Prison Talk

I was unexpectedly taken back, way back, when a Corrections Officer (CO) said to one of my peers in front of me, “I told Matthew that a few years ago.”
I thought, “A few years ago!” Wow! Weird! Those words sounded surreal, and I was jolted by the realization of how much time has passed since my arrival in prison. Forty-nine months in the same barricaded building, like a fortress; the same dingy and cheerless interior, like an abandoned basement; the same intense and chaotic environment.
The CO’s statement brought me back to the very beginning of my prison bid and all that has happened along the way from then to now. I started to think of this length of time, “a few years ago,” in relation to: minutes, days, weeks, months—adding up to years.
What is contained in a single year? Twelve months. Fifty-two weeks. Three-hundred sixty-five days. Eight-thousand, seven-hundred sixty hours. Five-hundred twenty-five thousand, six-hundred minutes. Now quantify that to my “few years.”
While some things about prison do not change, other things in here can transpire and change radically in just one second. Hence, “a few years” in a place like prison expresses much more than a quantity of time. The measurements cannot be accurately calculated nor condensed to simply “years” without comprehending the demands required of an individual to complete just one day in prison—that is, 24 hours, 1,440 minutes, 86,400 seconds. Add to that the countless ticking of the mind’s thoughts and the many decisions that must be resolved by that mind in limitless encounters. The result is an equation of an unstable population, held in limbo, sealed in a vacuum, with too many variables.
Some may be waiting to explode—the threat of violence is a constant presence. Others cannot handle the time and are defeated within Day One of their imprisonment. A one-second decision to give up affects years of prison living. Despite surrendering—imploding before the specter of prison—these individuals soon perceive that the war is long and extensive and consists of daily battles because time isn’t measured in the length of the day, but in the strength of how well one fights the day.
It’s not about the day’s duration; it’s about a person’s donation to the day. Tens of millions of seconds come down to a choice of two options: victim or victor. All I know is that God’s grace has continually poured out on me in abounding proportion to the load and unforeseen weight of time. “A few years ago,” I did not see the value of this time, but today my attitude of victory sees “a few years ago” as battles faced and won each moment of each day—the measurement of time weighed in character development as I handled such ordeals one second by one minute by one hour.
“A few years ago” rests on my shoulders as a donation to my character development—not duration of time chronologically developed.So while time pushes down relentlessly, I’ve learned to push up victoriously; and the hands of time are not what moves me to victory—rather, the hands of Christ that were stretched from 9 to 3 on the cross accomplished this for me.
Hindsight is better than foresight. We can all look back “a few years ago” and see what God has brought us through. One second. One minute. One hour. One day. One week. One year at a time.
(ED. NOTE: The author and professional athlete of Court House is serving five-and-a-half years in state prison after pleading guilty in October 2009 to manslaughter and driving while intoxicated. His blogs have been read by over 500,000 people in every state, 121 countries, and in 67 different languages. You can learn more at www.themattmaherstory.com.)