The Princesses

I was a bit nervous, a bit apprehensive, but very much full of anticipation last Sunday evening. My friend Lydia and I went through the instructions again out loud: Park in the lot to the right. Go to the gate at the main entrance. DO NOT RING THE BELL ... we will see you. Proceed to security to begin the clearance procedure. We stood outside the tall gate, capped with rolls of barbed wire, looking in at the buildings that sat in front of us. We had no idea what was in store for us, but we believed we were ready because we had covered ourselves in prayer long before this moment.

The security guard was quite friendly. He took our two forms of ID after he had carefully pulled on his white gloves and got his scanning machines ready. He handed us a key to our locker so that we could put in all of our stuff, valuable or not, while we were in the interior of the building. He handed Lydia a security button to attach to her belt, just in case there was an emergency. He explained that if the red button were pushed, no alarms would sound, but help would arrive within seconds and we'd be surrounded by people who would be there to cover us. Then we were told to go sit in the cafeteria and wait for Rosemary.

Several months ago, Lydia had asked me if I would be interested in being her partner in the women's prison ministry at the Grand Valley Institution for Women. I was interested immediately, and as soon as I gave her my answer, we started the process of getting a background police check, etc, and then we waited for our official invitation to attend Worship With Rosemary - the Sunday night chapel service for the inmates.

What happened that night is not easy to explain. I tried to soak it all in, but the experience was so overwhelming that most of the time I just sat in awe of what was going on around me. The room was already busy 15 minutes prior to the start of the service and more women kept coming in. We were told that it was a smaller group than usual, probably because of the hot, sticky weather and the rain that eventually came pouring down outside. Still, there were about 40 women in attendance, I would guess.

We began with some worship songs and then Rosemary, the prison chaplain, asked a question: Who is God to you? Wow. The answers those women gave immediately caused me to reconsider who they were, where they had been and who they were becoming! We sang some more. Rosemary asked more questions. More answers blew me away. I didn't hear the story behind all of the women in that room, but I was told that some of them had come from The Max (maximum security), some from isolation and some for much shorter and less severe sentences. One amazing woman, Ruth, is in there for life. She had killed her husband. She has gone through so much since that time - painful confession and repentance and memories. Now she is a Princess of the King of Kings and is being used as an encouragment and tower of strength for her fellow inmates. During the course of the evening, there were tears as one woman shared her story for the first time ever of being sexually abused. Another woman had to leave the room as she was weeping over the condition of her past. Yet another confessed her anger toward God because He had allowed her 17 year old brother to be killed. One woman acknowledged that her (sexual) violator was caught in a cycle of abuse from three generations past, and when she found that out, she could finally forgive him. She still had to serve her sentence for her sins, but she could forgive the one who started her on this path.

I could go on and on about the stories that we were told, but it was one of those times when you really had to be there to understand the depth of the healing that took place and the power of the Holy Spirit that was working that night. Lydia shared her testimony with the women, sharing her struggles as a teenager with bulimia and how she finally found victory over this when she realized that she was a princess in God's eyes - totally loved by Him! Her encouragement to the women was so evident as all eyes were riveted on her and no one moved the entire time she was speaking. My job (this time) was to cover Lydia in prayer as she shared what God had placed on her heart, so I didn't really have a part in the evening physically. Rosemary emphasized over and over again that more importantly to the women was the ministery of presence rather than the ministry of speaking.

Ministry of presence. Lydia and I have since talked about this often. Ministry of presence. Those women were more blessed by the fact that we had come in from outside the gates to just SIT with them, talk and laugh and cry with them, share a bowl of ice cream with them, talk about our families with them than if we had been preachers of a thousand sermons in that room! Even if we had not said a word (and we didn't speak very much at all, actually), our presence in the room with the women was more important than anything.

Lydia and I can not stop thinking and dreaming about our experience with those amazing women in the prison. THEY know what it's like to rely on God! THEY have come from the depths to the heights. THEY are true princesses, despite the fact that they are living out their sentences in a high security prison. THEY taught me more lessons Sunday night than I could have learned anywhere else.

Pray for those women in the prison. They all have families that they are not with. They have regrets and guilt and sorrow that are unfamiliar to most of us. They have fears about leaving the prison and making it on their own again. Pray that the faith that they have found in the Lord will prepare them and carry them through the rough days inside and outside of the prison gates. Pray that they will be strong enough to reach out to others that they can relate to. Pray that they will believe that they are Princesses because they are Daughters of the King!