Having no money, no thoughts on a future and all the time in the world I was ripe for the picking when the devil came knocking. My best friend, after one to many beers on a night that anything seemed possible my best friend suggested that we should rob a bank. Watching Johny Depp do it in the movies made it seem like a whole lot of free money, good times, and lots of pretty girls.
Well, one thing led to another and one bank became five banks. What they say is true, the first one is the hardest, the second one is easier, and the third one is a breeze or so it seemed. I knew it was wrong, but I was young and we did get away with it, well, almost. I couldn't stop the easy money and party lifestyle that large sums of unearned money brought me. There was no way my friend and I were ever going to stop, how could we? When you are making 100 thousand dollars or more for 15 minutes worth of work it's real hard to give it all up to go and work at Walmart.
Thankfully, the Lord was merciful, no one got hurt, I didn't have to shot some heroic guard and the FBI most certainly caught up with us. I knew it was over when the FBI tackled me inside the lobby of a DoubleTree Hotel in Omaha. A year later, I stood with shaky legs and a trembling spirit before a federal judge, who sentenced me to more than 12 years in federal prison. I was 23.
This may surprise you, but prison is not a place for personal growth. But there were small graces.
To escape the men around me, I took a job in the prison law library.
When I wasn't shelving books, I began learning the law. What I found was
that I really enjoyed the process of solving legal puzzles for my
friends, and so over the years, I took on fellow prisoners' cases,
writing petitions they would then file in federal courts across the
country, including the U.S. Supreme Court.
The odds of the Court hearing a case brought by a prisoner is less than
1 percent of 1 percent. And yet, the Court granted two petitions I had
prepared for my friends. Fellow prisoners began calling me a "jailhouse
lawyer."
Then another grace: Annie, my secret crush all through high school,
began sending letters to me, and through hundreds of letters, phone
calls, and visits, we became close friends.
I think many parents would have forsaken someone like me. But mine
continued to pray for me. And my mom continued to send me Christian
books, even after I told her to stop. I'd read those books and then
wonder if God had forgotten about me. I wasn't quite ready for God, but I
also couldn't rationalize the transformation I'd seen in the lives of
my fellow prisoners.
One day I walked over to Robert's cell and watched as he smiled and
danced around while sweeping the floor. My first thought was that he had
scored some drugs. But when I asked why he seemed so different, I was
unprepared for his response. "Shon, I'm with Jesus now," he said. Within
days Robert had forgiven the man who had testified against him. Today
Robert is back on his farm with his family, and once a week he treks
back into prison to lead a men's Bible study.
Robert was neither the first nor the last prisoner I saw experience a
complete and utter life turnaround. These inmates had a great effect on
me because I saw how grace can transform everyone, even
prisoners—perhaps especially prisoners.
I was finding it harder and harder to rationalize myself away from God.
I was released from prison in April of 2009, during the heart of the
recession, when no one, let alone a former inmate, could find work. But
within months, another grace arrived: I found a position at a leading
printer of Supreme Court briefs in Omaha, helping attorneys perfect
their briefs.
When Annie and I got engaged, we decided that we wanted my friend,
pastor Marty Barnhart, to officiate the ceremony. God bless him, Marty
wouldn't agree to do so until we had gone through his premarital
counseling.
Our first counseling session was, in a word, memorable. Instead of
discussing marriage, Marty asked what we believed about Jesus. When he
talked about grace, that free gift of salvation, I listened, especially
when he said that I could be forgiven. "Yeah, even you, Shon," he said.
The next day I couldn't escape the feeling that God had been pursuing
me for a long time and that if I'd just abandon my stubbornness and
selfishness, and hand everything over to him, I would find redemption.
What does it mean to be redeemed? And how do you redeem yourself after robbing five banks?
The answer is, you don't. The answer is that you need some help.
In Ephesians 1:7–8, Paul writes that in Christ "we have redemption
through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the
riches of God's grace that he lavished on us." To put it differently,
because of our sins, none of us—and surely no former prisoner like
me—can be redeemed on our own. We need the gospel of grace, which says
that each of us matters and has worth because we're made in the image of
God. Grace says we are not defined by our failures and our faults, but
by a love without merit or condition.
God's grace was enough to redeem me.
Nearly five years have passed since I made the most important decision
of my life: to surrender to this grace. Annie and I got married, and she
too became a believer. We were baptized together at Christ Community
Church in Omaha. We had a son whom we named Mark, after my father, a man
of faith who passed away after a long battle with cancer while I was
still incarcerated. And a few years later we had a baby girl, whom we
named Grace.
After I graduate this spring, we will move to Washington, D.C., and I
will begin clerking for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
D.C. Circuit.
To say we have been blessed doesn't begin to cover it. Through it all, from the amazing to the mundane, God loved us. Through
it all, God has given us a purpose. For me that purpose revolves around
repentance, loving my wife and children, sharing the grace I've been
given, and using my legal knowledge to assist those who cannot afford a
decent attorney.
Looking back over the course of my life, I can see that although I rarely returned the favor, God hotly pursued me.
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