LANCE LEANED AGAINST THE SIDE OF HIS CAR, WAITING FOR THE tank to fill at a rest stop near Montgomery, Alabama. He’d left Tallahassee at four a.m. and planned to make it back to St. Louis by early evening.
Seeing his mother behind bars was always painful, though she tried her best to make it easy on her son. Smiling in prison khakis, Pamela embraced him and asked how he was doing, as if he’d come through the front door after a long day rather than through barbed wire and metal detectors. Every time he wanted to cry. She’d made a lot of mistakes, but this was his mom. Locked up. She’d served six years and wasn’t even halfway done.
He walked across two islands to the convenience store for gum and more snacks. He’d made this trip dozens of times, and each time he filled the tank and restocked here. Each time he grieved. For her. For them. For bad choices they’d both made, always wishing they could turn back the hands of time.
But he was grateful too. Over the past year he could tell his mom wasn’t pretending to be okay for his sake. She was okay. In her words, “everything clicked” that he—and others in prison—had been telling her. And now she was telling others.
Lance paid for his goods, enjoying the memory of their conversation the day before.
“I don’t see how she couldn’t see it.” Her mother spoke of a fellow inmate. “How could you not see your life is messed up when you’re in a prison cell? How can you not see you need Jesus?”
Lance got a kick out of that. “Momma, you were in a prison cell for five years and didn’t see it.” He smiled at her. “Cut her some slack.”
“But she could die tomorrow.” Her voice was animated. “She needs Jesus today.”
She told Lance she was talking to more of the women, hearing their stories. Of the women in the visiting room alone, she seemed to know something of how each had gotten there. Alice’s boyfriend had asked her to pick up a package from a cousin in Florida, which turned out to be drugs. Convicted of conspiracy and intent to distribute drugs and given twenty-six years, she’d see her two young kids grow up from the visiting room.
The woman across the room had a story that seemed unreal. Teresa had three kids, the youngest a cute four-year-old who was styling her mother’s hair. She’d never used or dealt drugs, but had agreed to hide her boyfriend’s stash. For that she’d gotten life in prison, because she’d been unwilling to turn others in.
His mother’s story was similar: caught up with a boyfriend, letting him deal from her house. They’d both gotten arrested. But though he was the dealer, he got a fraction of her time because he rolled over on someone else. She had no one to roll over on. She got twenty years.
Unlike Teresa, though, his mom had been a user . . . and it had impacted much of his life.
Lance returned the nozzle, screwed the gas cap on, and jumped into the car, ready for more highway. He ramped up his speed, set the cruise control, and sank back into his thoughts. Maybe the stories made him sad more than anything. And not just those stories, but stories he heard almost daily in ministry about hardship, pain, and deep struggles. Who was exempt? He was starting to think that if he could see into people’s lives—their real lives, not the ones they wanted to show—he’d find everyone going through something, something that hurt.
He stared at the stretch of highway, eyes welling with tears. Lord, there’s so much pain in the world. Sometimes I just wonder . . . where are You?