The Man, The Myth, The Wolf

Dear Friends:

Just wanted to share some personal thoughts with you and an article detailing the life of Jordan Belfort, whose story will be featured in Scorcese's film, "The Wolf on Wall Street," starring Leonardo Dicaprio that will begin playing tomorrow in theaters.

In the first year of fighting my white collar case, I found myself locked in a cell 23 hours a day.  During that period, I spent most of my time reading.  Of the hundreds of books I read, numerous works had a profound impact on me.  The autobiographies of Clinton, Gandhi, Mandela, and Sidney Poitier were particularly moving.  Jim Bakker's memoir, "I Was Wrong," affected me deeply.  Terry Anderson's "Den of Lions" and Terry Waite's "Taken On Trust," detailing both men's years of captivity in Lebanon, most in solitary, were heartbreaking, yet inspirational in equal measure.  Solzhenitsyn's volumes, "The Gulag Archipelago," depicting the Nobel Laureate's life in the Soviet prison camps, and his subsequent conversion to Christianity, still resonate with me to this day.  And then there were Jordan Belfort's memoirs, "The Wolf on Wall Street," and, "Catching The Wolf on Wall Street."

Belfort's books hit home, connecting with me.  I could relate to most of what was written.  Like Belfort, I was facing serious white collar charges, I had managed an Investment Fund, I had failed and come up short.  Though my story is not as raucous as Belfort's, nor is the dollar amount as high, it does share many similarities: a dysfunctional and turbulent marriage, young children bearing the fallout of a father's failure, and the pitfalls of addiction, succumbing to dreadful vices.  Though at times I was appalled by what I read, seeing reflections of my own life in Belfort's experience, I also found encouragement in his story.  Oddly, God used Belfort's tale to peel back layers of darkness in my own life, allowing me to see light, to feel hope.  His saga, similar to my own, offered empowerment in my time of trouble.  By seeing what Belfort did with his personal collapse, what he accomplished during his prison years, and what he's doing now to right his wrongs, reaffirmed God's plan of redemption for my own life.

Years back, when I read Belfort's story, it inspired something greater, pushing me to reject the life and world in which I was tossed, to find that inner strength to will me through heartache and setback, to listen with determined focus to a still small voice echoing in my conscience, "This will be you.  Trust me, do your part."

Years later, those words still ring true in my heart.  I've never let go of God's promise.  It remains a fire that burns in my spirit, pushing me through every difficult day, connecting me with my rediscovered life, reinvented self, causing my mind's eye to see a future that some can't.

This week, I was whisked back to the early days of this harrowing ordeal, to a time when my promise was spoken, upon reading the Bloomberg BusinessWeek article below on the life of Jordan Belfort.  Though not written from a spiritual perspective, it's a story of redemption nonetheless.  Next week, Belfort's tale will be depicted on the big screen in the movie, "The Wolf on Wall Street," starring Leonardo Dicaprio.  I'm not sure if the film will convey the redemption aspect of Belfort's life, but the following article certainly does.

Steve



Jordan Belfort, aka the Wolf of Wall Street, hates it when people describe him as a criminal. “‘Convicted stock swindler’—it’s like it hurts my heart,” he says, practically shuddering. “I know it was true, but it’s not who I am. I say to my son, I say it to everybody who I try to mentor: We are not the mistakes of our past. We’re the resources and capabilities that we glean from our past. And it’s so true.”

It’s a delicate argument for Belfort to make. He will forever be associated with Stratton Oakmont, the Long Island penny-stock boiler room he ran in the 1990s. Stratton employed more than 1,000 brokers at its peak, before the Securities and Exchange Commission shut down the company and the FBI arrested Belfort, in 1998. Convicted of money laundering and securities fraud in 2003, he received a four-year prison sentence—he served only 22 months—and was ordered to repay $110.4 million to a victim compensation fund. Other terms for the kind of outfit he built and ran are “pump and dump” and “chop-shop.” The words “fraud” and “crook” come up frequently as well. “It chokes me up a little when I think about it. … I was a bad guy. And it wasn’t like I started that way,” he says, his voice becoming tight. “You can get desensitized to your own actions—it’s easy on Wall Street. Before you know it, it’s like everyone’s just a number.” He goes on: “I shouldn’t really care what people think of me. … I know I’m good. But of course I do care.”

Belfort, 51, is in Fort Worth for two days in October speaking to the Young Presidents’ Organization, a secretive networking group for CEOs and other senior executives under the age of 45. His theme, as usual, is what he’s learned from his experiences about how others can avoid the pain he caused and suffered. Belfort delivers a slick, self-deprecating performance describing how he drove his life into the gutter with greed and drugs and excess, how he stole millions from people and went to jail for it, and how he reinvented himself as a legitimate businessman. He’s a natural performer, and in spite of his tarnished background—or more likely because of it—audiences appear genuinely moved by what he says. It doesn’t hurt to open appearances with a trailer for The Wolf of Wall Street, the movie based on his story, which is due to open, after some editing hiccups, on Christmas Day.

“To my shock it got picked up, with this bidding war between Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt,” Belfort says, “and I chose Leo and Martin Scorsese.” In addition to several million dollars that have flowed from book and movie deals, Belfort gets paid in the neighborhood of $30,000 for a speech—not bad for an hour’s work, although it requires him to spend the night in Fort Worth. A portion of his income will go to repay the investors whose money he lost.

Belfort makes a very good living, but it’s crumbs compared with the millions he says he once generated every day, pushing crappy $4 stocks on retirees in Orlando. In addition to traveling the world speaking, he works as a consultant to individual companies, talking about business ethics or teaching his sales techniques—the same ones that fueled his brokerage firm—which he argues can also be put to good use. Belfort says he’s been hired to do work for Delta Air Lines, Symantec, Virgin Airlines, Wyndham , Telstra, Deutsche Bank , Fairfax Media , Southern Cross Austereo, and Absa Bank, among others. So far, almost all of his corporate clients have been abroad; in the U.S., the baggage of his criminal case may have created too much of a minefield for him to navigate, although he hopes this will change.

“From the letters and things we get, I think a lot of people in the U.S. think Jordan is thrilled about what he did, and that he partied hard and all that,” says Belfort’s fiancée, Anne Koppe, who runs his business with him out of Hermosa Beach, Calif. “He’d love [the U.S.] to be his main market, but he wanted to make sure that his message was pure and that people responded properly to it.”

Belfort says he doesn’t want to profit from his crimes, but of course without them there would be no Wolf of Wall Street, no notoriety, no redemption story, no one paying him to talk about his life, and no fraternizing with Leo, about whom Belfort sounds a little star-struck. “You can’t change what you’ve done, you can only learn from it and try to be a better person for it and embrace it and grow. I’m not saying I’m Gandhi or I’ve discovered the cure for everything that ailed me emotionally or my insecurities. But, you know, I try really hard to be the best person I can be every single day.”

Belfort’s $30,000 atonement speech is very earnest. His books, The Wolf of Wall Street and its sequel, Catching the Wolf of Wall Street, revel in crime and the high life. They recount in loving detail every pill he popped, every Concorde flight he took, and every prostitute he hired as he built his empire of sleaze, Stratton Oakmont, into “one of the largest and by far the wildest brokerage firms in Wall Street history.” The over-the-top antics depicted in the books read like submissions to Penthouse Forum: A young female sales assistant takes turns servicing the men at the office, like a shoe shiner; there are drugged-out helicopter rides and blitzed trips on private jets; Belfort goes hooker shopping with buttoned-up Swiss bankers. All of it happens against a backdrop of Belfort’s specially trained brokers making millions selling worthless stocks to gullible investors.

The scheme Belfort's firm employed to make money will be familiar to even the most junior enforcement attorney at the SEC: Stratton Oakmont would accumulate shares of so-called penny stocks, which tend to be thinly traded, stashing them in secret accounts Belfort refers to as "ratholes." The army of sales guys would feverishly work the phones, making cold calls like characters in a David Mamet play. As the price of a stock gradually rose, Belfort and his partners would dump their own shares at a profit and then step out of the way as the thing crashed. The government alleged that he defrauded investors of more than $200 million.

Belfort says he can't believe he was ever there. "I've had so many people tell me they've become successful from reading this book, in the sense that it motivated them to overcome obstacles in their life – and I love those emails," he says. "And then I get the occasional a-hole who will write me, 'Oh, I want to go f-ing do what you did, I want to go do Quaaludes.' And obviously that I'm not very fond of, okay?"

In 1994, Stratton Oakmont settled a civil securities fraud lawsuit with the SEC. The firm agreed to pay a $2.5 million fine, and Belfort and his partners, Daniel Porush and Kenneth Greene, agreed to $100,000 fines apiece. None of the three admitted or denied the SEC's allegations in the settlement, although Porush later went to prison over Stratton Oakmont. Greene pleaded guilty in 2003 to criminal charges related to another boiler room operation. Belfort was barred for life from the securities industry, and he was indicted in 1998. He cooperated with the FBI, finking on his former employees.

He reported to a federal prison camp in Taft, California in 2004. It was during his 22 months there that he decided to write his memoirs. Incredibly, his cellmate was Tommy Chong, of Cheech and Chong, who was serving a nine-month sentence for selling drug paraphernalia – bongs in particular. As Chong describes it, the Taft Federal Correctional Institution would beat many Manhattan hotels for comfort. He says Belfort's arrival "was like Elvis coming to jail" and that his roommate spent his days playing tennis and backgammon, cleverly hiring other inmates to do his chores for him.

"We were part of the elite gang," Chong says, adding that for a stretch they ate meals "Goodfellas-style" with another famous inmate, the PGA Tour caddie Eric Larson, who was serving time related to drug charges. Larson "Worked in the garden, and he grew these fresh, delicious vegetables, and he used to cook them," Chong says. "We had these beautiful vegetarian, healthy meals every night, and Jordan was part of the gang. We had a nice little hierarchy there, intelligent famous guys hanging out together."

Chong was working on a book, and after listening to Belfort regale him with tales of his own wild life, he urged him to put it down on paper. "All the stories were really about how he coped with his inadequacies, you know?" Chong says. "Like, he is a genius … but he is short, shorter than most, and Jewish, and so he compensated with money, you know, being able to make a lot of money. But the way he made it was part of his genius, because he would inspire salespeople to basically go rob people."

Belfort says he modeled his writing after Tom Wolfe, the author of The Bonfire of the Vanities. Hunter S. Thompson inspired him, too. Once he finished his manuscript, he quickly found that infamy could be lucrative. Multiple publishers were interested in his book, which ended up being sold to Random House for an advance of more than $1 million. An option on the film rights brought in another $1 million or so. At the time, Belfort was freshly out of Taft and on probation, and 50 percent of all of his income was going to repay his investors. He decided to try the speaking circuit and started giving talks based on his life story for free at colleges. The financial crisis was raging, and "there was no money coming in," Belfort says. "We were behind on all the credit cards. It was terrible."

After setting up his author page on Facebook, he learned that, rather surprisingly, he had a huge following in Australia. He found an agent there and went on a speaking tour. That led to engagements at companies – Belfort lists Virgin, Symantec, and Deutsche Bank as some of the first ones, noting that Virgin founder Richard Branson took a particular interest in him. Even as his career as a motivational speaker gained momentum, he was hesitant to try to monetize the one truly valuable skill he felt he possessed, the ability to teach others how to sell. This is how he'd driven dozens of kids from Long Island to get investors to buy his worthless stocks. "Imagine if Apple had enough parts to make a million iPhones, but they said, 'Well, let's make 5 million – we'll just put the s--- parts in after we run out of the good parts,'"Belfort says. "That was really the mistake that I made. My ability to sell outstripped my ability to manufacture good deals." He was reluctant to share his technique at first, having learned the hard way how aggressive sales tactics can be misused. But eventually Koppe and others persuaded him to try teaching it to companies. Even DiCaprio weighed in. "Dude, what's f—ing wrong with you?" Belfort recalls DiCaprio saying. "There's nothing wrong with selling. It wasn't the selling that was evil. It's what you did with it."

Belfort calls his method the Straight Line Persuasion System. "There are certain elements of influence that you have to line up before someone says yes," he says, pulling out a pen and starting to scribble on a flyer lying on the table in front of him.

How much does he get paid to do all this? "Let's just say, you know, my time is worth more than $5,000 a day. Well, $10,000 a day," he says. "Say more than five or ten." Then: "As much as fifty grand a day." But, he adds, "The biggest money I'll make by far in the next five years will be the books and the movie, which will probably be twenty, thirty million dollars, and I'm not even getting a dime of that. I gave 100 percent of that back to the investors."

In the meantime, Belfort is working on his next book while spending time with his kids, who are 20, 18, and 16, and preparing for the onslaught of publicity that will accompany the movie. He can give only so many speeches a year – he finds the constant travel to be something of a grind. He says he's thought about trying to expand his sales-training business online or even franchising it out by training other people to teach his methods, but so far no one's been able to do it as well as he has.

On October 6, the rather large ballroom at the JW Marriott Hotel in Grand Rapids, Michigan fills almost to capacity with local business folk who've come for a luncheon hosted by the city's Economic Club. Belfort hops onstage with his hands in perpetual motion, a spark plug in a light blue dress shirt. He carries the onlookers through his story: He came from a good, middle-class family on Long Island; he spent one day in dental college to please his parents but then dropped out; he tried to make money as a door-to-door seafood salesman, which he was pretty good at; then he heard about a kid from his neighborhood who'd gone to Wall Street and made a fortune. Belfort became infatuated with the idea, and it wasn't long before he was crashing helicopters onto his lawn and snorting drugs with high-priced call girls.

"You can't be half-pregnant when it comes to ethics. Every time you step over the line and back again, the line moves a little bit," he assures the crowd. "There's no way to succeed in business without the highest ethical standards."

Happy Thanksgiving

Dear Friends:

I want to take this moment to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.  I pray your weekend will be filled with joy and laughter, and gratefulness for the most important treasure you possess ... your family.  Take the time to let each loved one know how grateful you are for them.  The malls and stores can wait.  Spend the majority of your hours with those you love, the family God has given you.

The holidays are always the most difficult for those of us in prison.  It's a stark reminder of what is really important in life, of how selflessly we must live so our actions do not injure the hearts of the people we love.  We only have so much time, and then one day, suddenly, someone we love is gone.  And when that time comes, it should be a time of gratefulness, being thankful for the years we shared together.  But sadly, for some, that time becomes a time of regret, for the wasted hours, the wasted moments, for not fully engaging the life of another while they were still here.  Regret for the unspoken words, the selfish choices, the moments we passed in pursuit of our own wants and needs.

So this Thanksgiving, fill your heart with courage to do the right thing.  Mend the broken places that occupy your life, world.  Apologize to those you've hurt, extend forgiveness to those who've hurt you.  Eradicate the cancers of pride and anger and self-loathing, of bitterness and resentment.  Build a bridge across the great divide of strained relationships, filling the void with hope and healing and love.  In doing so, a miracle will unfold, in your heart, and in another life.  And blessing will come, to you, to your family.

We all need each other.  Stand strong in a person's failure and be their biggest cheerleader in their success.

Know I love you all and miss you dearly.

Steve

The Bible in the Bird's Nest

The Bible is the "most dangerous book on earth," George Bernard Shaw famously warned a century ago.  Today, Shaw's words ring true – literally – for the 24 million people of North Korea.  Possession of a Bible is a one-way ticket to the gulag or worse. 

The worst came true this month for a handful of North Koreans who were caught with Bibles, which are outlawed by the communist regime.  The Christians were among a group of 80 North Koreans who were executed by firing squad on Sunday, November 3, according to a report in the South Korean daily, JoongAng Ilbo.  The executions were public, and took place in seven cities across the country.  In the port city of Wonsan, "eight people were tied to a stake at a local stadium, had their heads covered with white sacks, and were shot with a machine gun."  Ten thousand spectators, including children, were forced to witness the executions.

The families of the victims were dispatched to political prison camps, a move in keeping with the regime's long-standing policy of punishing three generations of a family for one member's transgressions.  Most inmates do not survive long in North Korea's prison camps.

Persecuting Christians is a tradition of the ruling Kim family.  North Korea's young dictator, Kim Jong Un, is the third generation of dictators to kill, torture, and imprison Koreans of faith.  Like his father, Kim Jong Il, and his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, he understands the threat that Christianity poses to his rule.  With its message of individual freedom, Christianity offers a potent alternative to the Kim family cult of personality.

Kim Il Sung mostly eradicated Christianity from North Korea in the 1950s and 1960s through a brutal policy of murdering religious leaders, imprisoning believers who would not recant, and banishing others to remote regions.  Yet now Christianity is on the rise.  North Koreans are learning about the Bible from countrymen who flee to China and receive help from Christians, or from Bibles smuggled into the country by foreign missionaries or dropped from balloons launched from South Korea.

The only worship permitted in North Korea is that of the Kim family dictators.  Every North Korean wears a badge over his heart displaying a photograph  of the smiling face of Kim Il Sung, the country's founder.  Citizens are required to adhere to a national belief system called Juche.  The regime considers any religion a competitor to the Kims' pre-eminence.  North Koreans who have fled the country tell gruesome stories of the regime's cruel treatment of believers.

In South Korea, the Korean Institute for National Unification publishes an annual book-length report on human rights in the North, based on interviews with North Koreans who have escaped.  In this year's edition, numerous refugees describe the regime's persecution of Christians.  One spoke of a family that hid their Bible in a magpie's nest, perched in a tree near their home.  The family had been Christians since before the founding of the communist regime, and had worshipped in secret for more than half a century.  When a neighbor cut a branch off the tree and their Bible was discovered, three generations of the family disappeared.  In the refugee's words, the Christians were sent to "a place of no return."

Since Kim Jong Un took power in 2011, gullible outside observers have fooled themselves into believing the Swiss-educated, basketball-loving dictator is a kinder, gentler Kim.  But this month's mass executions leave little doubt that he "is playing by his father's playbook," says Grigore Scarlatoiu, Executive Director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, a Washington D.C. based research organization.  "Within the bizarre world of the Kim family regime, the executions of Christians and others make perfect sense," Mr. Scarlatoiu says.  Kim Jong Un's "top strategic objective is regime preservation."

Seen that way, the executions signal that the regime is worried about the public's growing awareness of alternative worldviews, and fearful of the potential for grass-roots opposition to its rule.  Christianity, especially, is a threat to the regime's survival.  If more North Koreans decide to transfer their allegiance from the Kims to the God of the universe, the regime's days may be numbered.

May we all continue to lift up our brothers and sisters around the world, who live in perilous conditions, to pray for their safety and God's intervention in their land of oppression.

This article was written by Melanie Kirkpatrick, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and published in the Wall Street Journal, November 15, 2013.

Daughters

Daughters

My three beautiful daughters are doing remarkably well in spite of all that's befallen their lives. God has protected and watched over the girls. Shayne and Abby are seniors in high school, and I'm extremely proud of these two young ladies. Both girls maintain a high GPA, and are very active in their schools, involved in a variety of extracurricular activities from student council to sports. They're making the most of their senior year.

Shayne is outgoing, adventurous, and possesses an endless curiosity. That beautiful sense of wonderment has not waned through the years. At times it scares me to death. She certainly knows how to keep me on my knees in prayer. I speak to her throughout the week, and every time we talk, her stories have me laughing, then worrying. She is a people person and has a boundless world of friends. When I call, it seems she's always introducing me to someone new. She'll just pass the phone, saying something like, "Meet my Dad, he's awesome. Don't worry that he's in prison, it's a crazy story." Next thing you know, I'm talking to her friends as if we've known each other for years. That's just Shayne: fearless, bold, a free spirit, living every minute to the full. She lives in the sunrise of life. Her personality causes me to see the wider horizons, the wider berths. Like a beautiful sunrise breaking across a violet sky, her wonderful spirit conveys the infinite power of possibility.

Abby is more reserved and has a sweet, tender spirit. She is polite, courteous, always giving thought to others, and loves God with all her heart. She's a servant, going beyond the call of duty at her school and church. Abby has a dry, quiet sense of humor. She is loyal and mature beyond her years. If Abby's your friend, you'll have a friend for life. She also maintains a carefree spirit, choosing not to worry about anything. She is a hard worker, disciplined, and keeps her nose to the grind in her efforts. Abby's personality causes me to see the extraordinary beauty that comes from a life engaged in altruistic ideas. Like a million points of light twinkling in the black canopy of night, her beautiful spirit sparks inspiration.

Abby and Shayne are resilient, having experienced wounds their peers know little about. Life has been unfair to them. Selfish choices of adults have fractured their hearts, clouded their sunshine. Yet, in that world of cruelty, the girls did not become victims of their circumstances. Never did they become bitter or hardened, or surrender to self-pity. They've determined themselves to define the negative experiences. The innocent forms of their lives, though wounded by deep cuts of pain, have survived and are now blossoming. Those petals are unfolding, revealing two beautiful, talented, and incredibly resilient young ladies.

Abby is hoping to attend Pepperdine, UC Davis, or the University of Hawaii in the fall and desires to become a pediatrician. Shayne has applied to NYU, Boston University, Loyola-Chicago, Hofstra, and USF, aspiring to become a lawyer.

My youngest is Shelby and she is now eight. She's in the third grade and growing up fast. She's extremely intelligent and very articulate. Just like with the older girls, I miss my little bundle of life so much. I have not seen her in nearly six years. Shelby's a little sweetheart. Her personality is a combination of her two older sisters. We speak on the phone two or three times a week, and our conversations center mainly on her world. Sometimes, we take make-believe trips to different countries and cities. Thus far, we've toured Los Angeles, New York, and London; Russia, Germany, Mexico, and Switzerland. Shelby enjoys taking care of her pets, going to church, playing games on her iPod and Nintendo DS. She was voted to her school's student council, enjoys spending time with her sisters and friends, and takes ballet lessons. This winter she'll perform in Sacramento's production of "The Nutcracker Suite."

Unable to play the role of a conventional father, I try to speak with one of the girls on the phone each day. I send cards, notes, and do whatever I can to be a father from a difficult place. Yet, I'm well aware that nothing will fill the cavernous void my physical absence brings to their lives. Daughters need fathers who are present, who dote, comfort, encourage, guide, embrace, and actively engage their lives and world. Every day, in my confined space, I get down on my knees and ask God to make this happen for my girls, to reunite us much sooner than expected. At night, in bed I brush their photos against my lips, place them over my heart, and whisper to God to do a miracle for us all.

When I think of my girls, it feels as though there is a gaping hole in the middle of my heart. I've been absent from the most important years of their young lives. Absent from the evening meals, the laughs, the events, the accomplishments, the illnesses, the school days, from the long string of simple rituals that make up a child's life. I've missed the beautiful smiles in the morning, the innocence of discovery, the genuine wonder in their eyes. I've missed the constant chatter that was in our home: the giggling and screaming and crying and banging. I loved all the chaos the girls brought when they were playing, living it up, having the time of their lives. I just loved all that life. I loved being an active father: the sports, the bike rides, the travels, the movies, the lake, the activities. I miss holding my girls. Nothing ever fits a father's palm so perfectly, feels so right, or inspires so much, as the hand of his child wrapped inside his hand. And nothing bring more comfort and more hope and more security to a child than their little hand nestled inside daddy's big hand.

Resulting from our own choices, and at times, the choices of others, we all reach some sort of disenchantment in our lives. We arrive at some place where we hoped for elation and fulfillment, but found desolation and emptiness instead. And that locale is a very difficult place to live, to understand, often void of answers. Events are upon you in an instant, unforeseen and without warning, and sometimes marked by disappointment and tragedy. Yet, landing at such a place can lead to a better understanding of the bittersweet truth of life: Every human endeavor is collaboration. Even though life now is not what I expected or imagined, I have experienced things these last few years, which I never knew, existed. You lose a lot in an ordeal like this, but you find a new you, a newfound belief in yourself and life's greatest treasures.

An African proverb says, "A person is a person through other people." No man is an island. We do little on our own. We play a role in the genesis of our own experience and in the experience of others. Deep emotional currents move us all, marking our passage through life. There is providence in every step we take. God gently walks by our side. He celebrates our victories. He mourns with us in our defeats. He is there when we honor Him with our choices; and He is still there when we dishonor Him. He is there for one reason:  He loves us unconditionally. I have learned that in the darkest moments of my life, God has been here, even when I thought He abandoned me. And I know that if God did not leave me in my time of trouble, He will not leave you when you walk through your deepest valley. If your facing adversity, overcome by failure, feeling hurt, keep pressing toward God's plan for your life, seeking to live in a way that honors him. Don't give up or give in. Love your family, your spouse, your children, with all your heart. Hold nothing back. For they are your greatest treasure.

Writing, Reflections, Gifts: An Update

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.