Being arrested for robbery and violating my parole in 1989 guaranteed I’d be spending Christmas in a Florida prison that year... and for years to come.
I didn’t have much of a Christmas spirit. I didn’t see anything to be merry or hopeful about. My plans to celebrate my first Christmas with my daughter and her new husband since I got out of prison weren’t going to happen. Christmas had lost all its meaning.
After a painful argument with my wife on the telephone, I sat down on my Dade County Jail bunk and began eating my meal. Anxious to get back on the phone, I ate too fast and sucked down a little chicken bone that stuck in my windpipe.
I couldn’t breath or talk and started choking. I remember thinking “It’s all over now.” I thought for sure I was a goner; and, in a way, I welcomed it. But then a strange thing happened.
My life flashed before me. From the past, I saw Abuelita, my grandmother, with her long hair, praying for me. I saw the nuns and the priest singing Christmas songs in front of the old cathedral at the orphanage where my sisters and I went to live when Abuelita went blind. From the present I saw my daughter with my grandson and my two sisters. They were praying for me too. In a matter of seconds I saw my wasted life pass before me—and all the people who had and were praying for me. “Is this how it’s going to end?” I thought.
I cried out to God although no words came out of my mouth. I suddenly realized I really didn’t want my life to end like this. “Lord, please help me,” I prayed.
Some of the prisoners nearby saw what was happening as my face turned red and then purple. One of them yelled for a guard who turned me upside down and began to shake me as he squeezed my stomach. The little bone popped out onto the floor in front of my bulging eyes.
I couldn’t talk for a couple weeks because the chicken bone had scraped my vocal cords—which was probably what God wanted. Now that I couldn’t talk, maybe I’d listen.
On Christmas Eve in the chapel, an ex-prisoner came and preached about a baby in a manger who came to save the world. I began to understand that Christmas was more than a holiday you spend with loved ones exchanging gifts.
God forgives a sinner like me and sets me on the right path not because I deserve it or did anything to earn it, but because He loves me.
I’d heard the story before, but this time my heart was ready, and I asked Jesus Christ into my life. That day completely changed everything for me. It was the day I began to put my hope and trust in Him instead of me.
Slowly the unhappiness of incarceration that cut away the meaning of Christmas changed as I took my eyes off the pain of prison and put my faith in the Son of God, who freed me from a fate worse than my cell—Hell.
I often think back to how God used a chicken bone stuck in my throat to lead me to Jesus. It taught me that God’s amazing grace is inexhaustible. He never gives up. He loved me more than I loved myself, and He shows me that when my heart is willing, He can use me even from a prison cell.
As I write about the things He teaches me, the real meaning of Christmas becomes crystal clear: God loves me. He loves me so much He sent His only Son to die to prove it.
Christmas in prison still has its lonely moments. But when I go to the chapel Christmas night and sing songs of praise to the One who came that first Christmas, the real meaning is made new in my heart. Christ came. A baby in a manger became the Savior. He freed me and gave me the greatest gift of all—eternal life.
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