PRISONER EXPRESS

  
It has taken me 27 years to figure out what family really means to me. I used to think it was my friends who used to stick by me and party with me all the time. I haven't heard from them since I have been in prison all these years. They left me and ad I truly realize, they don't care what happens to me, just as long as it's not them. That's not family to me!  
	How easily I was forgotten by my so-called friends. Then in my heart, feeling all alone and needing someone, I searched out for those who would love me as I am. I found the gangs in prison. I found guys who were sticking together, helping each other out, and telling each other, "I love ya, bro." How easily that word would come to their lips when getting something they wanted out of each other. When using each other and manipulating each other, it was always, "I love ya, bro." From the outside looking in, it seemed like they wouldn't let anything come between them or cause dissention amongst them. So I naturally fell in with them like the sucker I was then. I soon realized that they didn't love me, they didn't even hardly care for me. I was just around to be spent for them and to let them use me however they saw necessary. That has led me to this cell I sit in for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I haven't heard from any of them since I been here. What a fool I was!   
	Out of my last act of desperation I wrote my brother and his family. I told them I'm sorry for making them ashamed of me and for disgracing them. I didn't expect a response because in my sick mind I was thinking that they were tired of me. Not so. They gladly wrote me, and we still stay in touch on a regular basis today. They tell me they care and love me, and can't wait for me to get out and come home. They forgave me for my past actions and want to help me make a better future for myself. Before I thought or realized it, I had finally found my family.   
Anonymous  

  
Oh how I love and hate my family. Or should I say, how I hated myself and my family then loved myself and my family. When I was young, my family loved me. I just didn't know it. My father and mother were drunk a good part of the time, as I was later in my teens. I remember a few good things and a few bad things.  
	I have a brother and sister, but they are much older than me and they were not there for most of my life. I used to think how I wished for a normal family life and to be loved. It wasn't 'till I learned later in my life that my family did love me, I just didn't notice! Then when first my mother then my father stopped drinking, we started to really talk to each other. By that time it was too late for me to be the son they wanted, for I had a life sentence. It didn't stop us from growing into the family of love I always wished for. Also, I had learned to love and respect myself along the way. I still wish for that close loving family, but do not miss it either. For now I live for myself and the family I hope to have one day!   
	We all do not grow up in a normal family life, but most of the time our family still loves us. We just need to learn to love ourselves to see the love of our family. We may hate what we do to each other in our lifetime, but with luck we learn to get over it and go on to show we can change the way we act to each other and become a family of love and hope for all!  
-R.A.H. 62,   

  
  
	High school sweethearts, love at first sight, that magical attraction where a man and a woman twain.  They come together and learn each other through the concept of courtship.  Eventually, they consolidate the ceremony with marriage.  The consummation begins and the consequent is a child.  Forming the budding of a family.  
An idea: the people in that family travel one path with proper role modeling and healthy boundaries with altruism as its heartbeat.  The family I grew up in was elusive to all those points.  We were five selfish people going five different directions with little regard to the feelings of others.  I think all of us possessed the tame type of brain the ol' doc put in Frankenstein, the label was ABBY-NORMAL on the jar.  
	I am the oldest of three boys and our parents literally came up from absolute zero.  They worked hard and made sure we had everything we needed.  They taught us right from wrong.  And struggled and loved as I'm sure most parents do.  There was simply no sense of unity.  We would come together at supper time then scatter like a covey of quail.  
	Eventually, I came to prison just prior to my 21st birthday, I'm 47 now.  And I have been incarcerated most of my adult life.  Prison is tough especially back in the 70's, for a young white male.  I was in prison about six years and during that time I usually walked around sporting at least one black eye from fighting.  Every week went by with not less than three fights.  I can still fight good but back then I weighted 225 lbs and the tough guys would try me on for size.  There is no shortage of tough guys.  
	One afternoon three guys jumped me and tried to cut my face off using a box cutter razor knife.  I was lucky they only got half of my face cut off because I had two shanks (homemade knives) myself.  It was a particularly bloody afternoon.  From the grading system of prison, I won the fight.  Unknowingly, there was a group of guys that had been watching me for about a year.  A few days after I got my face sewed up one of them came to call on me.  The story the dude layed down was a romance to my ears.  He guaranteed that the violence against my person would end.  And I would be respected and feared.  The violence didn't stop, it turned the corner, and shifted into high gear.  But I was respected and feared because the gang became my family.  Talk about ABBY-NORMAL.  
	Anyone who dared to get out of line was dealt with great harshness. We had our 25-cent Tough Guy masks on all the time. And when we needed, we would pull out of 50-cent gorilla suits and mark territory with the fear and blood of others. All the years went by and we would say who was and who was not worthy of our attention or attitude adjustments.   
	My family homeboys and I would run around helping ourselves to other people with violence and take their property then slap each other on the back laughing and congratulating each other for taking advantage of another weak character. Because we thought we were the power and we were the ones who said who was ok and alright and who was less than weak. They were prey and we were predators.  
	For years I felt that the dudes in here that read and talked the Bible and prayed and went to church did it for one reason -- protection. I always thought they were doing the Christian thing so they wouldn't be held responsible for their crime or another weakness they may have. In fact, I viewed Christianity as weak and fake. I even persecuted many of them because of their perceived weakness, when necessary.   
	I became a very evil and looming presence for 26 years in this place we call prison. For 20 years I played. "The Game," "In Family." All these years have been fake, as fake as the tricks of a magician. The Family Game was entertaining or so I thought. It was a way to do time and not deal with my own shortcomings. Fake, all of it, everything in prison is fake... our tough guy masks, our gorilla suit attitudes. We came in here beating each other up, some even lose their lives and for what? To prove something? That maybe I'm better or badder or less fearful than the next dude? ABBY-NORMAL for real!  
	A little more than 18 months ago security finally placed me in Administrative Segregation. They labeled me a gang member literally too dangerous to live in the General Population. There it was, I finally made it to the bottom of the bottom. Now I was worse than the worst. Short of possible parole or the end of a man's sentence, there is no way out. 	  
	Not being able to move around and confined to my cell 23 hours per day with 1 hour recreation time (sometimes) weighed heavy on my emotions and mental strength. I couldn't sleep on night so I was listening to a story on the radio about a guy who was down on his luck and had problems on top of problems. I related to the story in many ways. The parallels were unreal. At the end of the show I realized it was a Christian program from a mission in Chicago.   
	That's when it hit me -- that the one thing I have always viewed as fake wasn't fake at all. It was real: Christians, the Bible, God, all of them real and the "Family Game" was really fake. Overwhelmed with emotion, I asked God to "Help me."  That's all I could say. But the next three days I told God all about it. I poured it out to Him and what an awful wreck I had made of things.   
	I started reading my Bible some, even started a Bible Study and prayed when I went to bed. After all, I needed something to do with all this extra time on my hands. What I was really doing was "Hustling Jesus" trying to get past some uncomfortable feelings to an ugly past.   
	I held onto my gang ties and one day I read about serving two masters in my Bible. Then I didn't think much about it. But a few days later that thought kept coming to mind, time after time, like Chinese water torture. I remember audibly saying aloud, "Ok God, I hear ya, if You want me out of the gang then you are going to have to take me out." Immediately "Ok" was in my mind and the serving two masters thought was gone.   
	At that time I didn't know it but what I did was enter into a covenant with God. One that He honored too. In family I was always a bit more vocal than I should have been. And I got into an argument with the rank 'cause I wouldn't help him lie on another member. It was decided how I, after 20 years of service, was no longer worthy of being a member. I was shocked, angry, and a lot of other things, but my family ties were severed.   
	Mad, I said these dudes are doing me wrong. Then the memory of the agreement God made with me came to mind. God gave me an out -- not one I would have chosen because it dishonored me in my mind. You see, I really was Hustling Jesus but God is true to His Word. That's how I know he isn't fake. God ripped me right out of my ABBY-NORMAL family and made me part of HIS ETERNAL FAMILY. That is when I realized I had weakness confused with meekness.   
	I always heard you better be careful what you pray for because you just might get it. I traded hate for love. And it's a sense of really belonging and a love so beautiful I cannot turn away. The transition from hate to love has not been easy, but all along the way I have experienced things I can't explain. I've had people send me books and talk about me over the radio. One lady even wrote a long poem about me. It's going to be published in her next book with some of my own poems. I've had another guy dedicate songs to me over the radio. It goes on and on. I can hardly believe the sincere warmth and love people are bestowing to me because God kept His word to me.   
	No -- if you are asking the question. I'm not Hustling Jesus anymore. I'm totally sold out to the Lamb of God and my past no longer matters; my slate is clean and I'm grateful. I belong to the REAL ETERNAL FAMILY -- God's family. I have God and people who believe in me, trust me, and will never leave me or forsake me. What a Family, one that's chock-full of altruism. Yes it's truly a love so beautiful I cannot turn away. Come and join me, you won't regret it. I promise.   
Silent