Volunteer prison chaplains from Inside Out Prison Chaplaincy are making a difference in the lives of people inside Queensland correctional centres who feel hopeless, helpless and alone.
A former prisoner wrote to Inside Out Prison Chaplaincy to share how chaplains supported her during the darkest period of her life.
My time in prison was the scariest, most degrading, loneliest, confusing time of my life.
I'd never been in trouble before, never been arrested. This new world was so cold, so dark: being treated as a number, realising that nothing I said mattered anymore to the ones who were holding me behind bars.
You lose all sense of feeling human. Everything has been taken: your family, your home, your clothes, down to your privacy and you right to speak - or for anyone to care.
I am a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend to many, but in those walls I had nothing left. No-one except the few nice people I bonded with inside. But as we know that usually changes pretty quickly by someone leaving or being moved around prison units.
I had started to forget what it was to feel love, to feel like I deserved anything, then one day I decided to approach the fence and speak with a chaplain. She smiled at me then the next thing she did changed everything: she asked if she could pray for me.
My tears were flowing. Someone cared, someone wanted to assure me I was not alone, and remind me of God and the beauty that he can bring us in our time of terror. We are made as prisoners to feel that anyone on the other side of the fence is above you or thinks you're scum.
From providing the colouring-ins to the chapel days singing songs and praying for each other and our families, I will never forget the love the chaplains brought back into my world and watched them do so to others. I think without them I … I don't even want to think about what road I was going down.
Prison is cold and lonely but the love and support gifted to us by these workers of the Lord are our reason to remember we are not alone, and there are people who will always fight for our rights to feel love and forgiveness our time to repent and think and pray for our families.
I thank you all so much for your time, your songs, all the Bible studies that kept me going, teaching us and giving us more to think about and pray for.
I know it's scary, especially if religion has been a trigger or non-existent, but I want this message to reach all of the ones locked behind those fences. Please reach out and let chaplains help you.
You deserve to remember who you are, who made you, and that you can always find forgiveness in the Lord.
