“And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.” (1 Peter 5:10)
It was time once again to step into the arena, to face the powers that be—the PA Parole Board. In August of 2022, I went before the Board for my fourth time—the last had been in 2020 when I was denied parole and given a two-year hit. (A “hit” is the amount of time that must transpire before you can reapply for parole). I never knew what to expect when I met with the Board. Each experience had been different, with new faces interrogating me each time.
In 2019 I had been told that my answers were too long, and to “cut out all the psychology crap.” I received a nine-month hit.
In 2020, I kept my answers short and to the point, and left out the psychology lingo. And I was told by the interviewer that my answers were too short and simple. “Come on,” she said at the end of the interview. “You’re obviously smarter than that.” I got a two-year hit.
So, what do you do to prepare for a parole interview? Step one: Ask yourself every possible question that may be raised. Step two: prepare a response that is clear, concise, humble, remorseful, and conciliatory. Your answer should admit to all details of your crime, accept full responsibility, and demonstrate an understanding of your defects, but not sound defensive, minimizing, or insensitive. You must incorporate what you learned in your rehabilitation classes and demonstrate your commitment to living a crime-free life, without sounding unrealistic, rehearsed, or overly confident. No easy task! That’s what I did, for months in advance, and I felt ready—at least as ready as I could be.
The interview was the roughest that I had been through yet. Two women were before me on the video screen: one was a Board member, the other a Hearing Examiner. The Board member was the one who would vote yes or no on my parole. The examiner was the one shining the bright light in my face and saying, “We have ways of making you talk!” It was her report that would be supplied to the other Board members to determine their vote.
The examiner asked question after question. Before I had finished answering one, she was interrupting with another. She changed topics and focus often, trying to throw me off balance. And she used provocative language to see if I would respond with anger, defensiveness, or hostility. I stayed patient and calm, responding as best as I could.
There were several odd moments. At one point the hearing examiner asked me how I identify sexually: “You had three failed marriages, and then assaulted your stepson. Maybe you’re a homosexual who hasn’t realized it yet?” I replied, “I identify as a heterosexual.”
Another odd moment was when the Board member, who had been reading something on her screen, interrupted the examiner and said, “Wait! You had an affair with your best friend’s wife?” And she proceeded to rail against the fact that I was a pastor during the affair. She thought that the affair had been with a parishioner. They were trying to make it seem like I had violated a position of authority by having an affair with a member of my own congregation. It took quite a while to clear up the whole saga of my affair with Sonia, who was not a parishioner and lived 150 miles away. (And I resisted the temptation to point out that having an affair, while immoral, was not a crime in Pennsylvania!)
They then asked about my plans for success in parole. Partway through my reply, the Board member again raised the matter of how many times I had been married: “You have three broken marriages. How do you expect to succeed at anything?”
The whole interview took about 17 minutes, but it felt like hours. The only positive glimmer was in a statement from the Hearing Examiner: “You’re an intelligent guy. If you are granted parole, just don’t try to outsmart the system.” (Whatever that meant). But I clung to that sentence, hoping there was still a chance they were considering parole for me.
I left that interview bewildered and shaken, feeling pummeled, demeaned, and muddled. I wanted to get home to my parents to help them out with the challenges of life in their older years, and I felt that I had somehow let them down by not having a better interview. I went back to the cell block and sent emails out, requesting prayer for me and for the Board members’ votes. I needed five out of nine Parole Board members to say yes to my parole, or I wasn’t going anywhere.
Two weeks later I was on the callout sheet to go see Parole. This would be the moment when I received the Board’s parole decision from my Parole Agent.
My agent instructed me to sit down and didn’t waste any time. I was so prepared for a denial, that I almost didn’t hear her correctly. “I’ve got your positive parole decision,” she said.
“What?” I asked in disbelief, as I dropped into the chair.
“The Board voted to grant you parole.”
She read through the rest of the two or three pages of the decision. (They are required to read the entire “green sheet” to the inmate, as there are several inmates who can’t read). As she explained the requirements of my parole, my eyes got damp, and then wet, and then downright soggy. “Are you OK?” she asked.
“I was just so certain it was going to be a no. I’m so happy. So relieved.”
“Well, you must have done all right,” she replied. “Or else it would have been a no.”
When we’re in the midst of misery and hardship, it’s hard to hold onto hope for the future. There are those times when nothing seems to be going right and things seem to just be getting worse. And there are even bleaker days, when it appears that even the whole world is against us. But even in these darkest moments, God is working for our good. He is our savior who is moving us from sadness to joy, even though the night is dark and the light of dawn a distant hope.
Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book Tales of Terror, Times of Wonder, tells a parable of God’s saving acts in our lives. She recalls discovering a very large loggerhead turtle trapped in the sand dunes on a beach, dried out and exhausted. She requested help from the local ranger station, and a man in a jeep eventually pulled up to the turtle, flipped it on its back, wrapped some chains around it, and dragged the turtle over the sand toward the water. The turtle’s head was flopping around and digging into the sand. It must have been a terrible trip. When they reached the water’s edge, the man unchained the turtle, flipped it back onto its belly, and watched as the waves washed in. The turtle sensed the ocean before it, and pushed itself out into the freedom of the water that was its home.
She concludes the parable with these words: “Watching her swim slowly away after her nightmare ride through the dunes, I noted that it is sometimes hard to tell whether you are being killed or saved by the hands that turn your life upside down.”
Have you been there, too? In those circumstances that seemed like the end, but were really a new beginning? When everything was upside down and hopeless, and God was there reaching out with a hand of healing, or peace, or freedom?
The Apostle Peter writes that all persons throughout the world undergo the same kind of sufferings. Yet God, the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen. (1 Peter 5:9-11).