Loneliness could hardly describe the feeling Mercedes experienced when her husband was arrested. Isolation was probably closer to it.
Not only did she and her two daughters lose their main source of income, but she said she also lost the respect of her friends and family.
“You tell someone that your husband is incarcerated, who starts a meal train? Who comes to babysit?”
Even worse perhaps, Mercedes’ own father had served time in prison when she was a child and now she felt like she was repeating a history she had tried her entire life to avoid.
Carrying embarrassment on her shoulders, Mercedes initially dealt with the shock of her husband’s incarceration by almost pretending it hadn’t happened. She worked overtime to provide a big Christmas for her two daughters.
“I almost went into debt,” she admits. And all “because I couldn’t give them the one thing that was on their list which was their dad.”
The following year, Mercedes tried even harder to pretend like life was normal. She only told a few people at her church about her situation and when an opportunity came up for her daughters to receive Christmas gifts from their father through Angel Tree, Mercedes balked at the thought of showing up for a big party, fearful of being seen by someone she knew.
“The thing that got me was that it was a present on behalf of my husband,” she said. “It had his name on it … I couldn’t pass that up.”
Following their first year as recipients of Angel Tree, Mercedes’ eldest daughter Ciara was invited to a special camp for children with incarcerated parents at Camp David of the Ozarks, a ministry that partners with Angel Tree.
Typically Mercedes would visit such a place in advance before even thinking of sending her daughter there, but with working nights and on the weekends, she couldn’t find the time.
“I had to just trust and send her on a bus two hours away for a week,” she said.
Halfway through the week at camp, Mercedes received a call from one of the counselors at the camp saying that Ciara wanted to get baptized. And although Mercedes wasn’t able to make it for the baptism, the camp put together a photo album from the week, so that Mercedes could witness the event through pictures.
When Ciara got off the bus at the end of the week, Mercedes said she welcomed home a different girl than the one she had waved goodbye to.
“Before her father’s incarceration, Ciara was so vibrant. Afterwards, she was withdrawn,” Mercedes said. “After camp, she was smiling and vibrant. ‘This is the little girl I know!’ “
Ciara told her mother how all the other kids at the camp understood each other because they were all going through the same thing; almost as if they were family. She also for the first time began opening up about her father’s incarceration.
“It was a major breakthrough for her,” Ciara said.
In October, Mercedes received an invitation of her own—to attend a retreat at Camp David for women with incarcerated husbands. It was the last thing she wanted to do.
“I don’t want to be around women who were like ‘my story is worse than your story’ and would be moping and wallowing.”
But “Ciara told me we had to go,” and she knew deep down that there was something special about the camp.
“I was curious about what made her love this place so much. Why are these people so special in my child’s life? What happened in seven days that made a total difference?”
When she arrived at the camp, the leeriness she felt intensified. She walked into the conference center and an older woman embraced her and told her she would be her “camp mom.”
“I’m not used to people coming up to me and being bold like that,” Mercedes said. “Because of my situation, people had always walked on eggshells.”
Later that evening, the ladies gathered in a circle, and from somewhere deep inside Mercedes felt compelled to share her story.
“I just started bawling and telling all my business … They all sat there and they listened. Usually, when I talk about incarceration, people get nervous and twiddle their thumbs. [But here] everyone could relate. We were all in the same boat. Nobody could judge nobody.”
Over the weekend, Mercedes said God continued softening her heart to other women who had similar circumstances and awakening her to her need to be willing to be vulnerable to others.
“I never felt that safe. Period. In a long time. I felt like God had hid me in a special safe place, in the woods, so He could work on my heart.”
Since then, Mercedes has started a support group for the women she met at camp and started a blog to share her personal story with the world.
“I never thought that God had a purpose for this pain,” she admits. “But people need to see you in the valley before they can see you at the mountaintop, so God can get the glory.”