Do You Feel Lucky?

Easy to Say but Hard to Be

Luck: A person’s tendency to have good or bad fortune.

Prison keys are ominous. Big ugly things dangling from guards belts, clinking as they walk. Coupled with the heavy clank of the bolt lock slamming home, they herald the coming of despair and claustrophobia. Hearing those big ugly keys lock those thick steel doors, it’s hard to feel anything but unlucky. Even though I knew it wasn’t bad luck but consequence that put me there, it didn’t make it any less painful.

It’s a colossal understatement to say adjusting to life in prison is a struggle, but you get there. You adjust to the day to day routine and somehow you get acclimated to the new reality. Only sometimes that new reality is….…quite bothersome. For me, getting used to a bunch of guys snoring all night was challenging. It’s not like I had done a lot of communal living….straight from college to marriage. It just wasn’t something I’d ever had to deal with it. But let me tell you, if you're a light sleeper, you really don’t want to nestle up in the room with a heavy snorer. Your nights will consist of the slowest possible ticking of the clock.

I had one particular cellmate who I was great friends with, but boy, could he go at it. It wasn’t his fault but I just couldn’t seem to get through the night. It was like trying to sleep in 1943 London as a barrage of nazi bombs detonated. After months of it, I started asking the Lord to give me some relief either by enabling me to sleep through it or finding me another room to move into. I didn’t want to move because cellmates in prison can make or break your sanity. Living with someone you get along with makes a terrible situation tolerable, but bad cellmates can make your time in prison truly torturous.

So moving rooms would bring this whole new set of problems into focus. My choices were limited, some by prison rules and some by my own rules. Clean and considerate were my main concerns. It’s close quarters living and those two make all the difference. 

I never got to where I could sleep at night, so I started looking around and found one room that might be a good fit. Unfortunately, it was full. So I waited, hoping the Lord would give me some direction. I didn’t want to get into a worse situation and since I couldn’t tell, I waited.  

In previous posts I’ve talked about K2 which is a common drug in prison. It also makes you freeze up and not be able to move. Yea, it’s crazy! Two days after I’d zeroed in on this room, one of the guys in it got caught smoking K2 in the bathroom. He was moved to a disciplinary unit and just like that, I had a room to move into.

I was sad to leave my buddy in my old room but I just had to get some sleep and it seemed like the Lord had opened up this door as a direct answer to my prayer. The new guys assured me that nobody snored and I set about moving.

My new bunkmate was not exactly what I expected but in truth you have to make due and it takes time to get adjusted to anyone. That first night I woke up about 2am to snoring that made me wish I was in 1943 London. Talk about the frying pan to the fire. I just couldn’t figure out why. Hadn’t the Lord orchestrated this move? Now I found myself in an even worse spot! I can remember getting out of bed in the middle of the night watching this new guy snore and wondering if somehow the Lord had gotten this wrong. Or maybe this was more punishment? I was despondent.

But as always, the Lord was working while I was whining. Ten days later I got in from work and the new guy was packed up and gone. He had put in to be transferred but wasn’t expecting to leave for months because transfers were few and far between post-covid. Completely out of the blue, with no warning, he was gone. 

It taught me that sometimes blessings are disguised. That the Lord wants our trust and sometimes the only way to get it is to force us to wade through some suffering to get to the blessing. For me it stretched my faith, taught me to wait on the Lord. In the future, I would be taught this lesson several more times before it finally sunk in. Come to think of it, maybe it hasn’t sunk in since I keep getting that same lesson plan!

At times it may look like God is rolling the dice and blindly hoping things will work out. But the Bible says He is sovereign…. Which is absolute, complete, and total control. To the world it may look like luck but sovereign doesn’t allow for chance. That’s why God’s children have nothing to fear in this world! 

Not one single thing!

He knows all that’s coming.

It does change the conversation when you know the future. How many things in your own life would you change if you could tell the future? A few? Most? I think about our changes in parenting if we could see into the future. It's easy to see how knowledge of the future would allow us to guide our children, sometimes even allowing them to choose their own way and make their own mistakes if we could see how those future lessons would bear fruit. We humans do so like to make our own mistakes. For the most part, I imagine we would beg our children to simply listen and trust that we know best. To somehow try and make them understand that we know what’s coming and our way can save them so much heartache. To me it sounds exactly like what God does throughout scripture, imploring His children to simply trust His way.

Did you know the most common phrase in the Bible is, “Do not be afraid.” Do you think He knew we might struggle with fear? It makes sense because things can be scary in this world. But just because we get hit with things out of left field doesn’t mean God is. The administration of the universe is not based on serendipity. God is in control of every little random and minor detail. He has one limit and He set it on Himself. He gave us free will that He will not violate because He has no interest in forced allegiance. Instead He allows us to make mistakes and suffer the consequences all the while promising to make all of it work together for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28 paraphrase). Only complete and total control can take bad and turn it into permanent good. 

Can you see?…… There are no accidents. If you are God’s child, when something happens in your life, however minuscule it may be, it passed through your Fathers hands first. 

So when the money’s short or the prognosis is bad or the loneliness seems endless, it's not a mistake. Your Father allowed it, for your good or the good of the Gospel.

It hardly makes sense that He would descend from paradise into this world, suffer horribly and die, and then head back to Heaven figuring we could handle it from there. After going to all that trouble for us, rest assured that we’re not abandoned and nothing on this Earth is left to chance. That nothing is to be feared and everything is an opportunity to give Him glory.

It’s easy to say isn’t it? Don’t be afraid. But saying and being are two different things. How can I feel unafraid?

It’s ironic, but the question came up because as I was writing this post I got some unsettling news. Nothing terrible, just changes at work, but still, it casts a degree of uncertainty on the future. And frankly, that makes me uncomfortable! Intellectually, I am completely confident that God will take care of me, but man……… I thought we’d put this to bed.

Like the flu, ever so often I get a case of forgetful follower syndrome and totally disregard all that God has carried me through. And I feel afraid, not lucky.

Unlike the flu, the remedy for forgetful follower syndrome is always the same.

Details next week….