Another whisper from God. Less than 30 days after I interviewed for the Hope program in jail, I was accepted. I finally had something to look forward to. I would be able to go to and reside in a special pod. The population there was women like myself, who had the urge to do something different, and also fill their time with self-help classes and exploring why our lives brought us to this moment. I fell in love from the first day with the Hope program. We learned things from self-discipline to self-examination, to stewardship, to respecting other religions, to psychology… The list goes on and on. But even outside of our classes I started to notice a change in me. I had this hunger to keep my attention fixed on something good and positive. Like every second of the day when I was surrounded by concrete walls and a negative set of circumstances that got me to this point in my life, there was this change. The next commissary day I bought myself a radio, a tablet, and some pencils. From that day forward instead of hanging out with the other people that were not in the Hope program like me, I chose to fill that time by changing the way I thought and even the things I listened to. Instead of rap music which triggered me of the life I was living, I found a radio station that also contributed to changing my life called K Love. This was a Christian radio station, but instead of endless lectures, they had music of all genres. Every song had one thing in common… Faith. There were a few songs in particular on this station that really resonated with me and my life— a couple of which were Hills and Valleys, by Tauren Wells, and Different by Micah Tyler. On the days that I had free time I would do a lot of writing. I always felt like writing my prayers. Putting pen to paper meant something a little bit more significant than those we said in our heads to ourselves, or spoke out loud, or even the memorized ones we said out of habit not out of understanding. Those types of prayers had always felt so fleeting… like if you just say them with your mind or lips they are there for a moment then gone. But I felt like there was an extra effort and therefore more thought and genuine purpose in the act of writing prayers. I actually would put them on paper… And there they were…. physically there….. and therefore, I felt like maybe—just maybe— something more physical would happen.
