Clarskville, Tennessee, has a hometown feel for Rochelle. When her husband, Anthony, goes out of town for work, her neighbor comes over to cut the grass. Another woman in the neighborhood is battling cancer, and together, Rochelle and Anthony support her however they can.
But life was not always this way for Rochelle.
In the early ‘90s, she was married to a different man, who served as a deacon at their church. She was also active in church life, and her three children performed well in school. Outwardly, Rochelle’s life looked like the American dream.
But life inside the home was more like a nightmare. Rochelle’s husband was abusive. She hid it from her children but couldn’t convince everyone. Her boss knew something was wrong and one day pulled Rochelle aside to say a prayer for her.
A NEW KIND OF PRAYER
Her boss wasn’t aware that, at her husband’s request, Rochelle had set up dummy accounts to look like businesses and was paying them with money from the company. Rochelle wanted a different life—she wanted out of her loveless marriage and out of hiding, but she didn’t know how. Soon she was lifting up prayers in her own behalf.
“Lord, I'm just tired,” she said, “I don't want to do this anymore. Can You get me out of this situation?”
She never anticipated how the Lord would answer her prayer. That same day, Rochelle was arrested and charged for theft of $50,000. After her conviction, she was sentenced to 14 years in prison in a facility eight hours away from her family.
While in prison, Rochelle was given a Bible from a Prison Fellowship® volunteer named Emma who led a Bible study at her facility. When she received the Bible, Rochelle dismissed it. What could she get from the Bible?
One day, while at a prayer service in the prison, Rochelle had an encounter with the Lord that changed her heart toward the Bible she had been given. The speaker mentioned Ezekiel 37, and Rochelle began to wonder if her own dry bones could live.
She opened the Bible Emma had given her, eager to hear what the Lord called her—and expected to hear that she was special and loved.
While those things were true, Rochelle’s foray into God’s Word revealed something very different when she opened it.
“It was that I was deceptive,” she says, “I was manipulative. I had learned maladaptive behavior. I had childhood trauma.”
A BUMPY BEGINNING
Rochelle had grown up in the 1970s, when much less was known about mental illness—something her mother struggled with. Her mother moved often, which left Rochelle with feelings of instability. Eventually, her grandmother stepped in and took Rochelle in permanently. But by the time she made it to her grandmother’s home, she was 13 and pregnant.
But her grandmother saw a bright future for Rochelle and encouraged her to graduate high school. At 16, Rochelle had her second child—and never gave up on her studies. She graduated high school, and at the age of 18 joined the military with her uncle, who was the same age and had been raised as a brother to her.
Rochelle served in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm immediately after training. While she was proud to be in the military, what really appealed to her was the way it made her look. Her service to the nation masked her guilt and shame to the outside world, while inside she was struggling.
“It was an honor to serve my country,” she says, “but I thought it would also be that place to replace what I thought was missing, to affirm that validation from the things I’ve experienced as a child.”
While serving, she met and married her first husband. She fought hard to make her life look different than she felt internally. She attributes her incarceration to overcompensating for what she felt she didn’t have.
'Lord, I'm just tired, I don't want to do this anymore. Can You get me out of this situation?'
—Rochelle
A TURNING POINT
When Rochelle realized she had learned unhealthy ways of living she set out to make a change. She approached the prison chaplain and asked to borrow a dictionary. Instead of looking up the negative words she felt God revealed to her, she looked up the opposite.
The first word: integrity. At the top of a page in her new Bible, she wrote down “integrity,” followed by its definition. She wanted to see it in her own life, so for the next 10 months she prayed, searched the scriptures, and asked the Holy Spirit to help integrity take root in her life.
After the 10 months were over, Rochelle could see a difference in how she behaved—and so could the correctional officers. She then moved onto the next word: accountability. Rochelle continued this process of writing down words and practicing them until a change had taken place in her heart.
The changes were visible not just to the corrections officers, but all who encountered Rochelle. She developed a relationship with Emma and took part in the Bible study she hosted. On the prison yard, women would approach Rochelle for counsel.
Back home, things had changed as well. Her marriage dissolved, and her children were living with her father and stepmother. They had decided to keep Rochelle’s incarceration a secret from the children, so Rochelle maintained the relationships through handwritten letters, occasional phone calls, and knit items she made. She never forgot how important it was to be there for them—even when she couldn’t see them.
One day, her daughter overheard the truth about Rochelle’s situation. The news was hard to hear, and her daughter started acting out. Before her daughter found out, her children were unable to visit—it would give away the truth about Rochelle’s incarceration. But now, with her children aware of her situation, Rochelle’s parents planned a visit. The first and only visit Rochelle received while incarcerated was that Christmas.
Rochelle learned how to build her life on a solid foundation while in prison. When she was released on parole, she had the opportunity to bring the lessons she had learned behind the walls back into her family life and community.
LETTING EDUCATION BE HER KEY
When her mother picked her up from the prison, Rochelle’s first request was to go to the library. Every day for a week, Rochelle returned there, reading a variety of books and as many versions of the Bible as she could get her hands on.
“I wanted to just put pieces of my life together with the words I had gathered about who I'm supposed to be,” she says.
Rochelle’s first job upon release was at a pizza restaurant located near her daughter’s school. One day she noticed the pots had been burned. She came in early, turned on a YouTube video about fixing burned pots, and set to work.
The integrity she had practiced while in prison was manifest in her job performance. Her manager was so impressed that he trained her to be the prep person, making the dough for the pizzas each morning. Eventually, she was promoted to manager.
She continued to educate herself, turning to YouTube to teach her Microsoft skills and taking computer classes at the library.
'God was letting me be the steward of a second chance for others.'
—Rochelle
AN UNEXPECTED GIFT
While working at the pizza place, Rochelle would ride the bus with her daughter and then walk 10 blocks to work. On her route there lived a woman who was often in her yard, and the two would wave to each other. One day, the woman met Rochelle at the bottom of her driveway.
“I see you every day walking. Where are you walking?” the woman asked.
After Rochelle told her, the woman smiled, opened Rochelle’s hand, and placed car keys in it.
“I kind of figured that,” she said, “My dad passed, and he had this Delta ‘88. It's an older car but it only has 10,000 miles. He never really drove it. I just want to give you this car.”
When Rochelle picked her daughter up from school that day, neither one could contain their excitement—they had a car.
After her daughter graduated high school, Rochelle moved to Texas, where her daughter was planning on going to college. She didn’t want to be separated from her if she could help it.
Rochelle continued her own education by attending Liberty University online. She started working for an international oil and gas company as its finance administrator for the trading floor. Just like at the pizza place, Rochelle worked with excellence. She was offered a promotion that would bring her to Dubai, but the Lord had put another path on her heart.
While working for the oil and gas company, Rochelle had been spending her free time volunteering at two prison ministries, including Prison Fellowship. When the opportunity to go to Dubai arose, Rochelle felt the Lord ask her, “Would you give all this up for the assignment on your life?”
She felt like Peter in John 21:17 as she responded, “Lord, You know all things. Of course.”
A SET OF KEYS
Instead of taking the promotion, Rochelle earned her certifications in topics relevant to prison ministry while getting ordained, focusing on understanding childhood trauma and post-incarceration issues. She became a peer recovery specialist and leaned into her calling. Eventually, she moved back to Tennessee and started volunteering at the very prison where she had been incarcerated.
She met her current husband, Anthony, while living in Tennessee. The pair has a blended family, and Rochelle and Anthony co-labor in prison ministry.
Rochelle remembers the day she was handed the keys to the chaplain’s office. She thought somebody had made a mistake. The chaplain had a family emergency, and Rochelle was asked to fill in as a temporary chaplain.
“Wait, does the warden know?” she said. “I don’t think I’m supposed to get the keys.”
“She’s the one who said you need the keys,” came the reply.
To Rochelle, this statement solidified God’s call on her life to prison ministry.
When she was first offered the position of field director of Tennessee for Prison Fellowship, she didn’t think she was the right fit. She didn’t believe she had the level of people skills the job required, but after prayer and encouragement from the current field director, she accepted.
“It was a confirmation of a message that I heard that God was letting me be the steward of a second chance for others.”
One of her favorite parts of the job is helping prisoners receive Bibles, like the one she received all those years ago—and helping them discover what it looks like to walk with integrity and accountability. To this day, she still uses the tattered, weathered old Bible she received while in prison, notes and all.
