Over the last year, I've
received letters, cards, email, and visits that have been a great source of
encouragement. Such kind acts humble me and bolster my spirits. The communiqués
reiterate the power of encouragement. We can make the world such a better place
through encouragement. When we take the time to raise another's spirit, we
unleash a perpetual cycle of good in the world, a providential blessing that
comes full circle.
Nearly six years of cramped
life has not squashed the free spirit in me. I remain keen to revisit the blue
waters of the world I love, the green grass and rolling hills, the rich
valleys, the shining cities and magnificent beaches. Until I was imprisoned, I
never fully appreciated the capacity of memory, the endless string of
information the head can carry. Nor did I recognize the value of all those
wonderful places on the globe I've encountered. I'm grateful for those
memories, for they sustain and fuel inspiration.
Most commonly, I'm asked
three questions: "What is it like in there?" "How are your
daughters?" "Can you tell us what really happened?" In detail, I
want to try to answer these questions in the upcoming months. There's this idea
that if you haven't been here, you're incapable of understanding it, which I
think is untrue. Life in prison is akin to being a castaway in the land that
time forgot, as if you're living on a distant planet that offers brief
flashbacks to the planet you once occupied. Those flashbacks come in the form
of email, visits, phone calls, magazines, newspapers, chapel services, movies,
and television. But at the end of the interaction, you're right back in this
odd, surreal world.
I'm fortunate to be in a
place that has lush vegetation. The grounds brim with a diverse mix of trees –
oaks, crate myrtles, willows, cedars. Beds of flowers and rows of hedges line
the sidewalks. Lush plants, some tropical, border the buildings. Cats live on
the compound. In many respects, the prison looks like a small idyllic college
campus. Within fifty yards of the recreation yard, I see life as it should be –
cars passing, people strolling, and rows of houses.
I fill my time with a variety
of disciplines. Mostly, I do what I can to make the best of the situation.
Though sequestered from the real world, I still carry a colossal zest for life.
Life is magical and must be lived. If it's behind a fence, so be it – I'll live
it with all my heart. Confinement will not quell my spirit nor crush my dreams.
This experience has become a
clarion call, forcing me to think creatively again, to build new ideas from
scratch in my head. I remember looking at the grim forecast early on, and
saying to myself, "I'll never recover from this nightmare. I've rekindled
the ashes in the past, but not this time." And then I thought, I'm not
going out like this in scandal and failure. I'm not going to let my daughters
down anymore, my family.
How do you give up? You
don't. You suck it up. You take responsibility for your actions. You apologize
to those you've hurt. You do everything you can to make your wrongs right. You
roll up your sleeves and do what it takes to restore order from the chaos your
actions caused. You fight to gain some semblance of normalcy, to make a
distorted world circular again.
If we all had more courage,
more honesty, and determined ourselves to do the right thing, there would be a
lot less pain and hurt in this world. It takes courage to look inside and
acknowledge failure, to admit acts of injury. Truth is all around us, but our
human tendency is to rationalize our shortcomings, leading to difficult,
arduous, pure hell for lack of a better term. I went through periods of
depression, self-doubt, uncertainty, then ultimately emerged in a state of
heightened confidence. Somehow, through it all, with God's help, I determined
my spirit to fight; I willed my mind to believe.
What keeps me believing?
Something simple but unshakeable: I know God is bigger than what's transpired.
None of these physical restraints can take away my gifts or God's plan for my
life. I know the talents I have, and I'm using this time to develop them
further, to better them, to refine them. I'll use this experience to help
others. All who lost financially, who were hurt, will be made whole. I've seen
God in the worst situations imaginable. I've seen miracles throughout the
world. God didn't allow me to be part of such miraculous acts just to taunt my
own faith. He allowed them into my life to fortify and strengthen my faith, to
inspire belief for His spoken promises in a time when the elements surrounding
my life contradicted those very promises.
I still believe that things
are going to give for me, and not just naturally, but supernaturally. So I
press forward, believing and trusting and doing my part. When we accept
responsibility for our actions, we feel our heart expand and unfold as it
releases burdens of fear, failure, and self-doubt. Fresh faith is born and
begins to grow. Sometimes those moments that you spend hoping and believing and
waiting for something good to happen become the most defining moments of your
life.
I spend my days in a routine
of discipline, six days a week. I spend each morning reading, starting early
with the Bible. Following my spiritual time, I move on to the Wall Street
Journal, various periodicals, and books. At 11:30, I hit the weight pile for
two hours. Cross-fit training makes up the first, incorporating weights and
cardio. I work my core and two different muscle groups during the second hour.
When finished, I squeeze in a high-protein meal, shower, and start writing. My
writing time occupies five hours, and is my favorite part of the day. In the
evenings, I watch movies, sports, and various television series, or go to the
gym and play basketball.
Writing has become my way of making
sense of the world, especially going through these difficult years. When I'm
writing I can feel it; there's a real feeling when I know I'm getting it right.
What has helped me through my recovery is being willing to essentially become
an open book and share both the good and bad of my life. Most people are
sympathetic beings. They understand fear, loss, regret, and failure, so they
can understand what I write. Anyone who knows me, who has read or heard some of
what's out there in the media, in the public eye, has said to himself,
"There has to be another side to the story." There is. When the legal
process is final, I'll tell all and hold nothing back, sparing no details.
I've always possessed a great
interest in the human story, in the intricacies of life that shape us as
individuals. This fuels my love of history, of story. I think the richest and
most significant stories defy easy answers. That's what draws me to writing.
The best movies, the best novels, the best works of nonfiction are, I think, complicated.
They rouse raw emotions, stirring the seed of life within us, waking us from
slumber, inspiring something beyond ourselves.
Most of us love a story.
Rarely do we remember easy stories. Characters facing their greatest fears with
intrepidity are what make a story good. Cherished movies and books are tales
embroiled in conflict. You had this, you had that, you crashed, you burned, you
rose from the ashes – these are all typical, mythological things we understand
and feel. Be it in our romances, careers, escapades, the polar changes, the
happy and sad things in life, are something we've all experienced. The same
elements that make a story meaningful are those that make a life meaningful;
love, loss, forgiveness, risk, fear, bravery, honor, failure, redemption. We
think life is about building a nest egg, finding security, but the truth is,
life is about our experiences, what we live, feel, and encounter.
The writing has reunited me
with my calling and unearthed a new internal fire – fiction writing. For the
past year I've been writing a novel. The five-hundred-page work is near
completion. Writing fiction involves placing yourself in imagined
circumstances, creating a world, and bringing that world to life. I find in
that labor of concentration something wonderful, something that can be,
something that is born. Looking candidly, this correlates with the role I
played when I stood behind pulpits and spoke to thousands weekly. Back then, I
understood my gift to be oratory, and at one point, believed I squandered that
gift. But now I see otherwise. My gift never left, and its prime role remains
intact. Only the delivery, the format, has changed.
Our gifts can transcend our
perception of where those gifts are applicable, where they might work, flourish,
and be used to touch the lives of others. Your gifts and talents are
transferable. Even if you're in a place right now that's not ideal, not what
you expected, your gifts will be utilized. And there are things you will learn
in that place to sharpen those gifts that will become transferable. The
biblical lives of Joseph and David live out this idea.
Hardship or crisis creates
opportunity. When your back's against the wall, you have no choice but to try
new things and stop being dependent on the former. The adversity can be an
advantage. It can be that one moment that opens something up for you, something
you were unable to see in comfort or stability.
As people self-select,
choosing what's comfortable, they miss the serendipity of bumping into ideas
that may not agree with them, but are life altering. Embrace what you don't
know, what you fear. Embrace hardship and difficulty. Though life may not be
breaking your way, God has a plan for it all. You might discover and unleash a
beautiful gift lying dormant inside your heart. Sometimes the only way to make
sense of the adversity is to plunge headfirst into it, to take the swim.
Fiction writing has
accomplished things in my life I never imagined. It has a life and significance
beyond what I fancied. With my novel, I initially wrote because there was a
story inside me burning to get out. I wanted readers to view life through the
lens of two characters taking the human journey, to feel the ups, the downs;
the laughter, the tears; the joys, the heartbreak. I hoped to move an audience
by conjuring emotions that inspire something greater, helping readers
comprehend why bad things happen to good people, to feel the nostalgic currents
of childhood, of romance, of the journey itself, the good and bad of those
affairs. I wrote to take readers outside of themselves, to a place where they
could feel these characters and be reminded that no matter what transpires in
life, there is a river of destiny flowing in the unseen space surrounding that
life. Blended streams of fate do shape our lives even when we doubt ourselves.
The further I delved into the
story, the more I fell in love with the characters, and the story took turns
and twists I never expected or imagined. Though the story contains all of what
I wanted, it holds more than I anticipated. The result is something
captivating. I think most readers will fall in love with the book and its
characters. The response from a group of twelve reviewers seems to support this
premise: "Engrossing." "Fascinating." "Riveting."
"A novel I'll read again and again." "Moving and
unexpected." "Unforgettable."
Writing should change the way
we look at things, inspiring us to look through a different lens. For me, it
boils down to this: If there's one person who sees my mistakes, learns from
them, and keeps pressing on through their own shortcomings, then writing was
the right thing for me to do. We all have life experiences that can bless
others. Whoever we are, wherever we find ourselves, no matter our age or station
in life, we all have stories to share – stories that can make a positive
difference in the world and change another person's life. Don't be afraid to
use the good and bad of your life to brighten someone's world.
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