My Letter

     A member of our prodigals prayer group asked us if we were willing to send letters to her grandson in prison. Naturally, I will not give his name or any details. Several of the other ladies have already written him, but I did not ask them what they wrote or what verses they included. I decided to go with my gut, be real, tell our family story, and the scriptures that intersected with those events which helped us most. This is my letter.

Hi,

    I’m a member of your Grandma’s prayer group and remember you from church many years ago, Connie Lamb. My sister and her husband own Flathead Woodwind and Brass from back when you played trumpet. This is not the first time I’ve written to someone in prison, we used to house homeless boys for a while and some of their friends were in prison, but it has been nearly 20 years since then. I have been trying to think of what to say to encourage you. There are some verses in John 6 the Lord used to encourage us when we wondered if our youngest son would be with the rest of our family in heaven.   

     I’m sure your Grandma already told you about the remarkable thing God did for us when we took him to Rimrock for addiction treatment in 2016. Tracy wasn’t required to go, and was so nervous about going I wasn’t sure he would make it to Billings. As he sat by the roadside smoking, he said, “I will never believe in God because I can’t see Him and He can’t see me.” I prayed that God would show him that He was real and that He was good. At that very moment, a car pulled up behind us on the shoulder of the highway. The driver, Ryan, said he was on his way to Helena for an important meeting at work when the Lord told him to turn around and go talk to us. He said he argued with God about it for a few minutes before turning around, yet he arrived in the exact instant Tracy said God couldn’t see him. Ryan encouraged and prayed with us, but the main thing was, God showed all of us He was real. He was good. And he heard us. Back in the car Tracy said, “I will never doubt God again because of what He did for me today.” And I realized, God was reaching for my son and He could not fail to get whatever He was reaching for.

    Just in case I still had doubts, when we got home from Billings there was a letter from my Dad stuck in one of the many cards charities sent him, and the verse on the card happened to be John 6:37 “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never turn away.” The next day’s sermon at church happened to be on the same part of John 6. I now call those verses God’s cement. They were, and still are, encouraging to me, and I have shared them with many others. Jn 6:44 says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up on the last day. 45b says, “Everyone who has heard the Father and learns from him comes to me.”  So here’s the deal, no one naturally wants to come to God, He has to draw them. When He is drawing, (trekkie reference) Resistance is futile. There is no long gap between God’s drawing and being raised up at the last day where God wonders if salvation is going to stick. Not only does He always reach what He’s aiming for, He never lets it go. 

    Tracy died March 22, 2022 of fentanyl, though he had been off drugs for six years. Alcohol was the addiction that kept pulling him back. But the Lord gave him five years of success and sobriety before he reached his appointed time, so Trace could regain his self-respect and the respect of others. God even used the tragedy of fentanyl to get a drug dealer of 40 years off the streets of Helena. He is in Bozeman awaiting transport to Deer Lodge for his 38 year sentence. But the best part is, we have no doubt whatsoever that Tracy is in heaven and we will have all of eternity to spend with him.

    I don’t know if these verses will help you, I just know they helped us. They cemented us to hope when we faced the hardest loss of our lives. You are probably already in the hardest loss of your life, your freedom. But nothing is ever wasted in, what I call, the beautiful economy of God, and I know He won’t waste what you are going through now, and He will never let you go.

 

                                                                                  Connie