The Prison

SEVEN YEARS EARLIER

THE PRISON COMPOUND squatted on a dismal, dusty street a distance from the main paved road. We pulled up outside a crumbling, gray cement wall. The prison guards let us in through a large metal door and led us across a grungy cement courtyard toward the entrance of what had originally been an old house. A small shack with what seemed to be the only window in the place stood at one end of the courtyard, and inside guards were lying about on thin mats on the floor, watching an old dusty TV and drinking hot mint tea out of a shared shot glass. A rusty steel-barred gate creaked in welcome as we stepped nervously into the main building.

Nothing in my past experience prepared me for this prison. I had seen heart-wrenching documentaries on life in US prisons, but nothing, save the documentaries on concentration camps during World War II that we were forced to watch in high school, could compare to what we would encounter in the prisons of this country in North Africa.

We were spending five weeks in this desert land, working with an NGO as part of the practical phase of the missions school we had been training with for six months. We believed this would be good preparation for a call to long-term missions somewhere. My husband, Stephen — accompanied by our four-year-old son, Joshua — worked every day in the ferocious sun, building a home for a mother of nine whose makeshift shack had collapsed. I and some other women on our team — as well as my three-year-old and six-year-old daughters — were working at a women's prison.

We wondered who and what we would encounter. What were these women in prison for? Were they dangerous, hardened criminals?

Evidently the inmates had heard we were coming. They were not confined to cells as we'd imagined, but were grouped in a communal living area. As soon as they saw us they started clapping, singing, and dancing in excitement. In true hospitable African fashion, they wanted to celebrate the arrival of their unusual visitors.

But the celebrations were quickly cut short. As we watched in horror, the guards got their whips out and began thrashing the women to shut them up.

I quickly tucked my girls behind me, trying to shield them from what was happening. I whispered under my breath, "Oh God! What have I gotten myself into? What have I gotten my babies into?"

* * *

We were probably not the people you'd expect to be doing this, Stephen and I. Sure, we'd started out starry-eyed and full of passion. I'd been that kid who was determined to tell all my friends about Jesus and who couldn't sleep the night after a missionary doctor had told our church stories about children in Africa. Stephen had gone on a mission trip to Mexico in high school and heard God whisper, This is what I have for you.

But when we met, I was a part-time college student working three part-time jobs, trying to support myself and wrap my head around being a single mom. During the four years my ex-boyfriend and I dated, I allowed my relationship with God to fade — at least until the wake-up call the day I took the pregnancy test. I was immediately broken and longed to make my life right again. Not only for my sake, but for the child's. My boyfriend wasn't interested in my renewed relationship with God — and he definitely wasn't interested in marriage and raising our child together. So there I was, alone and certain I had lost my right to dream of a relationship with a man who would love me and my child and have an all-consuming, red-hot zeal to glorify God.

At the same time, Stephen was facing the death of his first marriage — and of his dreams of serving God on the mission field. He and his wife had married right out of college, full of plans to serve God anywhere he would lead them. But as they started their missionary training, she pulled the plug on their dreams, deciding she wasn't comfortable with a life of what she called "begging" for the financial support to go. And Stephen accepted it. He wanted nothing more than to keep his marriage together. But despite his efforts, they began to drift apart, and she eventually filed for divorce.

Stephen had caught my eye at church camp a decade earlier, but I'd never even known his name. He was the manager at one of my part-time jobs, and in the midst of our individual dream-dashing moments, we became friends. I was sure it would be nothing more than that — I was pregnant, after all. But as the months passed, we both sensed it — we were falling in love. Stephen's acceptance of my situation, and his unconditional, fatherly love for this child I was carrying, was one of the most incredible expressions of God's provision and faithfulness I would ever experience. And not only were we being redeemed from our individual places of devastation — we were also being drawn into a united life of restoration.

Even so, we both felt that the call we'd heard from God was fraught with obstacles from the start. Would a divorced man be allowed to become a leader in the church or in service overseas? Would a young woman who'd become pregnant out of wedlock be permitted to go?

But God, of course, was not troubled by our pasts. He kept bringing to my mind the adulterous woman in the Bible, waiting for Jesus' response as the crowd hovered over her with stones. As Jesus stooped down, he didn't reach for a stone but began to write in the dirt. For Stephen and me, the ground was our hearts, and Jesus was beginning — or, rather, continuing — to write his story. Not a story of condemnation, but a story of redemption.

Shortly after we started dating, Stephen handed me Foxes Book of Martyrs, a daunting volume that chronicles the persecution and suffering of Christians throughout the centuries, starting with the biblical account of the apostle Stephen. "I feel it is only fair that you understand my level of commitment to God and his call on my life to take the gospel to the ends of the earth," he told me, an unusually serious look on his face. "No matter the cost."

As I read the stories of martyr after martyr, I felt overwhelmed as I attempted to calculate that cost. Was I really that serious about following Jesus? What would I have to give up to do this? How far would I be willing to go with God? What would I do if I were in a situation of choosing whether to deny Christ and live, or refuse to deny him and die? Was I willing to give my life for Christ? Was I willing to support Stephen's willingness to give his life for...