IO: You meet many women who are in a similar situation to yours. Some might be very familiar with the prison system. But what about women like you who would never have imagined they’d be in this position. What advice can you give them?
CK: First of all, if you are a person of faith, have one other woman that you can share your fears with and ask her to pray with you about those, because there are parts of this process that can create a whole lot of frightening situations.
Maybe . . . as it was for me, it’s the first time you’ve visited a jail—and it’s to see your child. Know that you will have some people who are rude, but maybe it’s not you who makes them rude. It’s been their own life experience, or their reaction to people who aren’t trustworthy that triggers their negative responses. Realize that it isn’t you that they’re mad at. Just know that other things have happened that have caused this.
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And you need to learn the system . . . and there is different protocol. And I may not like going through a patdown from someone I’ve never met before, but it’s a part of what I do in order to see my son. And so the end result of that “patdown” is worth it.
Make a point, every time you go, of talking to the person in the line waiting to go through security in front of you and behind you. And talk to the children, because those kids have been given a sentence of their own.
And look around and find somebody who needs help worse than you do and see how you can lend a hand.
IO: In a recent talk you gave at a Prison Fellowship conference, you quoted Isaiah 43:19: “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” What is this new thing that God is doing in your life?
CK: In my life, the new thing that God is doing is to help me to realize that the forgotten members of society—inmates and their families—desperately need a voice . . . I realize that God has given me a platform, and He has given me the opportunity to write books and to speak in radio and television and print interviews to be able to be a voice for those who might not be heard in another way. And so I try to be faithful to those opportunities, so that citizens who aren’t even aware of what’s going on in the prison system know what the needs are, where the problems are, where the hurts are, and so they can know how they can help. . . . So that’s been a huge change for me, because it wasn’t even on my radar before my son was incarcerated. . . .
Another thing I’ve needed to do is to realize that I can’t do everything, but I can do something. We can start a revolution, a good revolution that means the ripple effects of that will go very, very far.
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I think my life has changed in that I cry more than I used to, and I don’t apologize for those tears. And I’ve discovered that when emotion is genuine, people get it. They aren’t offended by it. They don’t feel like their emotions are being jerked around, because they can tell when it’s genuine, and they can tell when it’s not. . . .
You might read one of my books or hear one of my speeches and say, “Boy, she’s really gotten over it,” or, “She’s found a way to use it for something productive.” Every time I drive to that prison, and every time I see that water tower coming off the horizon in the middle of shrubbery, and I know there are 1,500 men in there behind the razor wire, I have that feeling of God, why?Why does my son, who has so much to offer society, so much to offer to help people . . . why does he have to live there for the rest of his lifewith no hope of parole? And there are days yet when I throw major pity parties. There are days when I don’t answer my phone and I don’t answer my door because the pain is too great, and I just need a day to mourn my losses. I don’t ever want somebody to think that I’m at a place where I don’t feel the pain anymore. I feel it big time.
But I’m also at a place where I can feel the hope, and I see the results of hope . . . God sees the big picture of this puzzle piece of my life today, and He’s making something beautiful out of it, even though I can’t see the picture completely yet. I can only see those jagged edges.
