Some of you know me well enough to know that telling our life stories is important to me. I strongly believe everyone who knows God on a personal level should be willing to tell others what has happened to them. There is no such thing as a bad testimony. It could be the sharing of a specific incident, or a series of occurrences, or your entire journey from the beginning until now.

    We all get ideas. Some good, some not so good. Some are self-inspired, and some are inspired by God. I believe the God-inspired ones won’t let go of us. We might try to pretend we didn’t hear, come up with various reasons why it wasn’t really from Him, or even become lazy about following through, but God is patient and has His own ways of getting us on board.

    Crying in prison is not common, and in some circumstances not safe. One of the places where it is usually safe is within the jurisdiction of the chaplain’s authority. Yet, even in those environments, there is an unspoken pressure to suppress emotions that might communicate weakness. So, when tears show up, it always catches me off-guard and reminds me of the ability of the Holy Spirit to reach men’s hearts.

     She was thirty years old when we first met. Since I was newly born, I was zero, and like anyone else at that age, I wasn’t aware of how important Mom was outside of her taking care of my infant needs. But as I would grow up, I would come to realize how blessed I was to have her as my mother.

    In one way or another, most of us think in terms of cause and effect. If we do A, then we should get B. Surprises are great when it is something good, but not too many people are fond of them when they’re not. We usually prefer knowing what we can expect.