the woman to her friends as they scanned the horizon and discerned the omens. “We’re always in process for a mission. ‘Standing still is your thing to know Me,’ God said to us before we could know little ‘me.’ For I am convinced that we’re here to find ourselves, to reflect on who we really are. Are we only what our degree says we are, letting our conviction frames us, or does the type of luxury car we drive define us? The very blessings we received from God has become our thorns that He tried to set us free from. And God wants us to know, ‘I brought you here to find Me so you can find yourself here.’” “Just teach me your language of the wind, the cloud, and the mountain,” Mimi made a bold request to the Father, “so you and I can talk about the limitless possibilities of people and the Word.”

The wind’s curiosity was aroused, something that had never happened before. It commenced to blow harder, raising Alderson dust and leaves. It wanted to talk to three friends about how many things the wind already knew how to do! It created deserts, carried mountains into the midst of the sea, flooded cities, and blew through canyons with music and strange sounds. The wind was a proud being, yet it couldn’t help turn three friends into the wind. “This is what we call love,” Tracie said, seeing that the wind could carried the message of what they requested, but it knew nothing about love. Only love can help us understand all things. “Yes, the only love worth finding—‘Find me here,’ God said to all of us, my friends,” the woman said. “When you are loved, you can do or be anything in creation. When you love, there’s no need at all to understand what’s happening because you become all things through what happens. Love is a two-way street. When you are loved, all potentials are given to you, but until you love, you won’t become all things.” So the wind blew with all its strength, and the air was filmy with dust. The compound was turned to a cloud of dust. At the camp, it was difficult to see anything. The three friends in Alderson were already familiar with that wind. There was no end in sight for the listening, thus said the voice of their heart.

*****

The woman spent her time under supervision and revelation in the Word, reporting daily to her confidant, a cheap eight-by-ten-and-a-half-inch Mead onesubject wide-ruled notebook, which fell apart quickly and was kept together by three rings made out of yarn, and a number two pencil in the Women Federal Prison Camp on Glen Ray Road, Alderson. She was often alone in her eight-bynine-feet cube number 27, at the recreation center by television watching the news, or under the almond tree by the rock at the pretty spot, scanning the horizon. Sometimes she was ed by young African American, Latino, Asian, and Caucasian fellow penitents who were desperate for prayer and comfort from

one another to keep their day sane. Her day’s routine in the past forty plus months was essentially identical but never the same or boring or felt slow, although her sentence felt eternal. The most unexpected moments she felt was during those work hours, whether in the chapel or the art room inside Alderson’s “gay bar” as a worker, where she got to bounce around in the pew or the drafting table and stool, respectively, with books, Bible, guitar, and listen to Rush Limbaugh or Laura Ingram or Shawn Hannity’s conservative radio news broadcasts, as her pen danced and twirled freely, page after page. It was the most adventurous part of her day. The stillness and quietness returned her to the old king, offering an unlikely three word: Find me here. “Find me here” returned her to herself. Then the safest she ever felt was during the one-hour-and-forty-five-minute Christian worship service in the chapel, when she got to bounce around with two hundred women or more in the pew as wild dancers shouted, clapped, and sang at the top of her lungs. It was the most exuberant part of her day. The only way that she stayed whole, now that Alderson wanted to engage with her—with criminal history, overpowered government, hundreds of fellow penitents, nonsense, contradictory BOP, overpopulated prison industry, and Criminal Justice Reform rumors obsessed with by prisoners—was to keep moving in silence and focus on “Find me here.” The epiphany of finding God in the midst was that she no longer had to fix the future, just receive the present as His currency, however cleverly disguised it might be, as undesirable as prison or as normal as everyday life. Not having the ability to control and plan for her life and her family was one of the hardest things she had to learn and adapt to in prison. Yet at the same time, not having a plan kept her open to new things, the mysteries unraveled. One may call it hope in the unseen or revelation. Whether it was waiting on God, a ping-pong match with Mr. P, Mr. Morgan, or Mr. Wallace, recreation staff, a self-practice bton foot work in the yard, writing, jogging, or just gazing at the unseen in the horizon. The secret of finding God here brought her from hopeless to ageless time. Sitting one sunny afternoon while loitering on the bench in front of the Willebrandt Hall in the sun, she listlessly watched Alderson women pursue an image of jumping into the gay lifestyle for emotional and financial or climbing up the BOP ladder by ratting out others in exchange for extra halfway

house time or early release. The world is full of counterfeits, thought the woman. Women in Alderson live in a counterfeit world just as much as people out in the world where image is everything, appearance weighs more than substance, and popularity trumps integrity. Life is a show, in prison or in the outside world alike. Ambition today, in America politics, mainstream media, and Hollywood, is commonly not wedded to biblical principle resulting in disruption, corruption, and chaos rather than prosperity with joy and peace. People decorate themselves with makeup and muscles and “bubble” celebrities and jewelry and designer clothes and smart phones and luxury cars and homes that are finely tuned to match the image they’re so carefully constructing for others they don’t even know. Life sporting the image! After being stripped bare naked all the way to prison, according to the thing seen, the world saw her as worthless. But she learned the one thing most valued, of most worth to God, was “me,” herself. There’s no secret formula to life. As hard as she tried to, she could never figure out all its twists and turns and seeming injustices. It didn’t make sense to the world’s wisest man, Solomon. And it’s not always going to make sense to her. But there is a trail beyond the mirage that leads to a true oasis. One that will satisfy the hearts in the deepest, longest-lasting ways possible. When it came to Alderson living, professional titles and athletic inclination and prison gear and ready-to-wear grays or tan and brown were suddenly on the same playing field. Everything had changed. Women were dressed for speed and conformity now, and there was not much cool factor to the look. Indeed, it was the height of self to live low, thanks in part to the ever comionate for God volunteer ministers, the chaplains, and few good prison staff who brought hope and relevancy of the unseen through the Word to bloody, broken, and heartache-filled women. So what shall she say about her prison? Only what she’d been told: “Don’t worry, don’t give up, and don’t be afraid. Prepare, persevere, share the story. And be ready, because the Day is coming.” She sat in solitude with “Find me here” on the West Virginia mountain, took up

her pen and papers, and she prayed that these words would be a comfort to her daughters, her beloved husband, and many people. Here, she found herself as a scribe. So she lived out her destination and wrote.

Chapter Twenty-EIGHT

The Escape Artist

To break the rules, you must first master them.

In my journey through prison, I’ve often seen people speaking of justice and looking toward the heavens, the woman thought, disappointed at having to acknowledge her own “justice.” Her favorite defense of all time was, “Yes, Lord, I had done wrong, but I’ve never done what the federal government accused and convicted me for, much less do I deserve prison.” Like an artist could give any story to her painting, the woman could almost always give a reason for her justice, a complete and unabridged explanation with footnotes and a detailed bibliography and plenty of appendices of ing facts and figures to explain why she deserved justice. And not until she learned for four years “graduating” up the hill, she almost never learned. Once, when she was younger, during her medical school days at a Paris café, a coffee shop in San Francisco, she found a full-color illustrated book on the bookshelves filled with pictures of sexy men and women in sleazy, skintight underpants and lingerie. Most of the models were posing half-naked and seductively. It’s not pornography, she reasoned to herself. It’s art. It was fascinating to her and a little disheartening how stubborn and blind people are that no one really learns the lessons that matter most the simple way. Over the years, she’d gotten caught with her foot in the mouth and her hand in the candy jar more than she’d care to it. And she’d been lucky in her life to be pretty successful in her escape. But not this time. Her recklessness, she called innovation; lack of discipline,

thinking outside the box; unbridled tongue, speaking in truth. They were the ways she operated business, which cost her four-plus years in Alderson and her family tumult and pain. At a certain point of her wit’s end, the woman would know that it was no use to reason but to just go for it. Alderson can keep me to a certain date but not the day after, she said to herself as she took Alderson as a challenge to educate herself to write in this period of time. Most of the stuff that was really important to her was only important because of the stories that surrounded it—her first car, a 1982 two-door tan Toyota Celica, for which her father emptied his savings to get her and her little brother for college; a handmade bow and arrow made by the local Kenyans out of dead branches on the ground given to her as weapon to keep animal predators away from the well-drilling equipment in the nights during her short-term medical mission; the photograph of her husband and her on a nameless sidewalk of Venice listening to “street” musicians performing a classical Vivaldi piece, The Four Seasons, during their honeymoon. The things only became valuable because she knew the stories. So was prison to her. There’s a story in everything, every picture. Writing would help her see the story behind and beyond her prison picture better. The woman hung on to penning throughout Alderson time. She didn’t know why, maybe just to remind herself that she was someone’s story, His story; someone’s life, her daughters’; someone’s lover, her husband. And that somewhere along the line, the story would intersect with her husband’s story, and then it would enter her daughters’, and then that of next generations. The story was the picture she had with the connection of wherever she was.

*****

As women, they have so many things to worry about. They put on the suit of life. They try to do everything themselves, to keep themselves busy so they don’t have to meet “self” and see the things that they don’t like in themselves. To escape the pain in prison, some choose to spend a couple of hundred dollars or

more a month on their yarns, crocheting all day and night of their free time, making all sources of women’s necessity, from a locker organizer to a pillowcase to Chanel or Louis Vuitton designer handbags to a Spiderman or Superman blanket for their sons or grandsons. Some sleep their lives away, hoping their out date would come by the time they awake. Others would walk and exercise or become a full-time camper in the TV room. As for the woman, writing was a way to escape her pain and see her prison picture clearer. One handiwork she did not pick up was mastering the prison rules, an obsession among prisoners throughout the system. To break the rules, you must first master them. One older prisoner who ran staff dining in the CDR before her was a remarkable smooth operator, a Caucasian woman career offender named Melisa, still managing to run a crooked business in prison as slick as in the outside. One day in the A2 range, the CO came searching her locker, turning her cube upside down looking for contraband and stolen CDR food. The news had been spreading around that she had turned staff dining into a food truck business, selling stolen food for as much as seven dollars a tray or seven dollars for five pieces of chicken wings. She even mastered the CO round schedules so she could keep the contraband out of her locker and stored them in her friend’s until the round was over. In the prison world, one’s popularity and favorability could be furthered from mastering the rules. Submitting to them, not so much. A loud discussion of “A2, we all we got” was happening in her housing unit, led by the ring leader of A2 range, Eisha, encouraging fellow inmates to stick together and never to snitch concerning the wheeling and dealing of stolen goods from the commissary or food from the CDR or sale of contrabands, even drugs in exchange for their basic, decent human living needed of three hundred dollars commissary allowed a month. Eisha had resided in A2 for eight years and became queen of mastering the prison rules to break them. She offered her prison knowledge and prison rules mastering skill to the new arrivals in an effort to call it the “rejection of the modern-day slavery movement.” The woman was surviving just fine as the “peculiar” one of A2 due to her luck in having prayerful friends during her first three years, and now toward the end of her prison season, she had been paired with Sissy, her last bunkie until she went home, who was also known as “Georgia, neighborhood watch.” Single-sex living had certain constants that in many ways she was more prepared to live in close quarters with a bunch of women than she imagined, more than some of her

fellow penitents, who were driven crazy by communal female living. There was less “Ivy League” and more fights than she had known as a professional woman in the outside, but the same feminine ethos was present—brokenness coupled with empathic womanhood. Sissy, “neighborhood watch,” had a policy she had come up with all by herself. To escape her pain of prison, once to twice a night, she would put every A2 resident on a check, strolling the entire range for a three-hundred-sixty-degree neighborhood watch. “Is everything all right, Ms. Georgia?” the woman asked her bunkie as she made it back to cube number 27 after two complete rounds of A2 inspection. “Nothing appeared out of normal activity to report, bunkie,” Ms. Georgia reassured her. “Everything is fine.” “It must be a big adjustment for you here. But you seem to be handling it. Are you sure A2 crime rate is down, Ms. Georgia?” “Absolutely! There’s nothing to report. Everything looks normal and good.” So that was Sissy’s life at night in A2 before nine o’clock count. On the other hand, being the neighborhood watch would mean the opportunity to meet new arrivals at the bus stop, to make friends and offer help. “Neighborhood watch” Sissy was widely known to be no thief, no snitch, and clearly casual, friendly, cozy in mannerism with prisoners, which the neighborhood watch position required. The neighborhood walk was Ms. Georgia’s walk of power to make it in prison. There were a host of walks of power at Alderson: Friday through Monday at the visitation center, visitation staff’s walk of power to humiliate and condescend the prisoners during visiting hours to quickly remind Alderson women that although they are having quality time with family and friends, they are still inmates and in prison. The counselor and case manager’s walk of power to grant or withhold the prisoners release date depend on how well one snitches or plays along with their game. Even among the inmates, there is a group of prison establishment and their liberal clique’s walk of power to bully others over the TV room and the microwave, a “holier than thou” class of women’s walk of power to consume the “self” that they can’t seem to accept their incarceration or any positive out of the

prison process and the experience; they see themselves as poor, righteous victims who deserve justice. The biggie, though, was the born-again “Christian” (a.k.a. baptomethoevangelicocathopentocostalist) who roistered loudly, proclaiming their prayers of power (instead of the power of prayer) on any number of topics, how God was delivering them from their addiction and through their incarceration, how Jesus loves sinners, and so on. Personally she found the religious rattling testimony of cardinal worshippers tedious. Testimony, at times, becomes more about self-congratulations. Their worship, although it was loud, their act was pretty lousy, abundant evidence of which was running around the compound. To many, prison staffs and prisoners alike, people earned the walk of power by mastering the rules to break them, not to submit to them. They operated in the position of power and not in the walk of authority. There was no authority in prison staff’s words and the BOP rules behind their back. People were like artists. RDAP women played the game of the system everyone else played to get their eighteen months off of the sentence. Church people used their anointing to eat stone and called it bread to gain power and popularity, the very thing Satan had tempted Jesus with, but He overcame it by prayers and being watchful. Sissy, “neighborhood watch,” on the other hand, was not a born-again Christian. Though she knew about Jesus and grew up in church at some point in her life, she had allowed the weeds of life to grow in her stony, fallow ground of the heart. She was of average height, a middle-aged woman with tattoos on her body and a playful smile, who tethered between being youthful-looking and maturelooking. She loved caramel candy and playing word search to keep her mind active and the time . She was counting the months out loud each evening, trying to figure out a good time and the RDAP when she would go home. She was straightforward and apologetic about her drug dealing. “I am here because of what I did. No government or anyone put me here. I’ve always known it was a matter of when, not a matter of if,” Sissy said to her one evening in their bunkie ship as the woman was five months away from graduating from her four-year college of life. “It looks like you have your days going, bunkie. Has your day in Alderson ever felt slow and long like mine? I keep my CDR job in the afternoon shift so I don’t have to wake up early until ten o’clock, and by the time I finish work at three thirty, most of my day is gone. I don’t like when I am off work—it feels

dragging and slow as there’s nothing for me to do here.” “Er, well, when I first came to Alderson, my sentence felt like eternity, and I wondered how I was going to make it,” the woman answered drily. “The fact is the day and the week always end unexpectedly quickly for me. I guess faith helped me and gave me a purpose why I am here, and I’ve always been busy with that purpose.” This response prompted a sudden and ionate declaration from Sissy. “Purpose! I need to find my purpose here. A fifty-four-month sentence is very long without a purpose. How am I supposed to find my purpose? I know I can’t be bothered with the same boyfriend on the outside, who is no good for me.” The woman opened her mouth then closed it. She felt like she should pray silently for the rocky soil of Sissy’s heart to soften it further to receive the seed. She tried to choose her words with delicacy. “Er, I’m certain that you’ll find your purpose when you start asking God to reveal it to you.” She instructed Sissy with a basic, simple prayer asking God what she wanted to know. Sissy listened with an attentive ear and looked at her with those curious eyes. Was she desperate enough? Vindicated for the Word? The woman couldn’t be sure, except she knew Sissy would need to be added to her prayer list. Sissy was clearly not one of those “holier than thou” people or “gay for a stay” people or a bitter, victimized one. She was a free-spirited woman who understood on a visceral level, as many did not, that there was really more to her life in prison than just taking away her right as a citizen. Different women had different ways of dealing with prison’s impact on their life and relationships. On one quiet weekend afternoon, the woman sat at the picnic table at the pretty spot, strumming the guitar and singing with her friends. Sissy strolled by out of nowhere with her group of four friends, who were doing their “neighborhood watch” duty in the yard on her day off as usual. “Bunkie, I didn’t know you play guitar. I learn something new every day doing my neighborhood watch,” she teasingly exclaimed and cheered her with her electric smile. “See, I told you, always something new to find in this place.” Then Sissy walked away with her gang of four and continued on with their neighborhood watch. The woman observed Sissy, her friendly face lighted and animated whether she

mingled with friends or greeted people at the dishwasher line in the CDR despite such a contradictory environment. She walked a simple balance between the prison’s demands and her own lightness and humor and sense of her own humanity. Sometimes, with a simple gesture of giving, Sissy would lend another acquainted prisoner a Coke when she was asked without strings attached. Sissy would bring the woman a banana or orange from the CDR, knowing that her bunkie had been fasting and not eating all day, and the woman would be encouraged, and suddenly, she overcame her sadness about her life at the moment. Could the simple human relationship weather this insanity of the prison experience? There is an art to living. The world believes mastering the rules to break them is the way to get ahead in life, but the Word teaches contrarily, mastering the rules to follow them, and man will walk in authority and power that conquers death. Unfortunately, the former is often the wider and more popular path people take. Some Alderson women were way too preoccupied with negatives about the BOP that they stopped seeing that tomorrow starts today; in every present, there’s a seed of tomorrow. The fact that the agony and the difficulty aided the loss of identity drove their interest to the immediate life behind four brick walls. There came a purposeless life to the prisoner of the soul. Others, on the other hand, were way too consumed about the boyfriend, husband, children, and the things at home. They seemed to have ignored the place that existed where they were. They tried to fix and solve the problems on the outside yet became frustrated and more lost. But now, when she looked in dismay at an elder woman in the cube next door, who was championing at the bit to hold on to her self-righteousness; when she thought about whether Sissy would be able to keep it together and prove herself the good woman that she aspired to be; when she was sad to see some of her prison friends whose power or victory was crushed by disobedience, mastering the rules to break them; and when she saw in the visiting room how pride and ego or addiction had torn apart the bonds between wives and their spouses, mothers and their children, she finally understood the true consequences of her own action—the walk of power in the position, not the walk of power in the Word. What made her finally recognize the indifferent cruelty of her own past weren’t the fetters put on her by the federal government, nor the debt she amassed from

the restitution, nor the fact that she could not be with the husband and daughters she loved. She was sitting, walking, and conversing with and knowing the people who suffered because of what they had done, mastered the rules to break them, and walked a powerless life. None of these women rebuked her—most of them had been struggling in the purposeless driven life in prison themselves. Yet for the first time, she really understood how her disobedience to the Word and disregard for the BOP rules would make her complicit in their purpose. She was to be the accomplice to their finding God—the escape artist on the mountain.

The Walk Speaks

Your walk is as far as you make it. I know, for I used to abide In the widest path in the world, My step striding close to my sight. But on the mountain, I sighted the distant horizon, Where the skyline endeared the sea, And I throbbed with a burning desire To travel this immensity. How much living have I done? From this valley, the patterns that I weave, I battered the cordons around me, Then soared to the utmost for the highest, With my wings diving in the breeze,

Memorable moments’ delivery Exceeding my expectations. How far a walk have I done? How full and free my giving? I know not, but of this I’m certain. My walk is this: I asked for victory that I might have the praise of men. I was given prison, that I might feel the need of God. I asked for all things that I might enjoy all things… I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I had walked in His authority.

Chapter Twenty-NINE

A Tomb with a View

The very world, which is the world of all of us—the place where, in the end, we find our happiness, or not at all. —C. S. Lewis

Which “world” do you live in? Which “world” do you see? It had been an eye-opening and what a learning experience for the woman those years in Alderson, the tomb to reflect and observe the various “worlds” people lived in. Most people are consumed by, and often limited by, the particular narrow world they inhabit. Alderson women inhabit the media world and gush with ardor over the stars of Hollywood and reality shows. Others are enthralled in the sports world and marvel at the aces served or goals scored or baskets dunked by their favorite sports heroes. And there are worlds within worlds. As a resident of each “world,” people often let their narrow interests consume nearly all their free time, money, conversations, and relationships. Rare are the individuals who will step back from their narrow interests and focus instead on the big picture that makes these narrow worlds small by comparison. Her own little “world” was basically limited to her family and church friends, the local Asian American immigrant communities, and the health care communities. That “world” broadened not only when she was a short-term missionary to Kenya and Peru but also now that she entered prison—a completely different “world” she would never know or experience. This “world” experience helped her understand more convincingly that the “true

value” people should be seeking are not those of middle-American Protestantism or European Catholicism or any man-made “world” of ideas and religions. Rather, those values are found in the Word—the inspired way God revealed in the oldest book ever written centuries ago and written in more than fifteen thousand languages today, the most published and translated book in the universe. Any other standards of morality and living are inferior and limited, far inferior to the Creator who made men in the first place. Many people might not like to hear this. The woman would never forget the advice of a successful pastor from a five-hundred-member congregation church. He preached prosperity and healing like people could draw a formula, that if they would declare various scriptures and ask what would Jesus do on various parts of their lives—to education, to work, to family, to health—the pastor said it would be helpful and that though problems might come at times, poverty and disease would never take on the major things of their life, such as career and health. In effect, he was telling her to put God in a formula or a box! God showed her, and she saw right through the fallacy of the reasoning of religion. If there were no real God, no personal God, his approach might be fine. But there is a real personal God of the Bible—a powerful spirit being who acts for each one according to where he is in his faith and meets him exactly where he’s at in a way that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no heart of man has perceived. Sitting in the tomb, she wondered, Our world is only as big as we make it. How much living have I done? Of course she thought that she had lived the born-again life. She thought she knew the cross, the salvation, the redemption, the tomb, and the resurrection. Now on the other side of life in the tomb, prison, she thought she knew until she looked again. The tomb is a dark place with much smelly decay, thought the woman. Everyone is scared of the tomb, and no one dares to go near it. She knew the story of the empty tomb and that three days later, the Son of Man rose, but she didn’t know why the empty tomb was important in Christian life except for eternal life in heaven with the Father. The sun thought for a minute. The wind was listening closely. A current of fear

rushed from her heart, and the woman began to pray. It was a prayer that she had never said before because it was a prayer of the empty tomb, without words or pleas. Her prayer didn’t give thanks for her family having found peace waiting for her return, it didn’t ask for the woman be able to restore her practice, and it didn’t beseech that the smell of the tomb she had lived stop following her return home. In the silence, the woman understood that the mountain, the wind, and the sun were also trying to discern the omens and were seeking to follow their paths and to understand what had been written in the book. Suddenly, the wind screamed with delight and blew harder. It wanted to tell every corner of the world that the tomb had its view. That it was unable to show the woman but only going in would reveal what is concealed. The woman turned to the book that everything was written, and she decided to read: Then she (Mary Magdalene) ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Peter therefore went out, and so did the other disciple, and they went to the tomb. So they both ran together, and the other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first. And he, stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying there, yet he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb, and he saw the linen cloths lying and the handkerchief that had been around His head not lying with the linen cloths but folded together in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who came to the tomb first, went in also, and he saw and believed (John 20:2–8). As she read, she sensed that the universe had fallen silent, and she decided to listen. “Every picture tells a story. Which picture of the tomb is your story going to be?” her heart asked the woman. A current of story rushed from her heart as she revisited the road that had gotten her here, and she was perplexed at the empty tomb. The woman kept listening. She saw that omens were scattered throughout the mountain and in space and in John 20:2–8 and that there was no reason or significance attached to their appearance; she could see that neither the

mountains nor the winds nor the sun nor Alderson women knew why they had been placed here. But the hand writing had a reason for all of this, and only the hand could transform the ocean into a mountain, a nearly blind John Muir into a visionary mountaineer…or a doubtful, scared skeptic into a zealous all-or-none believer. When John Muir was confined to a darkened room for six weeks after suffering a blinding eye injury, before regaining his sight, he saw the world— and his purpose—in a new light, and he wrote, “This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields. God has to nearly kill us sometimes to teach us lessons.” When both disciples closest to Jesus ran to the tomb, Peter went in and saw the empty tomb with the linen cloths lying there, but John was scared and remained outside the tomb. Only after John went in, then he saw, then he believed and later wrote the book of Revelation of the Bible while on the Patmos Island, where he was exiled as a result of anti-Christian persecution under the Roman emperor Domitian. Because “Only going in will reveal what is concealed.” Because only the hand understood that it was a larger design that had moved the universe into a master work in six days and moved death in the empty tomb to resurrection in three days. The woman reached through the Soul of the Universe and saw that the empty tomb was a part of the Soul of God as much as the universe was.

*****

With a conventional, beguiling look, Alderson has long been the subject of the women in an unwanted memorable photograph. Now with the audacious view in the tomb, she was determined to flip the narrative through the language of a pen. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of the earth, a deep stony heart flies where the sorrow dripped and sang. She was in a large brick building where laid a river of bodies staring into the light with eyes dead white and sightless as the eggs of spiders, looking for anything of color. Crouching there, pale and naked and translucent, these dried bones cast up a silhouette behind the blankets. She just sat there on her top bunk holding the writing instrument, watching the ashen daylight swirling below the ceiling’s

neon lights, and she penned the “A Tomb with a View” chapter. She knew only that writing was her warrant in the place. If my writing is not the story of God, God never spoke, said the woman to herself. “Hi, Papa,” she said. “I’m right here.” “I know.” “Are you okay?” She shook her head. Moisture in the corners of her eyes, she lowered the pen and pulled down the glasses from her face and wiped her eyes on the back of her wrist and then continued penning “A Tomb with a View.” An hour later, she set out for a walk with Papa along the wooded path by the back hill behind B building in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash. Papa and she, each the other’s world entirely, everything surrounding paling away into the murk. The soft ash blew in swirls from the ground like a smoke pillar in the middle of the softball field and over the top of the mountain. She listened to what she could see, the segments of winding path among the naked trees of winter. Looking for any moment, anything of color, and any trace of standing smoke. Everything as it once had been saved, faded, and weathered. At the bottom of the hill, she stood in the cold and the wind, getting her breath ready for getting back up the hill. Papa looked at her. “I’m all right,” she said. “What do you see?” “Nothing. There’s nothing here to see.” “You forget something?” “Yes. You forget what you want to , and you what you want to forget.”

She ed through the camp, meditating on the Word and the news throughout her days. She kept history of mankind two thousand years ago and of America today close to her living. The once promised nation was mostly ruined by corrupted government and her politics and the liberal progressives because the nation had turned her back on her God. No sign of justice all over America, especially in American politics today. No sign of the nation’s resurrection spiritually soon. How dare she even think of going city to city across the nation in a MAGA rally with Jesus culture in place of politics and humanistic culture? In the promised nation today, city after city, businesses in the street were caked with ash and dust wherever the liberal Democrat politicians touched and took control, or wherever the liberal protests turned into riots lawlessly in the name of the first amendment right and comion for the cause. Fossil tracks in the dried sludge. A corpse in a doorway dried to leather. Prisons housed ash for beauty instead of beauty for ash. Grimacing at the day, she pulled God closer, and He seemed farther. “ the things you put into your head are there forever. You might want to think about that.” “Yes, of course I know that. What good is it if I have them but I can’t use them?” the woman answered as she thought about the status of her doctor degree, and she missed podiatry. “One day. Not now.” “I need to ask you something.” “Yes, of course you can ask me anything.” “Why didn’t you protect me? Why did you bring me here?” “So you can walk with me.” “Uh…okay.” She stood listening to the mountain air hiss in the cold and the silence. Her heart was weary. The wicked continued having their ways, advancing their corrupted agenda, bullying and persecuting the conservatives who feared God and loved America seen all over by the liberal media mob and the Democrat policies. “Where are you, Papa?” she sighed. “Why didn’t you stop evil from prospering

his plan?” “Maybe I should, and maybe I shouldn’t.” “Why wouldn’t you?” “Maybe we should take a look as you keep walking.” “Okay.” She walked through the wooded paths. The crowd was failing. She followed the paths along the lower river among huge dead trees and ed the education building and the railroad track, encircled around the horticulture building up the hilly road. She kept circling the lower compound in the wooded path. A rich West Virginian backwoods where once lived pigeons, blue jays, and squirrels in the spring. The raw dead limbs of the almond tree, dried and knotted and black. She stopped. Something moved in the mulch and ash, a small blue jay. “Do you see what’s happening?” “The bird is frozen on the ground where he stands, and he tries to fly but he can’t.” “Why can’t he fly?” “I said because his feet are frozen on some icy metal plate on the ground.” “You’re right. Take a look at the blue jay.” “I don’t understand. What about the blue jay?” “What is the bird created to do?” “To fly.” “Yes. What happens when a bird can’t fly?” “It probably feels stuck and unhappy.” “Yes, like a prisoner. Weather and the environment has paralyzed the bird, and he can’t fly.”

“If I can help melt the ice, he can fly again.” “Yes, if you breathe into its feet where the ice froze, the ice will melt, and you can free the bird.” “I see.” The woman picked up the bird with her gray pair of gloves and breathed continuously for ten minutes on his icy feet, and the ice melted. The blue jay was free and flew away. “You see, Alderson to you is like the ice to the blue jay. But fear not! For when you stay on my Word and let your prayer breathe upon your circumstance, you will soon be free to fly like the bird again.” “Yes. But I’m scared.” “What does your confidence stand on, me or the circumstance?” “You, of course, Papa. I know. But…I’m still scared.” “It’s all right. We’ll walk together. I’ll never leave you.” “Okay. You always say that. I know you do. But I’m still scared. I’m sorry.” “Shhh…it’s okay.” The woman shook her head. At the crest of the hill was a curve and a pull out in the road. An old trail back hill led to the central dining room behind the woods by the chapel. She walked out and sat on a bench and looked out to the mountain, where the meadow rolled away into the gritty fog. The mountain above, the valley below, and a river down there. Cold and gray heavy in the scavenged bowl of the camp. The image of the bird with frozen feet stuck on the metal plate, flapping its wings restlessly and helplessly kept reminding her of herself and Alderson. She took out the plastic bottle of water and unscrewed the cap and sat drinking. “I’ve always known your heart, that you know me and love me. That’s why I chose you.”

“You do, Papa?” “Yes. I brought you here so you may know yourself.” “We’re going to be okay, my family and I, aren’t we, Papa?” “Yes, you are.” “We will overcome this storm?” “Yes. Because you’re carrying the fire.” Every day in Alderson and each early morning, she had been traveling through the drifting haze of wood smoke-like. In the draws, the smoke coming off the ground from the dew was like mist, and the thick white gray clouds descended on the slopes. There was no list of things to be done. The day was providential to itself, the hour. There was no later. This was later. The woman sat at the bench on the lookout in the back hill for several hours, listening avidly to what Papa had to say. “It’s okay. You’re a fighter. You will prevail.” “Prevail?” “Yes.” “I’m afraid I can’t.” “You can. You have to carry the fire.” “I don’t know how to.” “Yes, you do.” “Is it real, the fire?” “Yes, it is.” “Where is it? I don’t see where it is.” “Yes, you do. It’s inside you. It was always there. I can see it.”

The cloud began thickening. The sky turned grayish. The grainy air. The taste of it never left her heart. She sat there in the rain in the winter day in the camp like farm animals, holding a tan umbrella from the commissary over her head in the dull drizzle. Her eyes were wet, and her hands were cold. And the dreams were so rich in color. How else would death call a person? Sitting in the cold sunset in the camp, her life all turned to ash instantly. Like certain ancient frescoes entombed for generations suddenly exposed to the day. There was nothing, only the wind rustling the dead roadside bracken, a distant creaking. No door. Only shutters. The woman sighed. “I think you should take a look again.” “I am sitting, watching. “You should be on the lookout.” “I am on the lookout.” “Well, I suppose you may not be on the lookout and vision until there’s no going back.” “If you’re on the lookout constantly, isn’t that because you’re scared and lack of faith?” “I don’t know. Maybe you have to be scared enough to have faith and be on the lookout at the first place. To be cautious. Watchful. Expecting. But the rest of the time you’re not scared, you may not know. Blind in the way you are going.” “The rest of the time.” “Yeah. Maybe you should always be on the lookout, and the thing to do is always expect the unexpected.” “Do you always expect, Papa?” “I do. But sometimes I might forget to be on the lookout. Use your life story. Stepping out of history and stepping into a story is your lookout. Do you want me to tell a story?” “Yeah.”

“Are you sure?” “Why not?” The woman looked toward the mountain and looked away. “Those stories don’t come true.” “They don’t have to be true. They’re stories.” “Yes. But in the stories we always have happy endings, and we don’t have happy endings.” “Why don’t you tell me a story?” “I don’t want to.” “Okay.” “I don’t have any stories to tell.” “You could tell me a story about yourself.” “You already know all the stories about me. You were there.” “You have stories inside.” “Yeah, but stories are supposed to be happy. I don’t have one.” “You don’t have happy ones?” “They are more like real life.” “Real life is really bad?” “What do you think?” “Well, I think we’re still here. A lot of bad things have happened, but we’re still here.” “Yeah.”

“You don’t think that’s so great?” “It’s okay.” She pulled out a piece of paper and a pen from her gray jacket pocket and looked out across the mountain capes. She sat on the bench with her leg stretched out. After a moment of silence, Papa said, “I think it’s a pretty good story. It s for something.” “It’s okay, Papa. I just want to have a little quiet time.” “What about dreams? You used to tell me dreams sometimes.” “I don’t want to talk about anything.” “Okay.” “I don’t have good stories anyway. They’re always about something bad happening. You said that was okay because all things work together for our good.” “You don’t think that’s true?” “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know.” “Okay.” “What am I supposed to do, Papa?” “Well, what are we?” “I’m sorry. I don’t know anymore.” “We’re okay. Just keep watch.” “I’ve gotten more than I can carry now.” “I know. I just want you to take a look.” “Okay.”

“I’ll show you. It’s to signal with the road you take.” “Is that what I’m to be on the lookout for?” “Yes. I always do what I promised.” “Is that the truth?” “The road is not easy. That hurt, didn’t it?” “Yes. It did.” “Are you real brave?” “Just medium.” “What’s the bravest thing you ever did?” “Getting up this morning,” she said. “Really?” “No. Don’t listen to me.”

*****

The hour sloughed past uncounted and the day uncalendared. Along the road, up close and personal of charred and rusting human beings. The incinerate pride of many shrunk to the size of a child and propped by the base programs of the camps. Weekend morning quickly turned to night, and the days were each still murkier than what had gone previously. A thousand dreams ensepulchered within their crozzled hearts. Some women woke in the darkness, coughing softly. She lay listening. Papa looked down, watching her wrapped in a blanket. A drip of hope. A fading light. Old dreams encroached upon the waking world. Papa held her heart, whispering, “You need to keep going. Your odds are not against you but

for you. You’ll be lucky again if you don’t give up. You’ll see. Keep going. It’s all right.” “I try. Even so many things I don’t understand.” “You want to know what the Bible legends look like: David runs for his life from Saul living in the cave, his anointing preparation to be the greatest king. Paul lost his ship, but his life was preserved on the island of ‘unfamiliar,’ Malta, his anointed healing power birthed. Joseph’s imprisonment for telling the truth, anointing to a savior to his family and nation. Elijah looking for God in every greatest omen, the powerful wind that parted the mountain, the earthquake, then the fire, but he found God in quietness and a gentle whisper and was delivered from victimization. On this mountain, you will find your personal legend and live out your personal legacy. Do you understand?” “Yes.” The woman sat cowling in the blanket. After a while, she looked up then lay down again, covered under the blanket, and continued conversing with Papa. “You think your life is over, don’t you?” “I don’t know. Maybe.” “You’re not going to be destroyed.” “Okay.” “But you don’t believe me.” “I don’t know.” “Why do you suppose your life is over?” “I don’t know.” “Stop saying ‘I don’t know.’” “Okay.” “Why do you think your life is over?”

“I don’t have anything left. My practice is gone. My name is ruined. What left that’s not destroyed?” “You faced a shipwreck, and your ship got destroyed. You still have your life. We’ll find something.” “Okay.” “Your life is still preserved. We have our name. That’s the most important thing. You can’t do anything without you. You are your name. You don’t last very long without your name. Your name is in Me. We’ll find something.” “Yes.” “But you don’t believe me.” “Yes. I believe you.” “Do you think I am a fairy tale?” “No.” “Do you believe there’s an empty tomb?” “Yes.” “Okay. It means we are not dying but become more alive after going in the tomb.” “Yes.” In the grudging strength that ed for the journey, Papa put her at ease through their conversation. The woman closed her eyes and fell into a deep sleep.

Chapter THIRTY

The Accidental “I Am”

Say there’s a place: you’re traveling by yourself on a winding path through a wood at sunset, and all you have to do is keep traveling. Nothing to it. One stride, then the other stride, then the other stride endlessly, and the only thing you aren’t allowed to do is run or turn back. Now the sun sinks behind the horizon, the darkness thickens all your ways, the devil starts his moaning in the trees, you were scared (there was shame to blame, you were an idiot, you literally drove yourself into a ditch), and you no longer recall how you got in. There was need of rescue, from your thoughts, fear, and self. One foot, the other foot, then the other foot, forever, and the only thing you aren’t allowed to do is run or turn back. Cluelessly you pursue and find “I am”—all that you need to be and live. But more than finding “I am,” you cluelessly pursue and realize that you find “me—I am who I am.” The Great I Am! In this corner…reading quietly in the low grass, with cool mountain breeze blowing, among loved ones (who are also quietly reading or listening). Followed by a vending machine Philly cheese steak for lunch at an Alderson visitation. It was not exactly her family dream vacation, but it was the perfect peace for her husband and her and their daughters amid the circumstance. In this corner, she didn’t want to miss grace because she focused so much on things that she desperately desired—freedom and home. In this corner, can women stand when they don’t understand? she thought. Are the women, like Virgin Mary, collaborating with God for their next miracle, their next deliverance? Or are they campers institutionalized in prison? Are women moving through Alderson living like the ferocity with which salmon forge a path into freshwater when it’s time to spawn, how desperately they work to repossess “the pleasures that they have formerly found” in the cold lakes and streams where they were born? To get home, the fish fling themselves to

extraordinary heights—up twelve-foot waterfalls sometimes—by positioning their bodies in the current so as to turn themselves into a kind of self-loading slingshot. (“They beat the crap out of themselves” is how a group of fishermen described it.) Many people move through life in this corner this way—wandering off only to return to what they know best, which was often what they knew first. She learned that the past is infinitely less interesting than the future. As Alderson turned, on the other hand, what once seemed to be her spiritual fiction was unexpectedly becoming her spiritual fact. Few months ago, circumstantial headlines of her prison friend’s, Tracie’s, husband losing his judgeship and job security and his law license got suspended for nine months for guilty of tampering with witnesses and violating a court order during his wife’s trial traversed all over their prison paths. Today, her sorrows were giving way to the son of the righteous right hand. The woman recalled on an early evening of the fall, Tracie, who had turned completely lifeless after her husband’s guilty verdict, broke, almost destroying her faith in defiance of one of the most dedicated prayer lives on the mountain. The wind ceased to blow. Tracie looked to the pretty spot where she had been praying with friends. But her heart was no longer there; she was sitting on the bench in front of the B Building, the far side of the pretty spot. “Hi, Tracie, is everything all right? How’s your family?” asked the woman as she was walking back to the A Building from the e-mail room, seeing the agony on Tracie’s face. “Do you have a minute we can talk?” Tracie appeared teary as she asked. “Of course!” The woman sat down by Tracie, and both were silent for a few moments, then Tracie began the conversation, looking up to the stars. “Everything I’d feared finally came. And when I believed prayer would save my husband, it didn’t come. My husband was found guilty and lost his job. They gave him a threemonth sentence to men’s federal prison camp and suspended his law license for nine months for misdemeanor. He may lose his pension, his retirement benefits, and medical benefits. I still have six months left to go. I don’t know how we are going to take care of our mortgage and our children’s health insurance. Kirk’s

case is done. Nothing I can do now. My husband has to go to prison because of me. My prayer didn’t work.” “Don’t say that again.” The woman reminded her friend of power of the tongue. “Life might be listening and give you more or less the next time, depending on what you say.” The woman turned to her desperately hopeless friend and said that she was reminded of Martha begging Jesus to come and heal her brother, Lazarus, when he was sick, but Jesus didn’t come until two days later, and Lazarus died. “From here on, you know you’re still not alone. You’ve gotten to know God’s grammar.” The woman had learned of God’s grammar from The Circle Maker by Mark Patterson while going through Alderson herself and decided this was the time to share the applicable truth of the Bible to her friend. “‘Never put a comma where God puts a period, and never put a period where God puts a comma.’ Mark Patterson said this in The Circle Maker, and it is so true. What we perceive as a period is really just a comma and what comma is, is really a period. We think that God’s silence is the end of the sentence, but it’s just a providential pause. God might put a period to your husband’s judgeship, but it is only a comma to his honorable profession and God will provide him a better job after this, more than we know. Your house mortgage and children’s health insurance are necessities. Do you think God will put a period there or a comma? God will do the rest after all that you’ve done and can’t any longer. You Lazarus’s story when Martha said, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know even now God will give you whatever you ask.’ “This is the opportunity for you to say ‘even now’ to your husband and family’s situation and continue praying through and allowing God to not just finish the sentence but to make a statement. “ wherever there’s death, there’s ‘even now’ and resurrection. This is a perfect opportunity for you to do the Jericho walk with authority and rename your son of sorrow, Ben-no-ni, to the son of the righteous right hand, Benjamin. That’s what we’ve learned from Jacob’s story in the Bible,” the woman genuinely declared to her friend. “You are only three days from resurrection.” “Thank you,” said Tracie. “You taught me the language of prayer.”

“I only invoked what you already knew.” In much despair, Tracie got up, and the two friends circled the upper compound for the rest of the evening and the evenings following each day with their Jericho prayers. Their Jericho walks turned, one step, then the other step, then the other step without ceasing, and the only thing the two friends weren’t allowed to do was to run or turn back. Tracie’s prayer life had forever changed since. On the next Wednesday morning during their lunchtime, they stood at the pretty spot at about 11:45 a.m. The two friends raised their right arms, praising God and interceding Him for Kirk’s second job interview occurring at that moment (prior to his self-surrender). A week later, the “even now” prayer resurrected Tracie’s family situation. Yes, though Kirk was found guilty and would have to serve a three-month sentence at the men’s federal prison camp, it was only for a misdemeanor, not a felony. Though his law license got suspended for nine months, he was offered a higherpaying job at a pharmaceutical company as the company’s attorney once he finished his three-month sentence. Though he lost his judgeship at the state, he still received his retirement pension packet in full, and his health benefit was left untouched for a time, just in time until he started his new position at the pharmaceutical company and would be able to get a new health insurance for his family. “Now I know surely our God is God of the break of dawn just as you said,” Tracie said to the woman during one of their last fellowships together before she left Alderson. “Thank you for teaching me how to use the authority of my right hand. I learned from being Martha, knowing the mystery of ‘even now’ to Jacob, renaming my deadly sorrow into my righteous blessing in the authority of my right hand. And all it is because of our obedience in praying through and not stopping.” “This was your personal legacy, not mine,” the woman responded. “And I wanted you to know that it was possible.” The two friends continued to meet each day, continuing to pray through for their lives and their families until Tracie left to the halfway house. The bond of two women grew by a common prick of pain, a common prick of faith, and a

common prick of prayer.

*****

The woman walked along through Alderson living for several more months after her last Bible friend in prison was released home. It was the end of visiting hours with her family for a Mother’s Day weekend. The last inmate stragglers got teary as they kissed their loved ones goodbye, and she stood inside the corner, waiting to get patted down, sometimes lost in her own thoughts, hoping the CO would hurry to go home and skip the strip searches. Narrow bands of sunlight laddered across the floor, up the chair, and over the woman’s face in front of her. The brightness blinded her as soon as she opened her eyes, and she sat down waiting for the explosions of “Goodbye” to fade, the emotions of fear and its color to die. When she sat there, she listened avidly to what her heart had to say. It was her heart that would tell her where her treasure was hidden. “Where your treasure is, there also will be your heart,” Matthew 6:21 had told her. Her heart was speaking of many things. It spoke of her family, journeys, purposes, books, and change. But to people who loved her in the outside world, where Alderson had stood bare in four-plus years, there was nothing but sky and the sun sinking toward the edge of the world. It was her lucky afternoon; the CO was lazy and skipping the strip searches. She was patted down quickly and released from the visitation. She left the visitation, and she ascended the Halleluiah Hill into the noise and chatter of the compound, staring the chapel across, a square structure of red brick in its basement. The Spanish-speaking women in groups of three or four prayed in a language she could make no sense of. They were her church friends. “Hey, Mama,” Dianna said at her approach. “Did you have a nice visit?” She nodded, and she smiled at them. “How’s your day?” the woman asked

Dianna. “Nothing exciting. We’re gathering to pray.” “Ladies, it’s the best thing we can do, especially in this place. It’s time to put our hands up and declare the Kingdom of Heaven on the compound.” Waving goodbye at the women, she continued on. After walking what seemed like a mile in full three laps around the track of the upper compound, she stopped at the pretty spot facing the gate. She stood before sunset and watched the orange sky turn gray, slow and half opaque. Descending into a stainless-steel picnic bench next to the pretty rock, there she meditated on the present. Virtually everyone who had been unfortunate enough to spend a holiday somewhere solitary and desolate as prison has, at least fleetingly, harbored this murmur, “Total waste. Found a little place to live in hell even better.” Usually, the murmuring ran around upon two realities: (1) that the holiday hell becomes more prominent when it’s your daily place of residence away from family; and (2) that you are, ultimately, too tethered to too many things back home—family, children, job, the coffee shop down the street—to chuck everything and “vacation” your life for a fresh perspective here. In this corner…arise two types of women that leaped out at her—the type of woman in an era of conformism to the prison society, the BOP, who became institutionalized, then the less commonly traveled path was the rise of the women who created a culture with an unapologetic faith with enthusiasm and captured the aspirations of true feminism. Feminism is more than just an attitude; it’s a sensibility that ambitious women, regardless of their age or zip code, aspire to. To the eyes of man, prison is where her future might very well have ended, and in most narratives of the natural, it did end with Alderson women, in the sober light of day, laughing at the grandiose gabbing of the previous night or tearing at the overwhelming prison nightmare. And yet there was the heart speaking up first, “Do you still wish to write?” The woman said, “I am going to write a book!”

Here is where the story might very well have begun, she thought. To Fail Better was the title for her first book, one of the most accidental journeys she, the accidental writer, could imagine to tumble upon. She took one step, then another step, then another step, along the central pathway of federal prison camp that cut through the depth of the soul and heart. For her, a doctor, to even pursue a culinary apprenticeship, mechanics apprenticeship, and cosmetology program were all a subversion of the bourgeois. As the days of prison ed, she had already been accepted to the culinary and cosmetology program which she would attend to turn her uncharacteristic hobbies into a potential left-hand investment. Instead, she chose to defer enrollment and took up poetry and writing to launch prison as her writing hub. As she was taking yet another step on the mountain, her heart whispered, “Be aware of the place where you are brought to tears. That’s where I am, and that’s where your treasure is.” The woman climbed the mountain slowly. Scriptures rose again, brightening her dark days like a full moon rose in the starless sky; it had been months since she had set forth from writing. The scriptures cast shadows upon her prison fears, creating a rolling sea of writing like when the sunlight casted shadows on the hills in the fall days, creating the appearance of a magnificent twirling mountain rolling in many different colorful dresses. It reminded the woman of the day when the big white ice cream-like truck picked her from the Alderson parking lot and took her through the gate, cutting off completely everything she had known in the outside world, and she had come to know the Old and New Testaments intimately that created a rolling prison to promise. And the scriptures fell on the BOP’s silence and on a woman’s journey in search of treasure. It was quite extraordinary how magnetic the scriptures proved to be to an untrained but innately inspired God’s storyteller. She adapted to building picturesque stories and shelving out of scripture by which she’d been salvaged from nearly dumpster living. Scriptures turned prison into her most accidental “I am.” One step of conflict, then another step of disappointment, then another step of despair… turned to one foot in the scripture, then the other foot in the scripture, then the other foot in the scripture. In the middle of “I know not,” scriptures made provision for her confusion. But in the mind that is full of self, there’s no room for God. The woman knew the God of the beginning of creation when salvation came and

saved her at twenty-eight, and she knew God of the mountaintop when she sat in a successful practice at the age twenty-nine for twelve years. But it was in the middle of nowhere, prison, where she knew not. This was killing her. She knew not what her future might hold post Alderson. She wasn’t alone—her husband and two minor daughters had to come along for the miserable ride. Confronted with the desperate struggling from home minus Mom, she knew not what to do. There were times she knew not even what to pray though she hadn’t lost her faith. When she reached the height of misery and her heart shattered, the woman fell to her knees in silent moaning. There, Romans 8:26 came to her provision:

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.

She thanked God for the scriptures, having taken her one step, then another step, then another step, leading her to meet Alderson chaplains, Mrs. Comfort and Ms. Authority (two prison staff sisters), and the recreation staff, who showed their kindness toward prisoners, and most of all, opened the door for so much spiritual nourishment from Christian services in the chapel and physical nourishment from the recreation center. She was grateful. Because it was an acceptable norm to conceive of a relationship between prisoner and prison staff being less equal than that of any two adults in America where it is enforced by the institution that the inmate’s word means practically nothing and the BOP staff’s word means almost everything, one can command the other to do just about anything, and refusal can result in incident report. The fact was in the institution, a dog (in the dog program) is treated better than a prisoner. A private room with a door and a glass window called a fishbowl, scenic ambling paths out of bounds to prisoners, and a personal heater were all available only to the dog program. The extreme inequality of the daily relationship between prisoners and their jailers led very naturally into abuse of power, from small humiliations to sexual abuses. And above all, she was humbled and grateful for having met the old king of the mountain, who had taught her that love would help her find her personal legacy.

*****

On June 27, 2018, the woman was released. She stood there at the pretty spot by the rock in the dawn for the last time, breathing the last moment of Alderson air and absorbing every being in the place. The woman felt peace. She was about to breathe the air of freedom again. If she wanted to, she could now return to her former life, go back to her family, and live her life as a successful podiatrist. After all, the shepherd continued to go to the mountain, even though he understood the Language of the Universe, and knew how to heal the sick, and cast out demons. He didn’t need to demonstrate his knowledge and power to anyone. The woman told herself that on the way toward realizing her own personal legacy, she had learned all she needed to know on the mountain and had experienced everything she might have envisioned. But here she was, at the point of finding the accidental “I am,” and she reminded herself that no purpose is completed until its objective has been achieved. The woman looked at the rocks and mountain around her and saw that where her tears had fallen, a sweet lover squirrel was chasing people for mint candies along the back hill path. During her time in the prison, she had learned that even the sweet lover squirrels are a symbol of God. Another omen! The woman began to dig into the rock and its crevices. As she did so, she thought of what the old king had said:

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. (Psalm 23:4)

The woman could see now that she couldn’t do so through the prison valley if she didn’t place scripture upon scripture as stepping stones for the rest of her life.

There are two sides to the story and one side to the fact. And here are these facts of which she hoped to write and the readers would find their walk of authority in their destination, to fail better: It is impossible to walk in authority and power without faith and obedience! And the opposite of faith is not doubt but confidence in security and what one knows. In the valley, the two sides to the story are the valley of the shadow of death and the valley of blessing. But there’s only one side to the facts: (1) as (s)he takes one step in the scriptures as stepping stone, then another step in the scriptures, then another step in the scriptures, and does not look back, her/his valley of the shadow of death will turn into a valley of blessing; (2) when (s)he take one step in the valley, then another step, and another step on her/his own, the valley remains the valley of the shadow of death, though it’s not death. The fact remains that whether their stepping stones are scriptures in faith or their own understanding in self, their valley is not death. It’s only the shadow of death. And God is the loving Father who is in the business of turning the valley of shadow of death into a valley of blessing, mess to message, burden to blessing, and problem to promise. To my dear readers, what’s your story going to be in the valley or the storm? What story are you going to walk in and present at the end of your road, destined to fail better?

About the Author

Anmy Tran is a podiatric physician, an evangelist, a church planter, and a shortterm missionary abroad with a successful practice of twelve years, 1999 to 2013. She also led Vietnamese Warren Church in Michigan, a faith community outreach of teaching the Bible, evangelism, and comion projects for the needy in metro Detroit. New challenges came for Tran in August 2011, when she was indicted by the federal government for conspiracy to healthcare fraud. Two years later, she was convicted at trial and sentenced for five years to Alderson Women Federal Prison Camp, West Virginia. The new journey in prison was thought to be the end of her life and was devastating to her beloved husband and two daughters, eleven and five at the time. But what she thought was the ending turned into the beginning of a life that she loved but never dared to pursue because fear of failure, authorship. She was ministered by God through the human experiences throughout her Alderson prison stay, which allowed her to discover To Fail Better: Prison to Promise. She is a believer, a follower of Jesus. And after her prison experience, she is more convinced and a more firm believer. Because if the scripture is not real and has no life of God’s breath into it, she could not have overcome and have a second chance. Currently, she resides in Michigan with her beloved family, her husband and two daughters, now seventeen and eleven years old. She is also blessed to return to the profession she loves dearly, podiatry. She also published her first book, Treasure of Darkness: Problems to Promise, the poem book of messages and revelations from her prison journey.