Hi my friends,

I want to share something that’s been sitting on my heart.

Recently, I met a group of people who stirred something in me about prison ministry. This subject has always been near and dear to my heart because prison has impacted my life personally. My story isn’t theoretical. It has names. It has faces. It has visiting hours and collect calls.

The stories I want to share are about my two brothers.

Both went to prison.
Both grew up in the same house.
Both carried the same childhood wounds.
Both sat behind the same kind of cold brick walls.

But they did not leave the same way.

One brother went in for a crime that broke his family apart. When he entered the system, he made a quiet decision: I cannot keep living the way I was living.

The other brother treated prison like a revolving door. His focus wasn’t on change — it was on proving a point. To him, the system was corrupt, the world was unfair, and history had dealt him a bad hand. If there was a conspiracy theory floating around, he probably had a footnote for it.

There’s a cynical joke you hear from guards: “Everyone finds Jesus in prison.” It’s usually said with a smirk.

Ironically, they’re not wrong.

Brother one, opened a Bible not to impress anyone, but because he was desperate. Page after page, he found story after story of people who had been imprisoned, betrayed, exiled, broken — and restored. He began to build a real relationship with Jesus. Not the jailhouse version people roll their eyes at, but the kind that confronts you. The kind that asks you to forgive others… and yourself.

And that’s where his real prison was.

It wasn’t the bars. It wasn’t the food. It wasn’t the count times.

It was shame.

He struggled to forgive himself. He struggled to believe he could start over. Freedom felt more frightening than confinement because prison, in a strange way, had become predictable. Out here, he would have to face his victims. He would have to rebuild trust. He would have to live differently.

Meanwhile, brother two also attended Christian classes. He could quote Scripture. He could debate theology. He held a Bible in one hand — and resentment in the other. He built relationships with inmates who looked like him, talked like him, and reinforced the same belief: We are here because the world failed us.

Accountability was a foreign language.

Now, let me be clear. We all had a painful childhood. We experienced abuse, neglect, trauma — things no child should endure. But pain can either become a place of healing or a permanent excuse. One brother brought his wounds to God. The other carried his like a badge of honor.

Years passed. Both brothers experienced stretches without family visits. Without commissary money. Without outside support. Just four walls and their thoughts.

One flipped pages in his Bible and counted down the days — “ten days and a wake up” — clinging to hope. The other counted injustices.

Eventually, they both walked out.

Here’s the irony: the prison doors opened for both of them, but only one truly left.

Brother one stepped into the free world anxious and unsure. Prison had been harsh, but it had also sheltered him from responsibility. Freedom meant facing what he broke. It meant rebuilding relationships brick by brick. I could see that prison had hardened parts of his heart — but I could also see that God had softened deeper places. He spoke about the Lord’s goodness. He shared his testimony. He began restoring what had been torn apart. Slowly, painfully, but genuinely.

Brother two also walked out — but with an attitude that the world owed him repayment for lost time. His emotions were still erratic. His blame still pointed outward. He was physically free, but mentally, he never left the yard.

And that’s what struck me.

I’ve noticed that many ex-offenders describe themselves as “institutionalized” or “damaged.” Every time I hear those words, I feel a quiet tension in my spirit

Physically free.
Spiritually claiming rescue.
Mentally still incarcerated.

It made me realize something uncomfortable: prison isn’t always a place. Most of the time it’s a belief system.

And before we nod our heads at “those prisoners,” we should pause. How many of us do the same thing?

We carry old labels long after God has removed them.

Failure… Addict… Victim... Divorced… Rejected… Angry… Damaged… Abused… Introverted… Church Hurt…Depressed…Anxiety…Dumb…Ugly…Fat….Abandoned…

We may not wear an orange or a white jumpsuit, but we rehearse the same internal narrative. We blame our childhood. Our ex. Our boss. The economy. The church. The system. Sometimes all of the above.

Scripture says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

That verse isn’t sentimental. It’s transformational. The old has passed away. That’s not poetic language. That’s legal language in the Kingdom of God. The old man isn’t on parole. He’s buried.

Here’s the hard truth: two people can experience the same trauma and choose two completely different futures.

One uses pain as a platform for growth.
The other uses pain as permission to stay stuck.

You don’t wear ankle monitors anymore — not spiritually, not mentally. The only chain you carry now is the one that links you to Christ.

I think sometimes we along with ex-offenders are walking in freedom, but our words are still checking in with a guard tower. And my friends, there are no guards in grace.

God didn’t rescue us so we could introduce ourselves by our past. He rescued us so our life could introduce people to His mercy.

For example, the lesson prison taught me.

Freedom is offered to everyone. Transformation is chosen.

I witnessed, brother one share his life experiences, the good, the bad and ugly. It’s powerful that he shares his testimony. But he doesn’t let his testimony turn into a permanent name tag. Our stories are evidence of redemption — not a life sentence of identity.

The rearview mirror is smaller than the windshield for a reason. You glance back — you don’t drive staring into it.

There is a strange humor in life’s messes, if we’re honest. We laugh about “people finding Jesus in prison,” yet many of us sit in church every Sunday and still refuse to surrender the one thing keeping us bound — accountability. We justify our bad behavior and our erratic emotional decisions. We want rescue without responsibility. Redemption without repentance. A miracle without the mirror.

Real freedom is not walking out of a gate.
It’s walking out of your old narrative.

Not everything is trauma or needs to be drama.

One brother learned that forgiveness includes forgiving yourself. The other is still waiting for the world to apologize.

And the question isn’t really about them.

It’s about us.

I wondered… how many of us still speak in the dialect of old seasons? I am guilty of it and work on language correction daily.

New life demands new words.

It doesn’t mean we deny what we lived through. It means we stop letting it name us.

I’m praying that we fully see what God has done — not just around us, but within ourselves. Because when we do, we won’t describe ourselves as old labels. We will describe ourselves as redeemed.

And maybe we all need that reminder from time to time and ask ourselves,

 When the door opens — will we actually walk out?

Grace looks good on people. Especially when they decide to wear it.

With love, From Your Friend Its Me, Lorie