There’s a funny thing about prisons. The more people we put behind prison walls, the harder it gets to contain the consequences of incarceration practiced on such a massive scale. Since I started writing for Prison Fellowship, I’ve become more aware of those consequences, and I seem to stumble across them everywhere I turn. That’s what happened this past weekend in Nashville.
It’s hard to imagine a place more unlike prison than the inside of the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, Tennessee. It’s a multi-acre, glass-enclosed atrium, full of shops, gourmet restaurants, cascading waterfalls, and tropical gardens. The weather is always pleasant inside the dome; rain never falls.
But there’s a funny thing about prisons. The more people we put behind prison walls, the harder it gets to contain the consequences of incarceration practiced on such a massive scale. Since I started writing for Prison Fellowship, I’ve become more aware of those consequences, and I seem to stumble across them everywhere I turn. That’s what happened this past weekend in Nashville.
I was attending the international conference of an organization called Mothers of Preschoolers, or MOPS. With another Prison Fellowship colleague, I worked a booth to promote Angel Tree as a service project for local MOPS chapters. The mothers (and the occasional baby-toting father) were friendly and interested, taking flyers as they walked by. But one young woman paused longer than the others, looking both transfixed and a little hesitant.
“Are you familiar with the Angel Tree program?” we asked her.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, “I was an Angel Tree kid.”
The young woman went on to explain how her father went to prison when she was two years old. Her mother was incarcerated during the same period. But during the darkness of those parentless years, Angel Tree volunteers reached out to her. One year, she received a make-up caboodle. She treasured that simple gift until she was in college. Another year, she recalled receiving a large box of socks for the family, and I was reminded how, for many Angel Tree families, just laying hands on basic things like socks is a daily struggle.
She took information to help her own MOPS group get started with Angel Tree. Having felt the impact of the Angel Tree program firsthand, she wanted to reach out to others in her same position.
Prison ministry—whether it touches prisoners, ex-prisoners, prisoners’ children, or those who care for them—is a marvelous thing. Because though the effects of incarceration are pervasive, cascading through generations, so, too, are the effects of love, as one grown-up Angel Tree child now reaches out to bring healing to others.