We hurried home from church, got about 60 people fed and then Lorna, Mun Hee and I climbed in the van and headed for the prison. Sadly, one of the women there had committed suicide earlier in the week and we were on our way to the memorial service.
Last Monday evening, as we regularly do, we had filled the van with volunteers and driven out to the back side of Maple Ridge. We'd talked about how this was the last time for awhile that we'd be driving out in the dark (because of daylight saving time coming on the weekend). We crowded into the tiny "control" area to sign in and get our volunteer badges. Linnea had given each of us our list of 3 or 4 people we were visiting ... those we'd visited before and new folks who'd asked to have a visit. Some folks made their way over to the new minimum security facility on another part of the grounds. This was the first time for them over there. The rest of us headed off to various "houses" to find our friends.
As sometimes happens, at one point in the evening a number of us found ourselves on the same unit. When I came through the door I saw Lorna sitting at a table playing cards with two of the women there and, as I usually do, I had all sorts of crazy things to say about her and "warnings" that I gave the women about what would happen to them if they kept hanging around people like Lorna. We had lots of laughs and I went off to visit the woman I was there to see.
Forty-eight hours later, one of the women sitting at that table with Lorna took her own life. While Lorna had been too sick to visit in the prison for a few months last year Mun Hee had befriended this woman so when we received the news it was a pretty big shock to both of them and the usual questions go through your mind: What did I miss? What could I have done or said? Why did something like this have to happen?
These are the challenging moments for all of us as we long to have people come to know the hope and the joy we have found in our relationship with Jesus Christ.
I know the absence of hope. I know the darkness that seems to thick and too heavy to go on. I tried the same route years ago. Thankfully, I was not successful and God has given me a life that has been very worth living. That's a hope I have to share with women by my presence at a memorial service and in upcoming weeks when I sit with them somewhere on the grounds or in a common area of one of the units.
It is a reminder to me and all of us that only God's love can give us the strength and vision we need to see the future in a way that makes us want to enter into it.
I know that Lorna and MunHee, the women in the prison, the family of the woman who has died, would all appreciate your prayers in these days.
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