Thursday, October 22, 2020 -
Today I am so grateful to the Lord, absolutely thrilled over a photograph that would have little meaning to anyone else, but it has great meaning to me.
You see, back on March 8, the day before my mother’s funeral, my daughter Victoria, her husband Cory, my granddaughter Evelyn, and my son Jonathan came to visit me. William, Josiah, Anthony, and his family, and Rebekah were with Kathie at my mother’s funeral in Chattanooga.
Jonathan’s visit was an absolute surprise, it being his first and only visit to see me since my incarceration. I was thrilled to see him! Little did I know that in two days they’d be completely shutting down visitation for seven months because of Covid-19. Kathie had been to see me the prior Monday, March 8, with a friend.
I had one photo ticket with me and used it to have a photograph made of us during the visit. But I never received the photo back as I normally do within a few weeks. This I really lamented.
Months later, during the summer, someone told me I’d probably never see the photograph, as the photographer got caught taking close-up pictures candidly of a female staff’s posterior. For this incident, he was put in the SHU and shipped to another prison. Hearing of this really grieved me, as this man seemed to be in the chapel for every Protestant service there was.
I was told, however, that if I sent an email to the staff member in charge of photography, I perhaps might recover the photo. This I tried back in June or July, but the man never responded. Today, however, that man was in the chow hall when I went to pick up my lunch. And so I asked him about it. He said, “Let me see your face, pull down your mask.” After doing so, he said, “Come with me; let me see if we can find it.”
I followed him to his office, where he proceeded to dig through his desk drawers, files, envelopes, boxes, letter dividers, sometimes multiple times. He kept telling me that he knew it was there, still in the Wal-Mart envelope, and that he knows he stuck it somewhere. After searching through some drawers as many as three times, he opened one for the first time and began digging through file folders. He finally found one Wal-Mart photo envelope he hadn’t found before, and said, “I think this is it!” Our photo was one of the last ones in the envelope. I was so thankful and kept praising the Lord all the way back to my unit. My lunch (our only hot meal of the day) was by then cold, but as I ate my cold chicken and beans, I praised the Lord continually that God unexpectedly supplied that photo to me today, and that He directed me to ask for it from Mr. Brekenridge who actually was very kind and polite to me (something I don’t find too much of in this prison.) It was a terrific photo of us all, and I will cherish it with my other photos of my beloved wife and family. Praise His holy Name for the little things He does for us!