Thursday afternoon I drove out to the Kettle Moraine Correctional Institution. Behind the gate was a man who was in my confirmation class a few years back.
I got to the parking lot and while walking toward the wire and tower and gate a guard said, “You visiting someone?” “Yes,” I said. “Go back to that little house and fill out the form and we’ll call you.”
I went back to this garage like building. I found the form and a pen and filled out the papers when a voice came on a speaker. “OK – come on over.” They must have had a camera watching me.
I walked over and emptied my pockets after turning in the form. Then I put my valuables in a locker and walked through a metal detector. It was just like being at the airport. They allowed me in. It was 4PM.
I went to the administration building where there were blue plastic chairs in sections. Handed my paper form to another official. “You can sit in number 25. We’ll call for the inmate.” So I sat and watched a number of visitations going on: parents, friends, lovers, families visiting with men in dark green prison clothes. You can take in under $10. Many did as I watched them buy chips, soda, cookies from the vending machines to give to their green suit.
Soon T. arrived. I hadn’t seen him since he was in an orange jump suit with shackled wrists and ankles in the Sheboygan County Court House at his hearing. That was years ago. He was little more than a teenager back then. It was just through letters, cards and Christmas photos that I stayed in touch with him as he moved through Dodge, Fox Lake and now here.
What greeted me with a hug and smile was a MAN. Tanned face, slicked back hair and muscular build. Gone were the pimples, crew cut and chubby fast food frame. T. was a different person now. He spoke in subdued voice of his routine: recreation, weight lifting, group meetings, classes in automotive mechanics, so-so food and tolerable roommates. His mother always comes to visit and his brother too. An older gentleman from the ministry at “Good News Jail and Prison Ministry” from Sheboygan also visited and kept in touch with devotional materials which he reads every morning. None of the crowd he hung with before his run in with the law has as much as bothered to send a post card. “I know what a true friend is now,” he said.
He may get out in the next few months. T. is looking to start over. “I made some bad choices which landed me in here – I have learned the hard way.” It will be an uphill struggle to stay in the mainstream, find a job, get more education and move forward.
The prayers of his mother (a widow living on S.S) have been an unseen lifeline. I saw Jesus in dark green clothes behind the gate. He smiled and gave me a hug and said, “Thanks for coming, bro.” There have been only a few times when those words reached deep into my soul. He knows he is not forgotten.
What a thin but powerful thread of grace that holds us all. It reaches into funeral parlors, hospital rooms, lonely apartments and behind barbed-wire gates.
Looking for God – you’ll find him there.
