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Do you desire success, respect, love? Do you feel unconditionally respected and loved?

Eight months into my prison sentence I faced uncertainty. While I waited for employment I considered my failures. I hoped for relief, a better future! Distraction from the truth was easier to find.

Discover God’s perfect will for you and learn how He performs it! We’ll uncover the secret of love as God defines it, and how you can experience it today. Listen to the end, you won’t want to miss it! This is General Assembly.

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TRANSCRIPT

It was November 2011. Incarcerated now 8 months, I finished the WoW program and became eligible to work again. I’d been fired from my last job so I could not choose the next one. Nervously I checked the mail daily, waiting for a job assignment. The prison would assign it to me based on the needs of the prison. It could be anything.

Starting wages in prison varied from 25 to 50 cents an hour and top pay ranged from one to two dollars. A few jobs even allowed for $4-$6 per hour occasionally.

Prior to incarceration I struggled to manage money. I saw this as a performance issue. Financial success that I could proudly demonstrate – and I enjoyed showing off – would give me the approval I craved. So, I struggled with what my apparent failure said about me. I did not budget; I hated the rigidity, the very concept! I sometimes engaged in “retail therapy” whether or could afford it or not. I never really could afford it. If I could, I would attempt to out-earn my over-spending. I had written bad checks in the past and also played beat the bank with a check. the anxiety of such behavior eventually became too much, and I stopped using checks completely.

I remember the first time I saw the inside of a jail cell. My husband and I had moved to a small town and lived on his income. We struggled. It’s not hard to imagine. We had one car, used food shelves, saw our utilities frequently turned off, and were pretty skinny. On the flip side, we both smoked a pack a day.

To purchase food, I’d written a check I was sure would clear…eventually. I spent it at the local grocery store. It did not clear, and we couldn’t afford to make it good. This wasn’t the first time this had happened. It was the first time I was arrested for such a thing. My parents and husband found money immediately to pay the fine and I was released within a few hours.

At the time, I felt trapped in poverty, unsure how to escape into stability. I worked from home, sometimes 2 and 3 jobs, while raising our 5 children. I felt desperate to quit smoking. Nothing ever seemed to stick. Inside I died a million deaths, more miserable than the day before.

Can you relate? Do you struggle with finances, addiction, or relationships? Are you looking for solutions?

I thought many people did better. I tried to avoid thinking about it too much. When forced to face my behavior I used justification, excuses and blame-shifting. I yearned to be a self-disciplined financial success!

C.S. Lewis states accurately in Mere Christianity, “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.” He states further, “Unless we really try, whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next time, we shall succeed in being completely good….

“All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, ‘You must do this. I can’t.'”

Admittedly, I did not correlate these behaviors with God at all.  I did feel they were painful and undesirable. I was the “try harder next time” person.

Do you find yourself seeking success or trying harder in order to be liked or feel worthwhile?

Alarmingly, if I could not manage wages at hundreds of dollars a week or thousands of dollars a month, how was I now going to manage living on just a fraction? Successfully With sanity?

Most inmates receive only half their paycheck. The rest is taken in enforced savings, fines, fees, and the like. For many (and often me!) that meant working for 12.5 cents per hour, full-time, and receiving a two week total paycheck of $3.50 on average.

I struggle with what to share here. How do I adequately contrast life outside of prison, the foreign world inside prison, and where I fell in the mix? Some things about prison are shocking to learn no matter who you are. I’m not suggesting these things are good or bad.

When I first arrived at prison, I was loaned $15 from the prison whether I needed it or not. This $15 would be paid back from my first paychecks, which I would not earn until I had finished R&O. For some it could take months and months to repay this $15 because their monthly pay is so low.

I was also loaned a few needed items such as an alarm clock. We were warned we must return these after orientation. The prison strongly recommended we use our loan to purchase our own alarm clocks and other important items that would set us up for success.

This is no small suggestion. The prison runs on a firm schedule and individual cells have no clock. Failure to stand at one’s cell door for an inmate count results in discipline. Failure to go to work at the right time results in discipline. Too much discipline escalates to worse discipline. Alarm clocks become a lifeline!!

Orientation lasts 2 weeks, just enough time to order these things before loaners are taken away. Many inmates do not order their own. It is hard to imagine future consequences when faced with immediate suffering. For example, one often arrives at prison from county jail dirty, hungry and in pain, without personal belongings. Purchases other than an alarm clock seems more significant. Like shampoo.

Inmates are expected to pay for almost everything except food and shelter. They must do their own laundry, for example, with laundry soap they have purchased. All hygiene must be purchased, as well as paper, pencils, envelopes, school supplies, and so on. If an inmate wishes to call someone, they must pay for phone time, which can be expensive.

Where do we shop? Canteen. What is that? Canteen is a retail store currently run by MINNCOR in Minnesota. MINNCOR is the state’s prison industry program formed by the Department Of Corrections.¹ In 2003 MINNCOR took over and centralized the state’s canteen operations which had previously been run autonomously at each facility.

Even though prisoner wages are very low, canteen does not have low prices. It also does not have much variety. I don’t know why, but both things surprised me. Did these people not know where the good prices could be found? Did they not understand supply and demand? (No and no)

Canteen will be ordered by inmates on a Sunday, for example, and their order will not arrive that week, but 2 weeks later. MINNCOR is frequently out of stock without warning on many items (so many items). Inmates are limited to how much they can order and to the amount of property they are allowed to keep in their cell. This means scrupulous planning, budgeting and ordering if one wants to succeed! Failure, anger, so much anger and frustration were about to enter my future for years!

So much could be said about this. I imagine I will say more in the future. It’s an emotional subject. Such potential for growth can be found here. I raged when my order was short without warning. I overspent. I went without unexpectedly. I ranted about the system. I blamed prison policy. I blamed MINNCOR outages for my inconveniences, discomforts, and hardships. In short – I justified my own behavior, made excuses, and shifted the blame to others.

I did order that alarm clock while I was in R&O, but not because I was wise or future forward thinking. I lacked the ability to look ahead and be afraid of the discomfort that was my future.

My excuses and blame-shifting extended to my depression and mental health. I remember overhearing 2 women discuss a book by a popular Christian writer. The book covered the topic of mental health. As I listened, I