Another Chance to See

Most prison visits begin the same way. I go through security. I empty my pockets. I wait for doors to open and close. Someone checks my name and points me toward the visiting room.

Then I am given a seat.

Usually, I have fifteen or twenty minutes before the man I have come to see walks in. I have come to love that waiting.

At first, it just felt like part of the process, another delay between me and the visit. But over time, those minutes have become some of the most important of the day.

I sit down and let my breath settle. There are families waiting, children moving around, officers watching the room, vending machines, plastic chairs, and the strange mix that lives in every visiting room.

On this last trip through Texas, Ohio, and Indiana, I used those minutes to remember a line I have carried for years: whenever you meet anyone, it is a kind of holy encounter.

One thing about that line is that I know how it feels when I remember it.

It means the man walking toward me is not only his past, his sentence, his tattoos, his file, or the story people tell about him. He is someone I am being given another chance to see.

And somehow, in seeing him differently, I am given another chance to see myself differently too.

So that is what I kept asking for before each visit.

Let me see who is really here.

Because if I only look through my own fear, assumptions, and habits, I will miss people. And I do not want to miss them.

The trip started in Texas, with a man I have known for some time. When I arrived, the chaplain met me at the gate along with a few men from one of the groups inside. They already knew who I was and started telling me how well he had been doing.

By the time he and I sat down, we had a large visiting area almost to ourselves. We talked for three hours about purpose, forgiveness, responsibility, freedom, and the strange fact that a person can be inside prison and still discover something spacious within himself.

It was one of those conversations that feels like it had been waiting for you. One thing opened into the next until the time was gone.

From there I went to London, Ohio, to see a man who calls our in-person visits “Jedi Summits.” We laugh about it, but there is something sincere underneath the joke.

He is serving a very long sentence for a nonviolent crime. A thought I must hold lightly. There is a temptation to see unfairness in his story.

What has moved me this past year is his willingness to question his situation. Not to deny what happened, and not to pretend the sentence is small, but to ask what happens inside a person when I was treated unfairly becomes the place he lives from every day.

He wants freedom in his own mind. He wants to use his time, not just survive it. And now he has started sharing what he is learning with other men.

That is how change often moves. One person looks honestly at his own life, and someone nearby feels permission to look too.

In Chillicothe, I sat with a man I talk to so often that visiting almost feels like picking up a conversation already in progress. He is up for a review soon, and there is hope around that. But what stays with me is how he is living right now. He has been trusted with responsibility inside and helps lead classes each week. He is not waiting for the future to start being useful. He is doing what is in front of him.

I also sat with a man whose strength is obvious the second he walks in. He runs miles every morning and does hundreds of pushups and pullups. His body tells one story before he says a word.

But during our visit, another story came forward.

He started talking about his daughter. About betrayal. About the places in him that are still tender. There is something powerful about watching a man who looks that strong let himself be honest about hurt.

Not dramatic. Just real.

It reminded me how often we misread people from the outside. A body can look guarded while the heart is quietly asking to be heard.

Another visit felt like no time had passed. For months our letters had ended the same way:

God is.

He told me he walks through the facility saying it to other men.

God is.

And they answer back:

Period.

I smiled when he told me. There was joy in it, a shared language alive inside the walls.

Then he opened up about a victim panel he had been part of, with his daughter there. I mostly listened. Sometimes that is the only gift I know how to give. Not advice. Not interpretation. Just the willingness to stay present without judgment while someone tells the truth.

Later that same day, I met briefly with a man who had just been denied parole. I expected disappointment, and I am sure it was there. But what met me was humility, willingness, and a kind of openness I had not expected. Since then, he has been calling more, stepping out of his comfort zone, speaking in some of the programs, and taking a more honest look at himself.

I keep seeing this. A disappointment on the outside can become another place to practice honesty inside. Not always, and not automatically. But sometimes, when a person is willing, something begins to move.

Then there was a first visit with a man who walked in at about six-foot-five, over three hundred pounds, with a huge smile, and wrapped me in a bear hug.

Within minutes, tears were coming.

Soon he was telling me about crocheting.

It may have been the most beautiful surprise of the trip. Here was this enormous man, serving decades, talking about the peace and patience he has found with a hook and a length of yarn. The attention of it. The quiet of it. The way his hands have taught him something about life.

We sat outside for part of the visit, and a guard nearby noticed how deep the conversation had become. She asked if we wanted her to move.

We looked at each other and almost said it together:

“We have no secrets.”

That still makes me smile.

One more first visit opened slowly. Then music came into the conversation, and everything shifted. We talked about songs and bands, not just what he liked, but what the music made him feel.

As he shared the small moments of connection he had been noticing, his face changed. He became almost childlike in front of me.

Open. Amazed.

I love when that happens. When someone who has had to become hard, for seemingly justified reasons, suddenly remembers wonder.

By the end of the trip, I felt full in a way I still cannot quite describe. Not because the stories were easy. None of them are.

The walls are still there. The sentences are still there. The families seem to still be affected. The harm that brought these men to prison still seems to be felt. The grief and the consequences appear real.

But something is more real than all of that.

A man telling the truth about his daughter. A man saying God is down the hallway. A man finding peace in crocheting. A man lighting up over a song. A man walking into the room and giving me another chance to see.

Maybe that is what a holy encounter really is.

Not something separate from ordinary life. Not something announced. Just the moment we remember that the person in front of us is more than what we first assumed.

And maybe, if we stay open long enough, we find out that we are too.