They’re good lions I tell my intern, Dawn. “Maybe this will straighten him out,” I say. We had just taken one of our graduated seniors to his probation officer that he had been avoiding for at least two months. The hope was that we could somehow advocate for him to have a second chance. Dawn and I both knew there was the possibility that he would be arrested there, but we certainly weren’t prepared when it happened.
Apparently, he had screwed up so bad that there was not going to be a conversation. His probation officer brought us back and out stepped two officers and she said “You’re going to have to go with these two gentlemen.” They slapped the cuffs on him and we all went down together and watched him get put in the car and taken downtown. It was a surreal moment, I wasn’t shocked, but there was an eerie feeling inside me as the realization that I may have just gotten someone locked up for 2-3 years washed over me.
It was needed, they were going to find him anyway, and he does need to straighten his life out. He had been shacked up with his girlfriend for weeks, and lying to her mama saying he’d been kicked out by his mom. Not to mention he had lied over and over about things he was doing to his mama, and everyone at church. He was doing his best to manipulate us all to his advantage. The sad part was, his mom and I talk regularly and I knew all he was up to and he still wanted to keep lying to me even when I called him out on his lies.
If you can’t tell already, this was my first time getting someone arrested, which was difficult enough. Now Dawn and I needed to take his phone and stuff to his mom and tell her. In probably any other situation, I would have been terrified to tell a parent this, but as much as we had to deal his lying and other junk I figured she would be understanding. She was, we let her vent, we vented, and we prayed. I prayed for peace, and “that this kick in the butt, would wake him up to the reality of life and that he was not living it right.
Maybe that is something we should all pray for, a “kick in the butt.” I’m betting though for most of you reading this you don’t need one because you’re headed on a path to prison. But maybe you need a “kick in the butt” to live out your faith every day or maybe you one so that you will do something about a form of injustice in your community. Whatever it is, I pray it happens.
