Jailtime - Part 12 (Section 2)

Later that evening, an inmate came by with the nightly hot-water trolley for coffee. Along with the soft clatter of tin cups, she quietly handed me a folded piece of paper. My breath caught as I recognized the familiar handwriting. It was from Barineze. I quickly slipped my own letter into her hand to carry back, my heart pounding as if the paper itself was alive.

Tears streamed down my cheeks as I opened the note and read it over and over, each line soaking deeper into me:

“My dearest beloved, I can’t fall asleep because I’m wondering what you’re doing and if you are okay. This is going to be the longest night ever, and I can’t wait to see you. It feels like hell!!! Promise me that when we are granted the opportunity to be together alone, we will make the best of it. I honestly hope that all this unpleasantness won’t turn you into a negative mental state and make you give up everything we have. I’ve cried so many grieving tears today, all because of my endless love for you. You don’t deserve what happened today, because I love you so very much and know you are a kind and loving person.

You deserve better treatment, and I feel more ill-treated on your behalf. Today, I promised myself to do everything in my power to make you happy because you deserve every bit of it. All the love I have in me is yours, and I will share it with you in abundance. You’ll never suffer any lack of love from me. I’m all yours. My entire humanness feels beautiful and clean, because our love brings out the best in me, everything due to you.”

“Lord, please keep her safe, because she means everything to me. Without Your grace and support, we cannot live; therefore, we trust You to lead us. Keep us safe from everything that might undermine our relationship and give us the power and knowledge to stand the test. Forgive us our sin and cast Your Holy Spirit upon us every day.”

“I love you, my sunshine. I have finally found true love!!!”

When I finally lowered the page, my mind lingered on the prayer more than anything else. A sudden, piercing awareness washed over me. God had never truly held a place in my life when Lizette and I were together, yet here I was, aching for Him with every breath. I needed Him then more than ever, and with a jolt, I realized He had always been there, waiting silently while I lived as if I didn’t need Him.

The more I turned toward Him, the deeper my longing became. I began to crave those private, silent conversations, a closeness that set my soul on fire. At times, it frustrated me: no amount of prayer or quiet moments felt like enough to fully know Him.

I had tasted His love and grace, but the hunger only grew. I knew I couldn’t force it; a relationship with God required patience, trust, and daily surrender. Yet fear sometimes crept in; fear that I might miss something He was trying to tell me, fear that time itself would run out before I could grasp all that He was.

On the other hand, I had Barineze on my mind constantly. Thoughts of her softened the hard edges of my day, bringing a strange comfort to my soul. What steadied me most was the quiet realization that God was present in our relationship; not pushed to the side or hidden, but welcomed as a constant figure in our lives. We included Him in everything: in our questions, in our answers, in every tiny decision. He was part of our love, our happiness, and even our sadness. Knowing that we could lean on Him at any time felt like an anchor in a place where almost nothing else was certain.

But beneath that comfort, a different tension churned. Somewhere in the quiet of my mind, a “voice” kept whispering, sometimes shouting, its endless reprimands about my sexual orientation. It never rested. The more it condemned me, the more I pushed back, arguing with it in silent defiance.

There were nights when I found myself almost shouting back in my head, drowning it out with my own stubbornness. For a while, it would retreat, but it always returned; sharp, relentless, and exhausting.

At times, the conflict felt like it would tear me apart. I experienced a sickening sense of destruction, as though my own soul was at war with itself. I grew desperate for answers, for a way to reconcile what I felt with what I had been taught. Slowly, I began searching for the truth beyond the accusations. I asked myself every question I could think of about my orientation, stripping each one down to its core.

What I came to believe was simple but liberating: apart from our sexual preference, there is no real difference between homosexuals and heterosexuals. We are not a threat to society; we contribute just as much as anyone else. The idea that we are evil is nothing more than a myth; an echo of fear passed down by those who do not understand.

People claim homosexuality is “unnatural,” but what does that even mean? The word is slippery, a vague accusation with no clear shape.

If “unnatural” only meant we are outnumbered by heterosexuals, does being in the minority make something wrong? If “unnatural” meant that certain body parts were not meant to be used for sex, then by the same logic, masturbation, oral sex, or intimacy after menopause would also have to be condemned. Bodies are complex. They are capable of many things, and love finds ways to move through them. To say that the physical side of a homosexual relationship is wrong simply because it does not follow a narrow design, felt to me, deeply unfair.

Before my arrest, there were many times I attended church and sat quietly in the back, only to hear people speak about “people like me” as if we were a disease, an abomination to God. Each time the words landed, a part of me shrank further inward. I began to pull back from others long before I ever stepped into a prison cell, creating a distance that no one could cross, because it felt safer to hide than to keep being wounded. If people wanted to look at me with disgust, I decided I would simply remove myself from their presence.

The church, the very place where I once hoped to find acceptance, became the weapon that drove me away. In their judgment, they “killed” the God I longed to worship, leaving me to believe He wanted nothing to do with someone like me.

Years later, I would learn that God was never dead to me at all, but by then the damage was already done. The seed of God hates you had been planted deep in the soil of my soul, and it grew like a weed I couldn’t pull out.

To escape the suffocating weight of rejection, I turned to alcohol and reckless behavior.

Drinking dulled the ache, and in the haze of smoky gay bars and late-night laughter, I felt a temporary acceptance among the people I called friends. But underneath the smiles and drunken camaraderie, I was the most miserable person in the world, but I covered it with a mask of arrogance. I chased happiness in people, in distractions, in sex and lust, and in marijuana once in a while, anything except turning toward God. Why would I run to someone I was told wanted nothing to do with me?

Still, there were moments when the craving to hear His voice became unbearable. Sometimes it was as small as a whisper in the back of my mind: a longing to pray, to feel a presence that promised meaning in a life that otherwise felt empty, callous, and cold.

Yet every time I gathered the courage to walk back into a church, I felt the sting of rejection all over again. The sermons were polished, the hymns sweet, but the eyes of the congregation were sharp as knives. By the time the final hymn faded and the doors opened, I would leave feeling as though the entire church had spit me out into a hard, dark pit with nothing to cling to.

To survive, I learned to play roles, to fit into the circles where acceptance came at the cost of hiding my truth. I became whoever people needed me to be, because the moment they discovered my orientation, the first words out of their mouths were always the same: "It’s a sin."

Meanwhile, as the days, months, and years passed, I slowly began to nurture a personal relationship with God. There were countless moments when I wanted to share my faith with others: to speak openly about the quiet conversations I had with Him, the prayers whispered in the dark. But compelled by necessity, I kept silent.

My silence wasn’t from lack of belief; it was from fear. I knew the unspoken rule too well: you could not call yourself a Christian and a lesbian in the same breath. To many, those two truths could never live side by side. Their version of God demanded that I choose: faith or identity, as though the two could not possibly coexist.

But my sexuality wasn’t a choice. It wasn’t a habit or a passing desire. It was real. It was me. I couldn’t deny it any more than I could stop breathing. My deepest longing was painfully simple: to be the person God created: nothing more, nothing less. Just me. No masks, no explanations, no apologies. And yet that very longing was where my spiritual struggle sharpened.

Despite all the late-night prayers and the conclusions I thought I’d reached, the battle inside me never quieted. Whenever I sought answers, the same scripture from Romans 1:18–32 flashed relentlessly before my eyes. I knew every word by heart. Sometimes I would glare at the page until the words blurred, my chest tight with anger and sorrow. More than once, I imagined tearing that section from the Bible entirely, ripping it free from the spine, but even if I destroyed the paper, the torment wouldn’t vanish. The Living Word would remain, unshaken.

All I wanted was a rightful place in the world. Despite my orientation, I yearned for eternal life with God. But that place could not be claimed by my own strength; it had to be given. Only God Himself could offer the acceptance my heart craved. In my mind, I knew He had already accepted me: how could He not? He was the one who breathed life into me. Yet in my heart, I couldn’t make peace with myself.

There were nights when I felt the weight of that contradiction press so hard against my chest that I thought of hating God, not because I truly despised Him, but because I so deeply disliked myself. I pleaded for a different life, a different heart: anything but this. But every morning I awoke with the same reality: I was still me. I was still a woman who loved women. And every day, I lived with the constant, aching awareness of that truth.

Even though I was in a different cell block, every thought of Bari made my heart race uncontrollably. Just imagining her face, the curve of her smile, or the way her eyes lit up when she laughed, sent waves of warmth and desperation through me. I longed to hold her, to feel the simple comfort of her presence, but the walls between us were thick and unyielding. My days were haunted by the emptiness that her absence left behind, and each passing hour without seeing her made me feel as though I were unraveling from the inside.

I obsessed over her constantly, thinking about every word she had ever said, every small gesture she had made, and wondering if she thought about me with the same intensity.

At night, the “voice” became unbearable. It sneaked into my mind, no matter how tightly I tried to shut it out, accusing me of sin, whispering that my love was wrong, that I must stop. I would bury my head under the pillow, squeezing my eyes shut, willing it to go away, but it only grew louder, persistent, relentless. Eventually, exhaustion overtook me, and I would fall into a restless sleep, my mind tangled in guilt and desire, longing and fear.

I started dedicating our love to God with every ounce of sincerity I had. I poured my heart into silent prayers, telling Him about my struggle, about the conflict I felt between my deepest desires and the condemnations that haunted me. I begged for guidance, for a sign of approval or disapproval: anything that would show me the right path.

Bari knew all of this. She knew of my silent conversations, my desperate struggles, and my prayers whispered into the darkness. Each time we wrote to each other, there was always a thread of faith woven into the words, a small reassurance that we were not alone, that our love was not a sin but a gift to be nurtured carefully.

Then, one evening, when the despair seemed overwhelming, a letter arrived from her. I recognized her handwriting instantly, and as I unfolded the paper, my hands shook. Tears blurred my vision before I even read the first line.

The poem she had sent: the one she called My prayer for you, was a balm to my aching soul. I read it again and again:

“Late at night, when it’s hard to rest
I put your picture close to my breast
Tonight I decided to pray
And this is what I had to say: -
Dear Lord, high above
Please watch over the one I love
I think of her so deep
In her tiny room, asleep
A gift from you, she came
Only love…no regret, no shame
Bless us for the years to come
And unite us rightfully as one
Oh God, we need you now
Help us to seal our love with a vow”.

Reading her words, I felt an uncontrollable surge of love and gratitude. “God, how I love this woman…how could this be wrong, God?” I whispered to the empty cell, clutching the letter to my chest.

Bari had become everything to me: my hope, my joy, my reason to endure this cruel place. Our love had grown far beyond any possibility of turning back. It was real, it was vital, and I believed in it fully.

I remembered the day I had confided in her, sharing everything about my past, the story of how I landed in prison, and the label of “murderer” that followed me. I needed to know that she could accept me despite it. I remembered her reaction vividly: her eyes steady, voice calm yet full of conviction.

“Do you really think I see or think of you as a murderer, and do you really think that I’m frightened of you because of what you’ve done?” she asked. “Don’t ever doubt my feelings and my love for you,” she continued. “If I had doubts or regarded you as some vicious animal or thought your behavior and deed were horrendous and unforgivable, I would have avoided entering this relationship with you.”

Her honesty washed over me, dissolving a lifetime of fear and self-loathing. I relaxed into her words, letting them fill the gaps in my heart. Her voice softened further, her gentleness reaching me even in memory:

“Questions similar to these should not be spoken between us, because what we’ve found in each other should erase all that is uncalled for. I’m proud to say that I fell in love with the most desirable little human being on earth and will treasure you till the day I die.”

I clutched that memory like a lifeline. In the lonely, cold hours of separation, it was a constant reminder that love could survive anything, even the iron bars and endless distance between us.

Bari’s love was my anchor, my proof that I could endure the hardest days, the cruelest silence, and the relentless accusations of the “voice” in my head.

Bari and I had been together for just over a month when I decided it was time to tell my mother about our relationship.

It was a Sunday when Mom came to visit, and my heart raced with nervous excitement. I carefully chose my words, knowing that what I was about to reveal might upset her deeply. Not only was Bari in prison for the second time, but she was also a colored woman: a fact that could complicate my mother’s perception further.

“She’s my friend, and I like her a lot, Mom,” I said hesitantly, feeling the weight of her gaze on me. By then, Mom had already sensed that there was much more than friendship between us. She knew me too well; she could read my expressions like an open book.

“Do you love her?” she asked, the fear clear in her eyes, as though she were bracing herself for the inevitable answer.

“Yes, Mom,” I admitted, my voice tight with both fear and determination. I wanted to tell her everything, the depths of my heart and the truth of our love, but I also knew the limitations imposed by the glass that separated us. I couldn’t reach out, couldn’t hold her hand or embrace her, and that physical barrier made the conversation feel even more excruciatingly distant and impersonal.

“Why, my child?...haven’t you been through enough hurt and humiliation with Lizette?...haven’t you learned your lesson yet?... I just don’t want to see you hurt again…I wouldn’t be able to handle it this time.” Her words pierced me, and I could see the trembling of her hands as she pressed them against the glass.

“What do you mean by "why," Mom, and what do you mean by "haven’t I learned my lesson yet?'” I asked, trying to steady my voice. “This isn’t about a lesson…it’s about love, and I love her…we love each other. It’s different. She’s everything I’ve always dreamt of…everything I’ve always wanted…just because I’m in prison, doesn’t mean I never have to love again…my life has to continue…Lizette has been dead and gone for almost two years.”

Mom’s face hardened. “It’s her second time in prison, both times for fraud, and she’s financially going to ruin you just like Lizette did.” Her voice was sharp, almost accusing. In her mind, prison marked a person as bad, unworthy, and unreliable, no matter their color or the reasons behind their circumstances. She saw me as innocent in a world of guilt, but somehow Bari had already been judged.

“Mom, just like circumstances drove me to shoot Lizette and end up in prison, just so circumstances drove Barineze to do what she did, causing her to come to prison for the second time,” I said, feeling a surge of frustration. “But you wouldn’t be interested, would you? "You would rather judge her before you even met her. She has a beautiful, loving, and caring personality, and it’s the heart within the body that matters, not the color.” My voice trembled, raw with hurt and disbelief. I felt my mother’s lack of warmth and compassion acutely: it was so unlike the comfort and understanding I felt with Bari.

“I don’t want you to be in an intimate relationship with her, and I’m not interested in meeting her…why can’t you just be friends?” Her words hit me like cold metal, harsh and final.

“It’s too late, Mom…we love each other,” I said, my throat tight, my chest aching.

“I don’t ever want to hear her name again, and I don’t want you to push her down my throat either, because she’s going to hurt you just like Lizette did.”

“Fuck!!!” I exploded, unable to contain my anger and pain any longer. “Aren’t you ever going to grant me any love or happiness?...don’t you think I deserve just a little bit of both after what I’ve been through?” Tears streamed down my face, burning behind my eyes. I stood up abruptly, turning away from her, my body shaking. “And you don’t ever have to come and visit me again.”

By then, I could see that Mom was crying too, her tears fogging the glass between us, but I didn’t care. All I wanted was to be with Bari, to feel her near me in a way my mother could not understand.

When I returned to the section, I saw Bari in the hallway in front of the hair salon. She noticed the sudden heaviness in my step, the silence that clung to me like a shadow. Her eyes searched mine instinctively, and she knew, without a word, that something terrible had happened. I pulled her into a tentative embrace, careful not to overwhelm her, and kissed her gently to reassure both of us. Her lips met mine with a deep, passionate urgency, her fingers gripping my shoulders as if to anchor me in reality.

“Don’t let your mother upset you,” she whispered, her voice trembling with concern yet steady with love. “I love you. Nothing she says can change that.”

I held her tightly for a long moment, letting her words sink into me, the warmth of her presence a balm to my frayed nerves. She then returned to the hair salon, her figure disappearing into the space that separated us, leaving me with the lingering heat of her love and the unshakable certainty that, no matter what, our connection could not be broken.

Days blurred together in the monotony of prison life, and yet, the thought of Bari remained my anchor. Every glance at the small barred window reminded me of the distance I had to endure.

I longed for her presence, her laughter, her touch, but patience was the only way forward. I realized that patience wasn’t merely waiting; it was a surrender, a conscious decision to place my trust in God’s timing, even when every part of me screamed for immediate relief.

That night, as I lay on my bed, I felt the weight of my earlier outburst toward my mother crushing me. She didn’t deserve that kind of treatment: she had been my steadfast support since the tragedy, visiting me every Sunday, no matter the wind, the rain, or the storm. Lying on my narrow prison bed, I felt like a worm for the way I had spoken to her. The next morning, I phoned her, my tears soaking the receiver, and told her I was sorry and that I loved her. Her voice, steady and warm, wrapped around me like a blanket. She didn’t need an explanation. She only said, “I love you, my child,” as if my failures were nothing compared to her love. In that moment, I understood a deeper truth: patience is love stretched across time, and my mother was living proof.

I remembered the way she would always wave at me through the glass, her eyes shining with encouragement, even when she couldn’t hold me close. The following morning, I phoned her, tears running down my face, and told her how terribly sorry I was for my behavior. I told her that I loved her, that despite my anger, she was my rock, my glue in a world of chaos. Even through the glass, even at a distance, her presence had been my anchor, and I knew I couldn’t take that love for granted.

In the meantime, I prayed to God, asking Him to make a way for Bari and me to be together, and every day I waited patiently. At first, I only experienced frustration, and as the days went by, the frustration made space for patience. I became more and more patient and knew it was all made possible through God’s grace and teachings. He taught me how easy it was to wait patiently.

Each evening, when the sounds of the other inmates faded, and silence filled my cell, I would think of my mother’s gentle voice on the phone, her small words of encouragement, and it gave me comfort. Even the smallest gestures: her telling me she loved me, her asking me to eat properly, her prayers for my safety, became a balm for my restless spirit.

One night, I was lying on my bed, staring out into the night through the small barred cell window, and thought to myself how privileged I was to still be able to see the night and the stars: God’s creation. Even though the sight was restricted due to the small and out-of-reach window, I felt grateful. Suddenly, a different, more compassionate “voice” spoke to me and said:

“Don’t despair…I am here with you.” The “voice” told me that I’m on my way to a spacious paradise, filled with more love than I can ever dream of. There are no prison walls, no safety gates, and no small windows. Immediately, I realized how calm and content I felt with this assurance. Being frustrated at lying there lonely again, I suddenly experienced patience toward accepting the fact that I couldn’t be with Bari. At first, it came as a shock, because I suffered a great lack of patience before, and I didn’t quite know what this sudden new feeling was until I started self-study.

It hadn’t been long after that that I realized that patience was already present in some parts of my life, but I wasn’t able to identify it at first.

When I came to prison, I was a very impatient person, but God soon showed me that to be impatient was making me an unbearable person to live with, not just for others, but for myself too.

I had to learn to be patient with the fact that I had a very long sentence, after all, nine years aren’t nine days. I had to learn to be patient with the many different kinds of people in prison; they all had a different culture, a different religion, and to be able to get along with them, I had to understand their way of thinking, their way of speaking, and still, it wasn’t very easy. I had to wait patiently for a safety gate to be opened by a warden, and believe me, they sometimes took all the time in the world to open that gate. I had to wait patiently in line to “draw” my food, only to discover some part of the body of a cockroach in my food. I had to wait patiently in the line at the tuck shop, only to hear these words: “Sorry, the cigarettes are all sold out.” That’s when I decided to switch to tobacco: it’s cheaper, and it’s never sold out. I had to be patient during the times that it wasn’t always possible to see my loved one, but above all, I was still waiting for God to tell me what His plan was with me, and to be honest, when it came to this point, it was tough to be patient.

Even in the toughest moments, small comforts kept me going. My mother’s weekly visits, even behind the glass, her steady voice on the phone, and Bari’s letters and poems: they all reminded me that love could still reach me, even in this enclosed, lonely world. They were fragments of warmth, reminders that patience and trust could coexist with longing and despair, and that even in confinement, I was not completely alone.

I always adored people who have waited. My thoughts on being patient became broader and more complex as I tried to answer so many questions. Thinking about patience turned out to be like peeling an onion, layer by layer, because there are so many kinds and levels of it, and it crops up everywhere.

In Gal. 5:22, the synonym for patience in the list of the fruit of the Spirit is “long-suffering.” No doubt, waiting always involved some degree of suffering, whether it was waiting for some joyful event to occur or for some sorrow or suffering to end.

I thought that perhaps people have so much trouble with time because they were really made for eternity. Patience, at first glance, appeared to be an ordinary feature, not in a class with such noble features as faith, hope, charity, or justice. As I peeled away more of the onion, I discovered that I might have underestimated it. One kind of long-suffering I recognized was waiting for my release date. Daily, I was praying that the Lord would give me an abundance of patience. I really needed it.

A smile appeared on my face as I was thinking about the patience that is expressed in the poster, which I’d seen at a stationery shop once. It said: “Be patient—God isn’t finished with me yet.” This was a very consoling thought; it was the kind of patience that makes it possible for people to accept each other exactly as they are and where they are.

I realized that God’s schedule isn’t always mine, so I prayed every day and patiently had to wait for God to finish His work in me, knowing that there is an appointed time for everything. There were times in my life when praying came easily, when my faith was a joy and comfort to me, and I felt that I was making real progress. Other times, praying became a chore, bad habits would rear their ugly heads again, and I would become discouraged. I realized that this was when I needed to be still and patiently wait for God to continue working in me according to His own timetable. I also realized that gradually I would come to recognize that these times of pruning could be the most fruitful of my life.

I was thinking about another kind of patience that bears sorrow or loss without bitterness or complaining. Lizette and my own past brought this thought to my mind. It was not the grit-your-teeth or clench-your-fists kind of grim resignation, but a faithful acceptance, a quiet embracing of the suffering, knowing that in God’s own good time all things work together for good.

I was experiencing difficulties in cultivating patience, so I had no choice but to begin to appreciate God’s patience with me. “So patient is the Lord that to Him one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like one day.” The same thought continued with the very comforting assurance that the Lord does not delay in keeping His promises, though at times I considered it a delay. I realized that He shows generous patience because He wants none to perish but all to come to repentance.

Sometimes I even thought patient people were foolish, but soon realized that without patience, there could be no growth at all. Because of my impatience, wanting to have the timing of things my way, I realized that I was in some sense trying to play God. I had to learn to be patient, to wait for God’s timing and trust it, but it was the most difficult task of my life.

Inside the walls of prison, patience was no gentle virtue; it was survival. Every day brought a hundred small opportunities to practice it. I waited for the wardens to open the gates, their keys jingling slowly as if mocking my eagerness. I waited in endless lines for food, for the tuck shop, for a letter, for a ten-minute phone call. Each delay scraped against my nerves like sandpaper until I learned to breathe and let the waiting become a lesson instead of a torment.

Even the smallest acts of daily life demanded surrender. But the hardest waiting was for love. I longed for Bari, for the warmth of my mother’s embrace, for freedom. At first, these longings burned like open wounds. I paced my cell like a restless animal, praying for release, aching for a letter, desperate for any sign of movement in God’s plan. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, those wounds began to scab over with patience. I discovered that patience was not passive. It was a decision to trust, to keep breathing, to stay open even when nothing seemed to change.

My mother’s unwavering devotion became one of God’s clearest lessons. No matter the weather: wind, rain, or scorching sun, she came every Sunday. She passed through the gates, endured the searches, and sat across the cold glass with eyes that never stopped loving me. Her visits were a living sermon on patience. She waited for me to change. She waited for me to heal. She waited for the day I would walk free. Each time she looked at me through that glass, I felt both convicted and comforted. Her love asked for nothing but everything: that I keep going and let God finish His work.

It struck me that God’s patience often wears the face of a loving mother. Just as she forgave my outbursts and returned week after week, so did He forgive my rebellion and call me back to Him. I remembered the night after one of my worst outbursts, when guilt crushed me like a stone.

As days turned to months and months to years, I began to see patience not as a punishment but as a gift. It was God’s way of shaping me into someone who could hold both joy and pain without breaking. Waiting no longer felt like an empty pause: it became a holy classroom where faith and endurance were forged. I learned that patience is not the absence of action; it is the quiet, steady refusal to give up when everything in you screams to run ahead. It is the courage to trust God’s timing even when every clock around you says you’re late.

Looking back, I realize that patience is love in slow motion. It is the fruit that ripens only under the heat of suffering and the chill of disappointment. It is the long road that leads to freedom, not of bars but of the soul. And as I sat on my bunk, peeling away the layers of this onion-like virtue, I understood that patience was no small thing at all. It was the very heartbeat of God’s grace, pulsing through every delay, every prayer, every tear-stained night, teaching me to wait, not just for my release, but for the day when I would be truly free.

........To be continued