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A FAMILY HELD TOGETHER BY FAITH
Pam and Aaron began their relationship on the run, but God brought order and peace amid chaos
By Lou Haviland
Aaron and Pam were both 25 when they began dating after almost 10 years of friendship. Friendship is a great foundation for romance, but their courtship began against the backdrop of drug abuse and addiction.
“We were at a bad time,” Pam says. “We were both using drugs. We weren’t going anywhere good.”
Aaron had been in prison twice and Pam was working as an exotic dancer. She left that job once they began dating, but their drug habit required money.
Their next move would lead each of them to a place of unimaginable brokenness.
DRAWN TOGETHER BY PAIN
The couple had grief and trauma in common, and both relied on drugs to numb their feelings.
Aaron began experimenting with drugs after the death of his best friend, Mike, who was killed in a fight. Mike’s mother was white and his father Black, just like Aaron’s parents. Both young men were raised by single mothers. Mike helped Aaron feel less alone in their mostly white community.
“When Mike died, I started doing all kinds of drugs,” Aaron says. “Any drugs I could get my hands on. I walked flat out into [addiction], not knowing that it was going to own me for a long time.”
Pam was raised in a Christian home with a father who served in the military and says, “There was no reason I should have ended up the way I did.” But within the space of one year Pam was, in three separate incidents, sexually assaulted, raped, and viciously beaten while being robbed. None of her offenders was prosecuted, leaving her angry and bitter. She started using drugs and working as an escort.
“I was of the mind frame that if men were just going to take from me, I was going to at least get paid for it,” Pam says.
Turning to drugs dulled for Pam the memory of the violence and trauma she’d endured. She stopped working as an escort once she and Aaron began dating, and the perfect storm of drug addiction and a lack of money to finance the habit formed over the couple.
PARTNERS IN CRIME
Aaron had previously served time in the late 1990s for burglary and remembered a former cellmate’s counsel for holding up a bank. All he would need to do, his friend assured him, was walk into a bank, hand them a note, and the money would be given to him.
“Somehow I didn’t disagree,” Pam recalls. “I drove the getaway car, and Aaron went in and robbed the bank.”
The two reasoned that since Aaron was unarmed, no one would get hurt, and that the bank, being insured, would recoup their money later. They saw it as a victimless crime. The robbery went well enough that they decided to try another bank a month later.
“When you’re addicted to drugs, everything sounds like a perfect plan,” Aaron says.
Within weeks, Aaron was arrested. Pam’s arrest took place soon after—followed by her realization that she was pregnant.
FAITH IN SPITE OF CHAOS
Aaron was sentenced to over 20 years in prison. While Pam’s sentence of two years was much lighter than Aaron’s, her time behind bars was just as intensely painful.
Pregnant with their son, Pam gave birth while serving her sentence.
“[It was] the worst thing I’ve ever experienced,” Pam says. “You have to go to the hospital in the shackles and the cuffs. And people are looking at you like you’re a monster having a baby.”
Soon after Pam gave birth, her mother, who had been caring for Pam’s older son from an earlier relationship, took care of her newborn.
Even as Aaron and Pam served their time, God was at work.
“The vein that runs through this story is God,” Aaron says. “I have a praying mom and a praying family who are just relentless. In their prayers for you, you can’t be fully lost. You get lost, but you can’t be lost.”
When news broke of Aaron’s arrest, his mother was interviewed on television, where she spoke life into her son’s emptiness.
“'My son has a purpose, he’s not this guy,'” Aaron recalls his mother telling the news reporter. “'He’s going to be a leader among men.'”
Pam also had believing family members. Her father and brothers were her spiritual mentors, interceding for her with patience and steadfastness.
SURRENDERING TO GOD
In his cell, Aaron cried out to God to rescue him, not only from physical incarceration but from the addictions he was enslaved to. His aunt and uncle, who serve as pastors and missionaries, regularly reminded him that he had a hope and a future. His aunt urged him to turn each area of his life over to God.
“I had a lot wrong with me,” Aaron says. “My aunt, my mentor, told me, ‘Just take one thing at a time. Don’t try to fix everything tomorrow.’ So that’s what I did. I started to live my life in preparation for the day that I was going to walk out of prison.”
Piece by piece and moment by moment, Aaron asked God to heal him from the areas of life that he struggled with: cursing, pornography, gambling, fighting.
It was a painstaking process but one that resulted in absolute surrender to Jesus.
He began an in-prison ministry, praying for other men and telling them about the life-changing love of Christ.
THE ANGEL TREE FAMILY
After serving her sentence, Pam returned home to raise her sons and became a volunteer for Prison Fellowship Academy® which enables participants to achieve purpose in their lives using biblically based life principles instead of criminal thinking and behaviors.
“I drove from Omaha to York 93 miles each way, each week,” she says. “I loved it. I believe that the Academy changes the environment in the prison. It brings hope to a place that often feels hopeless.”
Pam and Aaron married while he was in prison. For various reasons, their marriage ended, but she continued to visit him so Aaron could spend time with their son.
Despite the dissolving of their marriage, the couple’s friendship endured. They had been friends first before anything else, and that solid foundation was strong.
Aaron had heard about Prison Fellowship Angel Tree® and signed their children up to receive a note from him, as well as the Gospel message and gifts delivered by Angel Tree volunteers in Aaron’s name. Those were gifts that were especially memorable to their children because of the affection conveyed from their dad.
“I bet they could tell you what they got from him with Angel Tree because it's not the gift,” Pam says. “It's the thought behind the gift. It's love. It's the thought. [Angel Tree] can be life-changing, not just for one child, but for a whole family.”
Aaron adds, “Giving a gift seems like a small thing, but it’s not a small thing. It’s something that has power.”
Two of Pam and Aaron’s children also participated in Angel Tree camping during the summer for several years. Pam encourages incarcerated moms and dads to consider sending their kids to an Angel Tree camp.
“My two kids that went are polar-opposite children, and they both had the time of their lives,” she says. “They learned a lot spiritually and even just in the real world of like, ‘Hey, I'm a kid, and I'm at this camp, and my dad's like your dad.’”
Growing in their faith and back in love with one another, Pam and Aaron became engaged in 2021. “We were engaged before we knew he was going to get out early,” Pam says.
And after Aaron’s release in 2022, they married again.
'Angel Tree can be life-changing, not just for one child, but for a whole family.'
—Pam
TOGETHER AGAIN
While in prison, Aaron completed college courses and countless programs, wrote two books, and continued heading up his ministry to fellow prisoners.
Despite being sentenced to decades of time in prison, Aaron was released after 17 years and is now a reentry specialist for Rise, a Nebraska-based reentry organization, where he serves as a mentor/facilitator for men and women coming out of prison.
“I got a compassionate release through the FIRST STEP Act because of my good behavior and because of the change in the law,” he says.
The baby Pam gave birth to during her incarceration is now 16 years old, and the couple has four other children: two 24-year-olds, an 11-year-old, and a 9-year-old.
Both of their lives are more intentionally focused on placing God at the center of their family.
“[God] was a part of us, but He wasn’t all of both of us,” Pam says of their earlier marriage. “He wasn’t our One. I call Aaron my Two and I’m his Two, but our One is God. It wasn’t like that before. Now God’s up here, up top.”
'The vein that runs through this story is God.'
—Aaron
