Scary Things in the Rear View
Eddie Money, Soot Tattoos, and Your Purpose
As I followed Jimmy into the dark cell and the first thing I noticed was the fire in the bottom of the locker. It looked like a typical high school locker….only without books, just glass bottles with lit wicks sticking out the top. Who starts a fire in their own locker? A dismembered Coke box was taped to the walls and not surprisingly, black with soot.
The absurdity of it piqued my curiosity for a split second.
A brief respite from the reality that the locker sat inside a cell, inside a housing unit, inside a prison.
That curiosity must have shown on my face because the guy sitting on the bottom bunk bed said, "I'm a tattoo guy, and that's my ink."
Confused, I asked, "So you use this for...?" My voice trailed off, unsure of what to expect.
He grinned and reassured me, "Yeah, see how the soot sticks all over the Coke box….scrape that off and mix with a little water and voila, prison ink. Besides, a little soot won't hurt you."
I studied him as he leaned into the light and saw he was indeed a tattoo guy. His arms were sleeves of ink, or maybe soot, tattoos. Teardrops under his eyes and what looked to be an Aryan call-to-arms encircled his bald head. I wondered where he would find enough virgin territory for the next flaming skull.
Breaking the silence, he cracked a smile revealing multi tooth gaps and said, "Hey, I'm Tim."
Yet another surreal moment in federal prison, and it was only my first hour. I shook his hand and took a moment to glance around the cell. I stamped down the claustrophobic feeling that rose like bile in my throat as I studied the bunk beds filling up the far wall, the stacked lockers, two plastic chairs, and a toilet and a sink, all crammed into a ten foot by ten foot space.
"Have a seat, Mark," Tim said, waving towards one of the empty chairs. As he got up to close the door, I noticed his mid-forties paunch and graying goatee. He moved with surprising agility, closing the door on my guide Jimmy, who had collected me when I had first walked through the front door of the housing unit.
As the noise from outside subsided, my nerves hummed……stretched like piano wire. I took a deep breath and wondered what this was all about. Was I about to be conscripted into some Aryan Brotherhood group? What if I said no?
"Mark," Tim began, "The CO asked me to get you settled in a cell, but we need to talk first. You got your paperwork?"
"Paperwork?" I said, caught off guard.
"Yeah, your PSI or pre-sentencing investigation report. It'll state your charges. We need to know where to put you," Tim explained.
They hadn't given me any paperwork, "I'm in for odometer fraud."
Tim shook his head in annoyance, looking me straight in the eye. "Listen, if you're a SO and trying to hide it, it won't work. We'll find out one way or another."
What’s an SO, I wondered, but it seemed a bad time to be inquisitive.
"Ask the officer or someone," I said forcefully. "It's odometer fraud, that's the truth."
Tim looked up at the ceiling, exhaling deeply. " Listen bro, you're white so I’m trying to help you, but I'm telling you, it'll go much better for you if you come clean now."
Exasperated, I just shook my head, unable to find the right words.
Tim studied me for a moment and then seemed to relent, "Sorry for the third degree, but it makes you wonder. Middle-aged man coming to prison for the first time. You know, kind of screams sex offender.”
Ok, so I knew what sex offender meant.
Six weeks before, the Judge had granted me the opportunity to self-surrender. Essentially, it meant I was allowed to turn myself in on a certain day to begin my prison sentence.
It sounds like a blessing, right? For me, that time between sentencing and surrendering, was a nightmare. Like waiting a few weeks before pulling the plug on my own life support machine. The anticipation was paralyzing.
But I was able to do a lot of research on prison life. And I knew that sex offenders weren’t always treated well in prison.
“Look I’ll get whatever paperwork you're talking about but I’m telling the truth about the odometer fraud,” I said.
Tim studied me for a moment and grinned, "Yeah, ok bro, that’s what they told me but I needed to make sure. We’re always looking for more good white boys," He paused, emphasizing, "Like me……..and you."
Scary Things in the Rear View Mirror
My first hour in prison played out like that because when you walk onto a prison yard, you are nothing but your past. Rat or robber, whatever defines your walk through the legal system, labels you inside prison. And nobody ever forgets in prison and the labels always stick.
But in or out of prison, aren’t we all dragging something behind us? Don’t we all have that same rear mirror view? You know, the one where we can clearly see those missteps in the past that make us wish we could reel back time and change a moment, or even a year.
“I wanna go back and do it all over…..” is practically the motto of the human race. No matter what kind of life we’ve lived, most of us have some things we wish we’d done differently. It’s undoubtedly one of the devil’s best tricks, using our past to distort our future.
At times the scary stuff in my rear view blanketed the sky of my life and blotted out the light. Even with Christ in my life, my first couple years in prison I was overcome with guilt and remorse for just about everything. And while I don’t think I’ll ever completely forget my past, over time God has changed my feelings about it. Somewhere along the way God erected a wall in my mind, behind which sits my past failings. I know what they are and remember every little transgression, but the debilitating hold they had on me is no longer there. God gradually took that shame away, although it didn’t disappear completely until I answered God’s call to share my testimony.
But make no mistake, I did not want to!
I was completely comfortable with the past being just that, the past. But God never called anyone to sit down and be quiet. After all, being a member of the royal family does come with its obligations.
A strange thing happened though, after sharing, my past ceased to be my shame and became proof of the life-changing power of Jesus. People can deny Christ, argue about the Bible, and tell me it’s not real, but they can’t argue with God’s transformational power in my life. My (and your) story of adversity and overcoming through Jesus is a testimony to God’s faithfulness and evidence of a better way of life. Proof that God can take what the devil meant for evil and use it for good. A tingle of fear may run down your back when you think of it, but you can be assured that God wants you to share what He’s done for you. It’s just part of the family business.
How often we worry and fuss instead of stepping out and believing. Whatever your pain or your past, it’s not a burden, it’s part of your purpose.
