Deep River
Deep river
My home is over Jordan
Deep river, Lord
I want to cross over into campground.
Oh, don't you want to go over,
To that Gospel feast
That Promised Land
Where all is peace?
Deep river
My home is over Jordan
Deep river, Lord
I want to cross over into campground.
Trust Over Trauma - Cie December Rose
I grew up in the inner city
Basically a ghetto
At the age of 5
I had my first major trauma
Sexually violated by my father
I don’t know if I can really trust people
My teacher noticed I could write well
Maybe I’ll be a writer
When I was 15
My manuscript was accepted
But that dream got burned up in a fire
I don’t know if I can really trust people
They told me I should be a doctor
So I went to school
When I was 19
I was attacked going to class
gang raped at gunpoint in the street
I don’t know if I can really trust people
I ended up getting married
My marriage went sour
Drugs were introduced
It snowballed and became abusive
Sexual, physical, financial, verbal
I don’t know if I can really trust people
I didn’t realize how broken I was
Perception becomes reality
Whether it’s actuality or not
So I reached out for help
There’s been so much healing and growth
I fully embrace me
I try to focus on
What I can do, not what I can’t
I say with a smile, “This is who I am.”
Maybe some people can be trusted
At least with some things
Enjoy the Journey - Staci Mitchell
When I was little I fell and hurt myself.
They told me I wouldn't have kids.
I found out I was pregnant and everything changed
I’m 19 years old.
I felt restricted, like I didn’t have a choice.
I was Grieving the loss of my dream.
And bearing the guilt of that.
I was bearing the guilt of that.
Chorus
Life is scary. Do things afraid.
It’s okay to make mistakes
Just get back up.
Recovery is possible.
Be kind to yourself. You can be forgiven.
God can transform relationships.
And don’t forget to enjoy the journey
When he was two a car crash changed our lives
I got hooked on the pain pills.
I couldn’t pay for them, so took from family.
I could not get off the drugs.
My family pressed charges, they were trying to save me.
I was on the floor again
My hands behind my back, yet another felony.
Chorus
Made mistakes they felt unforgivable
I was tired and so broken
Choosing to recover is intimidating
How do I unlearn codependency
I heard about this Jesus who is beautiful
Gave me hope to take each step
Now I love myself and know
Jesus loves me too
Chorus
Stephanie Dellinger’s Story
I used to live in Naples, Florida. I drove a BMW and was really big in the hospitality industry. When I was in my 30s, I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. I went into the hospital and I was there for a couple months. They put me on one of those pain pumps, and sent me home with a prescription of pain pills, which at the time I knew nothing about. I was never into any kind of hard drugs, and I'd never been in trouble before. At the time I was a working single mom. One day I woke up from the hospital, when I was released I woke up, and I felt like I was going to die. I didn't know what was wrong with me. My friend who happened to be a nurse said, “You're going through opiate withdrawal. Take a pill, you'll be fine.” And that's what I did. That led me to two pills, then led me to three pills, and eventually was up to sometimes 20 a day, starting to inject them into my arm, which led me to heroin. I was a very closet addict, and I just did it to keep my body from going through withdrawal so I could take care of my son.
I was driving one day and got pulled over. I had failed to turn my turn signal on. The cop asked if he could search my car, and I said “Yeah, no big deal.” Again, never being in trouble before, I didn't know anything about laws or anything. He found a needle and a spoon in my car, and charged me with paraphernalia and took me to the county jail, which I had never been to before. While I was in jail, waiting for this little misdemeanor paraphernalia charge, which I probably would have got probation or some fine, a detective came to see and asked about a credit card that was in my grandmother's name. A couple of weeks prior to this, I thought in my crazy mind that I could just get a credit card out in my grandmother's name, and I’d just pay it back and she'd never know. I went through $10,000 in two weeks. She got a bill while I was waiting on these little misdemeanor charges. The state ended up picking it up and they pressed charges on me. It ended up being a felony for grand theft of an elderly person, which is a Felony 2, and I spent three months in county jail.
I was released and doing well. I was working, I was staying sober. I didn't get into any trouble. A newspaper article came out and said that I was facing 12 and a half years in prison. I freaked. I didn't know anything about how laws worked, so I just figured I was going to prison for 12 years. At that time I was only 32 years old.
I ran into some acquaintances that I had met in county jail, who were also awaiting a prison sentence. They thought it would be such a great idea to try to steal some guns, and we could turn around and sell them for our drugs and have money to live on while we were on our long prison sentences. So that's what I did. I went with them to a different county and we attempted to steal 32 firearms. There was a cop across the street who saw us and took us into custody. I spent another three months in that county [jail] before being sentenced to three years in prison.
I was known as W087482. I was no longer Stephanie, I was known strictly by my number and my last name. I was a ward of the State of Ohio Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. I felt like I was nothing. I think that's kind of the goal, is that they want to strip you of everything. At that time we all wore the same uniforms. We all went to chow at the same time, we all ate the same food. I was told when I could use the restroom, when I could take a shower, when I could go outside. And there are staff members that are definitely not nice. Sometimes you’re dealing with male guards and you need sanitary napkins. You ask, “May I have a box of pads?” “Nope. Go ask your neighbor.” They have no empathy. It's disgusting how they treat some women. You're just not you, and you have no identity.
When I first got there I was very angry. I knew I was in trouble, and I knew that I had to pay for what I did, and I had no family support. It wasn't until going into my second year that I started physically feeling better. I knew this was no place I wanted to be. I was next door to murderers, drug addicts, child molesters, some people that just weren’t like me. But then you start sharing stories of trauma they've experienced, and we had some things that were common ground. I wouldn't call myself an addict, like an addict addict, like some of the other women I was with. Thankfully I hadn't been doing drugs ongoing for 10 years straight, like some of these women had. And thankfully, I was arrested prior to having to go into a life of prostitution, or some of the horrible stories that I had heard.
So I took stock of myself. I joined a lot of programs. I went to college. I facilitated my own meetings mentoring other girls, especially young girls, because a lot of them were in there for drug treatment.
In 2016, I was released to transitional control. Again, I had no family and I left prison with just the sweat pants on my back. No clothes, no money, no driver's license, no anything. I started from the ground up. I rode the bus whenever I needed to apply to a million jobs, and I never took ‘no’ for an answer. I knew if somebody did tell me ‘no’, I was gonna eventually get a ‘maybe’ and then a ‘yes’.
At one point Ashland University was looking to give people that were formerly incarcerated a chance at post secondary education. Someone I worked with in the rehab program recommended me, and I said, “Me? Well, I have six felonies, there's no way some University is going to want to hire me.” I went through four interviews, and they did take a chance on me. That role led me to where I am now, at a men’s Correctional facility. I’m the liaison between about 100 students and Ashland University, basically a guidance counselor. I wanted to do something where I could give back and help others that were like me and show them there's still hope and that they’re still worthy. You feel terrible when you're in there. You're not even a name, you're only a number, and you’re stripped of everything.
The most important thing I learned is that I can't make anyone forgive me. I can only do what's best for me and my life. I'm sorry I did what I did. I did my time. I understand that people don't trust me. I understand that there's gonna be healing time, and I'll take all that, but give me a chance. If you don't want to, that's you, and that's your choice. I still have to do what's best for me.
Have Hope - Melissa Riccio
I lived my life to please other people.
Completing that checklist from family and culture.
But still I wasn’t happy.
It all came crashing down.
Have hope. You can still recreate your life.
The way I lived set a pattern for my children
I put my three kids on the school bus one morning,
I said I’d see them that night
But left for seven years.
Have hope. You can still recreate your life.
Chorus
Find yourself.
Find who you’re meant to be
Pare down your list of wants
Choose things carefully.
Know the repercussions
Last longer than your sentence.
Find peace with your decisions
so you don’t have regret.
Live your life.
There’s freedom
in being who you are
To go from this life of luxury and privilege
Illegally obtained it all came to nothing.
A chance for a new checklist.
I’m on my checklist now
Have hope. You can still recreate your life.
Chorus
These days I’m not in contact with my children
I want to stop generational curses
If that is what it takes
Then that’s an answered prayer
Have hope. You can still recreate your life.
Chorus
Lisa Hartman’s Story
Hi, my name is Lisa Hartman. I used to be in the mortgage banking industry before I became a drunk. I had been married. It lasted 10 years. Then I got a divorce. The divorce turned into a custody battle with split custody and one kid in Ohio and one kid in Florida. My oldest sister had cancer and died - she was only 35. So all of these things were like going on all at once and so my drinking just got worse and worse and worse and worse. By the time I left Florida, I was a full-blown drug addict. When my parents finally got me back here and my sister passed away, and I was just kind of like - I can't fix this. I've destroyed everything. And my parents don't mean it, but they're like, ‘oh my God, you screwed up your life.’ So you just think everything’s over. Like my mom said, I screwed up my life. So I was lost in this drug world for about five years before it just became alcohol, alcohol, alcohol. Really from 2001 to 2006, it was my really bad drug period. But from 2007 to 2009, I was a full blown drunk.
In my mind, at least I wasn't doing drugs, and my boyfriend, was an officer of rank with EMS. He was a full-blown alcoholic so now I'm running around with police officers and families of people in EMS. And they're all drinking, but at the same time saying to me, “If we catch you with drugs, we'll turn you in for your own good. But hey, come party with us.” It was this mixed message kind of thing. And then they gave me a wife badge. We got pulled over every other day and they would just say, “Oh, okay it’s you,” and let us go. So you think it’s just your safety net but in actuality it’s contributing to the problem.
It was his car that I crashed. I'm convicted of aggravated vehicular homicide. I am your typical drunk driver. It was not the first time. I'm not gonna play like it was a freak accident, I was a raging alcoholic. And sooner or later, my garbage spilled over and ended up taking somebody else's life.
I lived at the Northeast Reintegration Center for five and a half years out of a nine year sentence. The other three and a half I was at the Ohio Reformatory for Women, plus another seven or eight months sitting in county jail waiting for that to play out.
The first few months you’re kind of numb - when you're in prison, you don't really know what's going on, you don’t know what's going to happen to you. You don't have the time to look at yourself, you're just wondering, ‘am I going to get probation or life?’, being shunned by everybody that's in there because they're in and out on minor offenses and you're sitting there like, having no idea. You can't even really grasp the gravity of what you've done at that point. It's so very hard.
Then the news comes in and it's pretty scary, and deservingly so, I guess. You have TV cameras shoved in your face and you have all of these officials and you're chained up to a table and it's almost so superficial. They want you to stand and say, “I'm sorry,” so they can say, “She's not really sorry.” You can't even convey that, once you truly realize what you have done. How does ‘I'm sorry,’ cover it? It just doesn't. So I understand sometimes when I see other things going on, why people choose not to talk, because there's kinda no point. You can’t go back and actually say something meaningful that would make a difference. So I said very little at my sentencing.
But I did get forgiveness from her mother. And that helps. She forgave me right at the sentencing. I didn't even grasp it, I don't think, even when she said it. She got up, and she literally just turned around and she says, “God told me I’m to forgive you, so I forgive you. I don't condone what you did, but I forgive you.” And it was just that simple.
It was a hard road to walk. I know there are innocent people in prison, I know there are people in prison that do a whole lot more time for something a lot less, being that our judicial system is the way it is, but I feel like my sentence was fair and I needed every day of it. Now I look at it and I don't want to say it was fun, that's not the right word. I would never have had that happen. But the Lord has done so much.
God is so amazing. He is so amazing. I wasn't saved before I went into prison. I didn't believe there was a God or anything. But there were key people that I truly believe that God put there, that said key phrases to me that just stuck. He put these people in my path to sit down in a compassionate and brutally honest way. And that's the one thing that I can say, is that I needed that much time, I needed every day of it, or I wouldn’t have listened to anything. It would have been all the outside worldly forces: “You didn’t mean it. What's the chance that could happen again? How many times do you have to say you’re sorry?” Things like that, instead of sitting down and saying, “Why? Why am I like this? Why did I do this?” The judge didn't sentence me to death. So my choice is to keep living, so how can I do that in a different manner that will bring glory and honor to God?
I'm 50 now, and looking back over 20 years, you see the things that God gifted you with from birth, that you once ran away from, you wanted nothing to do with. I always had everything I needed, I just couldn't open my eyes to see that then. The biggest gift that I knew that I had was my art. When I was the little kid that was always out drawing or playing in my food to make sculptures. Molasses and mashed potatoes are great for that. But you know, life happens. You don't just sit around all day drawing. So it was something I knew that I had a gift for, but nothing that I practiced.
Chaplain Brightinger brought that out. When I got to Northeast, like within the first 30 days, he had me painting on the walls. So literally the walls of the prison taught me how to paint. They had a business program that got me into where you could legally sell your artwork instead of doing the trading and the bartering thing, and you could get supplies sent in for you. So my daughter did that and it aided in paying off my fines, my court costs, things like that. So I was able to actually make a living that way, doing kids' portraits, and things like that. And it took off into, ‘We need you to make a prop for this. We need you to make a backdrop for that, photographs’, all kinds of projects. So I was kept very, very busy.
I didn’t really have a group of friends in prison. I did what I was asked to do. I sat on my bed and I read this Bible until it started to make sense. And then I had some staff members actually take notice and start helping me out with that. Then I got involved with some recovery groups. And when they introduced me to codependency and that is when my life made sense. But when I actually saw those reasons, like that the alcohol and the drugs are just a self-medicating remedy for why I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin.
So I really dove into that for several years. There was also the painting, and I was part of a sign language choir, then I helped start a worship band. It was a lot of learning. They gave me structure that I had never had. I was just always that loud, obnoxious, drunk, and I wanted to go because I had too much time on my hands. I didn't feel like I was doing anything with my life, I served no purpose before 2009.
After getting out they placed me in a city that I knew nothing about, on a bus line in Akron. Eventually I got back up here. Living arrangements were tough because you know, landlords look at your record and they’re like, “No, I'm not going to rent to you.” So that's something that in the future, I would love to be able to buy an apartment building or bridge the gap for people there. I don't know what that looks like yet, but that's a long-term goal.
This December will be four years out. And art is what I do for a living today. I went and got a shop to work out of. We are “Push and Paint with Lisa” in Mentor on the Lake. Obviously for PUSH - pray until something happens - and paint. It's actually working. I’ve made my rent for the last seven months in a row. We do little paint parties, home decor, painted pumpkins, centerpieces, ornaments, cakes, I've got a couple of realtors that have asked me to make gifts for when they make sales to their clients - all kinds of little creative projects like that.
I have situations sometimes when after people meet you, they're like, “Oh, you don't look like a criminal.” I have to laugh, What does a criminal look like? We’re all just people. When you break it down into the smallest part - we’re just people that made mistakes. I got caught, I’m guilty, I paid for it. Still pay for it, I’ll forever pay for it. You know, it is what it is, not that I'm looking to be released from that because my salvation came at a very high price, it took someone else's life. But you know Jesus paid it first. So i feel like it cost double. And I do not forget that. And At the same time I don't live in it every day, and I don't forget all of the privilege that I have, came at that high price. The very fact that we open our eyes in the free world is a blessing. Life is good. Life is hard, though. You have to actively choose joy, to choose to be grateful.
Retribution to Redemption - Terri Mason
Before I was eighteen
I did things I shouldn’t have
I wanted what everyone else had
Got a thirty year sentence
Took my PTSD to prison with me
Was raised by the system
Years being in a cesspool
people don’t care ‘bout you
violence, hatred, deceit
I chose to be mean
to be alone in Terri’s world
Living in and out of the hole
Introduced to Islam
Just wanted the structure
But I needed God
Started going to church
interacting with people I realized the impact
I could have
Chorus
I am true to who I am and the light I carry
People paint a dark picture of what I look like
No matter what people paint me as
I have the love of God inside
Love and light
That’s what life is about
I reached out for help
Said, “I am coming home.”
Though everything was locked down
They took me to church
Got a pastor, a counselor, a therapist, friends
They care about me
Chorus
Journey through the Jordan - Woman from the Jordan CRC
Standing in the rain
no shoes on my feet
I was scared with no direction
Treading through the water
I once was drowning in
Now I emerge into a new land
Trafficked in the streets
I had prayed for months
For God to show me the way
Police picked me up
The court sent me to treatment
So I follow in God’s way
Chorus
Been lost for so long
No way to go but up
Struggling through the murky waters
Starting to cross over Jordan
Finally see the light
Step by step
Ask. Seek. Knock.
Waiting for my plane
Passed out before boarding
I woke up in the ER
And it wasn’t the first time
I know it was God
Who was waking me up
Chorus
At home in the dark
Drinking taking pills
Hurting everyone, so ashamed
I Wanted to die
but asked God for help
Now I have freedom
Chorus
Drinking by myself
I could not quit
Had an old school landline
Knocked it on the floor
The operator sent help
Those angels brought back my faith
Chorus
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