The last place I thought I would end up was prison.  The drive into Edna Mahan is surprisingly peaceful and almost majestic. Deer grazed on the well manicured grass along the entire road towards the entrance. The sun was setting and a warm amber glow hugged the distant sky.  It felt more like driving up to a well secured college campus instead of a minimum, medium, and maximum security prison.  I had a knot in the pit of my stomach.  Would these women just eat me alive? I was tough but not Edna Mahan tough.  I rehearsed over and over in my head how I would introduce myself, how I would handle someone handing me a letter to send out for them like the guards warned might happen.  I thought about how I would protect myself from being shanked.  I prayed for God to take over. I prayed for him to use me in whatever way he could to minister to the women who would be coming to our class.  We parked, calmly and nervously gathered our materials, and walked into the check in office which was right at the front gate and entrance to Edna Mahan. There we turned in purses and keys and jewelry and were interrogated and checked for credentials.  The guards were nice and professional but still intimidating.  They escorted us through a door that led right into the grounds of the prison.  Grounds was minimum security. Women freely walked around like groups of college girlfriends on their way to their next class.  Some women were walking dogs, others were sporting full faces of make up. It was nothing like I had expected. There was an ease as friendly faces said hello as they passed.  We made our way to the building where we would be hosting our class for the evening. The prison Chaplain met us there and more ease and comfort came over my anxious heart.  Chaplain knew what she was talking about and what she was doing and I had such a confidence in a woman I knew so little about.  She had a knowledge I wanted to soak up into my brain and a love for hurting and damaged women that I wanted to absorb into my soul. I will never forget the first faces that came in that beautiful evening. There was one older woman serving a long 30 year sentence (years later I would come to find out it was for murder). She was clearly a mature believer with unwavering faith is Christ and was a strong leader and source of wisdom and spiritual strength and guidance for the other women.  At that time she was nearing the end of her time in prison.  Another woman full of energy and life and kindness came in smiling, a deep and loud scar across her entire neck, the hardness of her miserable life knotted in the over healed flesh.  She talked about her son Nicholas, showed me his picture, so much hope radiated from her eyes as she spoke of him.  So many faces, some were smiling, some were solemn, some were dead serious and intimidating.  But they were all searching, they were all alone and desperate for real connection, and they were all carrying the weight of their lives lost to their horrible decisions, the grief of the people they had hurt, the children they had lost to their drug habits, the deaths they had caused, the incredible trauma of their childhoods.  It was a heaviness with which I could relate, and for once in a very long time, I felt at home. These women carried the same things I carried except that I was lucky. I was lucky to have found Christ before doing something awful, I was lucky that I had the support of someone who loved me.  Some of them never had a chance.  All the odds were stacked against them.  I felt such an instant and deep connection and love for the women of Edna Mahan and the path that led me to that room that day is a story that is full of the prompting and leading and pure miracle of God. There is no other way of explaining the way things happened.

In 2006, after a year long deployment to Iraq that started shortly after our son’s death, my husband was honorably discharged from the Army.  We left Georgia with no desire to look back.   As a matter of fact, as we left the entrance of the base to Fort Benning we joked about racing off and never returning as long as we lived.  We arrived in New Jersey twenty three long hours later ready to begin our new life.  We lived with Brett’s parents for a while. While there we attended his childhood church South Ridge, which is by no coincidence directly across the street from the well hidden maximum security prison.  Along with Brett’s mom I started going to a program called Community Bible Study in Flemington. It was led by a dynamic and mesmerizing woman.  She was an incredible speaker, intelligent, honest, fearless, powerful, anointed, and beautiful.  I was completely moved and convicted by her words every week. During this time I was working on my Bachelor of Criminal Justice Administration and specifically studying the unique issues regarding women in prison.  I was juggling school, work, and a two year old.  My hands were so full and I was nearing the end of my degree and was longing to know where God was leading my life.  One day after reading about the differences in motivation for crime between men and women, I felt the urge to pray.  I got down on my knees and cried out to God asking him to guide my life and begging him to show me what I should do.  I felt this deep ache in my heart and a voice deep inside my soul said, “I want you in prison and I want you to tell Beth”.  I sat up and quickly brushed it off as my own mind and desires guiding me.  Beth was the vivacious leader of Community Bible Study that I so admired.  The very next Community Bible Study meeting as I sat in the audience, I heard that deep inner voice say it again, “I want you in prison and I want you to tell Beth”.  I thought I was completely nuts.  The urge was so strong that I feared I was schizophrenic. No feeling or conviction had ever overwhelmed me like that. I almost got up in the middle of the service to leave I was so filled with emotion.  After she was done preaching and the room began to clear, I sheepishly walked up to Beth.  I could not believe what I was doing and I was sure she would think I had a demon and ask me to never come back. So instead of telling her what was in my heart I wrote my number down on a piece of paper, my body drenched in adrenal sweat, and asked her to please call me.    A few days later she called but I had been out. I was so relieved I had not been there.  I did not call her back and woke up the next morning horribly sick.  I felt this weight on my body and felt the sickness was connected to my disobedience.  So out of fear I picked up the phone and called Beth, and much to my dismay, she answered.  So out it came. I explained to her my prayer and what I felt I heard.  She listened very quietly and I was mortified.  Then she began to explain her own dilemma. She had been praying for God to show her where to bring Community Bible Study next and had felt a pull to prison, and she comforted me by adding that she believed what I heard was from God and she was going to pray about it. I was floored. I was not crazy, something special was happening.  A few weeks later, Beth called me again, there was this joyful dance in her words as she told me that at a Christmas party she began to have a conversation with a man she never met before who ended up being the prison warden to a juvenile correction facility in Hunterdon County.  We both knew it wasn’t a coincidence.  Just like that, people began to come out of the woodwork with similar callings and not so chance meetings occurred and all the right people came together to start a beautiful ministry.  Even the money for it all came from God as one church had an untouched reserve of money for prison ministry.  Beth and I went into Edna Mahan to meet the Chaplain and present the Community Bible Study in prison ministry that God himself had laid out in front of us.  She considered and she accepted.

One terrifying and small act of obedience opened up the floodgates of heaven’s blessings and for nearly three years I ministered to the women of Edna Mahan. I did the worship at first on grounds and then had the wonderful opportunity to teach the women of C Cottage, a well secured section of the prison that housed women with cognitive and mental challenges.  After I left the ministry to devote my life full time to my children, maximum security opened up to CBS and the people within the ministry opened up other avenues of ministering and helping the women post incarceration.  I often think about my time there and the way things unfolded and I am left in awe at how evident God was in it all.  I remember the faces of the women. Both the women I served with and the prisoners.  I long to return one day. I don’t know when it will happen but I know it will. The desire still burns in my heart. It was an experience that changed my faith forever. I learned to trust the voice of God. He doesn’t lead us astray and when he puts something in our hearts it is always so that we can respond by prayer and action.  And you know what I found? That I was being ministered to as much as those women.  And on rainy days when I feel down and sorry for myself I remember the stories of those women. I remember the sad eyes, I remember the voices, I remember the gates slamming behind me, and I remember that I got to walk out of there freely every Tuesday.