Chapter 1 - The Robber In The Mirror

Let me tickle your imagination. You are constantly being robbed by the same unmasked assailant, over and over again. He approaches with a familiar, simple question and a smile you have seen often, and he catches you completely off guard. You are unprepared for his next move. He strikes. He slips through your defenses. After the first incident, caution washes over you. You tell yourself you don't want to be caught unprepared again. After the second, heightened alertness takes root in your mind. You trace your steps; you look over your shoulder more often. After the third robbery, you become hyper-aware. You start scrutinizing every person around you. You pay attention to any movement around you.

You insist that this will never happen again. You take a few classes to learn how to defend yourself from being robbed. On an ordinary Friday afternoon in May, around six o'clock, the familiar feeling of being robbed returned. As I stood at home, out of nowhere, from behind me, the image of a figure loomed over me. It was a large man, towering at six feet two inches. I turned quickly to look in the mirror to catch the suspect, and to my surprise, the large man was none other than me! That revelation sent chills down my spine. I had been robbed by myself. I stood there thinking. What drives and compels a person to rob himself? How did I inflict harm and threaten my own future? How am I undermining my known peace? Why am I disrupting the sacredness of my marriage? When we rob ourselves, we inevitably rob those who we love. We rob them of trust. We rob them of safety. We rob them of peace.

That evening began like any other Friday. It was a warm, sunny day, and I was looking forward to the weekend. But some storms created by a domestic stranger aren't captured by weather apps on your phone or by looking at the sky. These storms are created within. These storms are hidden from the eyes of family and friends. These storms that brew inside of us are often hidden from us. One such storm was gathering strength inside of me. I didn't deal with my storm, and now everybody around me is about to get wet.

A LONG DAY BUT IT'S PAYDAY

At 4:30 AM every morning, Monday through Friday, Mary, my wife, got up and got ready to take me to work. Our morning routine consisted of me making her coffee with cream and sugar and bringing it to her. I took out the trash, gave the dogs a fresh bowl of water, and jumped in the shower. Usually, while I was in the shower, my wife would make my coffee and my favorite breakfast: eggs and avocado on toast, a peanut butter sandwich, and a banana. She would put my lunch in my work bag with my favorite protein bars and snacks. We would often find a moment to sneak a quick dance and a kiss. She taught me how to do the 2-Step, a country dance. We would work on our moves barefooted on the kitchen floor. On our way to work, we would sip our coffee and sing along to Aaron Watson, Luke Bryan, or other country artists on the radio. The early morning sky changed the streetlights to a soft glow.

This morning was different. There was no coffee made. No breakfast or lunch was made. I don't even remember if the dogs got fresh water that day. May 1st was different. As she drove and navigated the roads of West Adams in Temple, we didn't talk. We hadn't talked for a few days. I don't remember the reason. The reason sounds petty now. But the anger that grew inside the domestic stranger grew in my heart and soul. The silence between us was uncomfortable and awkward. She dropped me off at work, Danhill Containers, without saying goodbye or even a quick kiss, just silence. I operated heavy machinery that stitched together the robust corrugated boxes. It was a labor-intensive job. The job demanded physical strength, concentration, and attention to detail. Each ten-hour shift felt endless, leaving my mind and body exhausted. The pay was crappy and didn't reflect how hard I worked. They just found more work for you to do. By the time I clocked out, my body ached, and my mind felt depleted. Although I was tired, it was payday. Even though my hard-earned paycheck went toward the bills, contributing to the household filled me with a deep sense of purpose and pride. After three decades spent behind prison walls, earning a paycheck and helping support the home felt monumental. It made me feel like I was part of something special and that I belonged.

I usually didn't get home until 3:30 PM. One of my spiritual mentors, Glenn Lackey or Charlie Robinson, would pick me up from work and drive me home. I met Glenn seven years ago, when I was in prison on the Hughes Unit in Gatesville, Texas. He was a prison volunteer in the faith-based dorm. I met Charlie Robinson through a good mutual friend, Dave Meggett. Dave knew I was coming to Temple, Texas, a new city, and that I would need discipleship support, so he introduced me to Charlie. Glenn and Charlie are pillars of the community and of ministry. When Glenn or Charlie weren't available, I would ride the HOP, a Bell County transit van.

When I walked through the door, the door was unlocked. The atmosphere felt heavy, with unspoken tension. There was no greetings, no yelling, no arguing, no words exchanged. There was no small talk, only silence. There were no hugs or a kiss. Silence greeted me, enveloping the house like an unwelcome guest.

As I stepped in the door, our dogs, Hiachi and Manchi, welcomed me home. Hiachi, a large, all-white Chow, charged at me, wanting to go outside to play or take a walk. Manchi, a brown Shih Tzu, is small, but his personality is larger than life. Their playful energy momentarily filled the silence. My wife remained in her home office typing away at the keyboard.

INVISIBLE BATTLES

After my time in prison, finding ways to contribute around the house took on a new significance for me. I enjoyed washing dishes, folding laundry, vacuuming the floors, mowing the grass, or caring for the pool. I wasn't going to win any cleaning awards for my domestic skills, but I really loved helping out. These everyday tasks became my way of reconnecting with the notion of home. Yet my wife often stepped in to correct my techniques, not out of malice, but for safety. She had knowledge and skills I lacked. I had entered prison as a teenager and returned years later, as a man. I returned to a world that had changed dramatically. Countless domestic skills that most people learned naturally had remained foreign to me.

My pride and insecurity sometimes held me back from asking the simplest questions. In my mind, asking questions whispered doubts about my ability to do simple tasks. Those same internal struggles often reared their ugly heads in other areas of my life, despite being educated. I earned my G.E.D. in 1996, and my Ph.D. in 2023, framed on my wife's office wall. Having survived the trials of prison, beneath the accomplishments lay a man in a fierce battle with depression, unaddressed mental health issues, trauma, insecurity, and the haunting fear of never being enough. I wanted more than survival. I carved significance. I wanted to matter, to know I had what it took and was worth being loved. I yearned to be a good husband and a good Christian.

THE LOCKED DOOR

I went to the corner store to cash my paycheck. Before I left the house, I told my wife I was heading to the store to cash my check and give her money for a bill she'd texted me about a few days earlier. It was a routine comment; one I thought would get a brief acknowledgment or response. She didn't glance my way. All I got was silence. This inaction left me worried. Her lack of response felt like a signal, an indication that I was alone in this relationship.

As I walked to the 7-11 convenience store to cash my paycheck, pick up a few hygiene items, and give my wife money for bills, I called Jake. Jake is a friend I was incarcerated with on the Hughes Unit. Jake was a field minister. A field minister is an inmate minister who has received training from seminary college with a Bachelor's degree. Field ministers work alongside prison chaplains to provide religious services and address the spiritual needs of the inmate population. Jake and I became good friends through our work in the prison chapel, living together in the faith-based dorm, our love for God, and our passion for the Dallas Cowboys.

Jake was a mentor and big brother on the Lord. Jake had done quite a lengthy prison sentence himself, and he had mentioned in a previous text the mental and emotional challenges he was facing reentering society. We had made an agreement in a text to talk on the phone about our struggles. I was elated to finally have someone to talk to who wouldn't preach to me or give me a scripture to read. I needed someone to hear what I was going through and who could relate to it. Coming home from prison, well-meaning, good-intentioned people offer clichés and pep talks about reentering society. People say, "Take it one day at a time." But what does that really mean? I can't take two days at a time. All I have is one day at a time.

What does that look like when life pressures require you to provide? Then some people are well-meaning and will offer a "just be happy you're out" speech. Who isn't happy after getting out of prison after several decades? Coming home after three decades, I had expectations I placed on myself. I had expectations others placed on me. At times, I was criticized for my behavior as a husband not lining up with what the Bible says a husband should be. Yes, there were some gaps between what the Bible said and how I was living. But I was being penalized for something I had never been taught or discipled in, or seen lived out day to day. Yes, I loved my wife. Yes, I was faithful to my wife. But the standard isn't just fidelity. I didn't know how to create a home marked by peace and safety. Jake had spoken about his own struggles, family and friends in Ft. Worth, Texas, but he had to live in Houston, Texas, a new city, with so much unfamiliarity. I was living in Temple, a new city, and I didn't know anyone who had been through what I had been through for the last three decades.

As I walked to the store, Jake and I talked over the phone. I had isolated myself so much that nobody really knew I was overwhelmed. When I did talk to people who showed concern, I lied and pretended everything was okay. I was embarrassed that I was struggling mentally and emotionally. I didn't want to be a burden on people or people looking at me thinking, " You've been incarcerated over three decades, and you got all this education, and you're struggling. The answer was yes! And I didn't feel comfortable sharing it with anyone, including my wife. So I did what most men do when we are lost: I pretended like I knew what I was doing. I had isolated myself so that nobody really knew I was drinking, doing drugs, depressed, feeling miserable, like I wasn't enough. Like my whole life of dysfunction, this new level of dysfunction; I just learned to function in my dysfunction. Jake's struggles had some similarities, but there were some differences; it was just good to talk to someone and get off my chest what I was feeling and to know I wasn't the only returning home who was struggling. Although Jake struggles were like mine, they were real and honest. As we talked on the phone, it started to rain lightly. I told him I was getting near 7-11, it was raining, and I would call him later. We exchanged our appreciation for each other sharing and listening. He prayed, and we ended the call.

I didn't know that the next time I would call Jake and we talked would be later that night, and I would be arrested and in Bell County Jail. The outside world's expectations bore down on me like a weighted blanket. It was hot and smothering.

Freedom is a gift that others take advantage of until it is gone. But the lasting scars of our past are etched deep within our soul. These scars are not easily seen and even harder to heal. I entered 7-11, cashed my check, and purchased the items I needed. I asked the store manager about part-time work to make a little extra money since it was within walking distance of the house. He said it was possible. I was hopeful about the opportunity to make a little extra money. I had a chance to talk to someone who could relate, but I was still heavy. I realized that although I have my freedom, my past was a big part of my present and my future. As I walked home, the rain began to fall harder as the sky darkened. The rain fell steadily. When I reached home and tried to open the door, I realized it was locked. I was shocked. It hadn't been locked when I came home from work just an hour ago.

My stomach tightened into knots as I pressed the doorbell. No answer. No yell of, "Wait a minute or hold on." I pulled out my phone and texted my wife. No response. No Just a second, or " Here I come." I pressed the doorbell a second time. Again, nothing. I began knocking loudly on the door. Again, no response, only silence. My heart was racing with uncertainty. I texted my sister Carmen in Dallas, hoping she would call or text my wife. I believed she was ignoring me, and if my wife saw a different number other than mine, she would respond. I got no response from Carmen. As the moments stretched, anger crept up in me. It wasn't a physical threat lurking outside; it was something more insidious. Panic and anger scratched and clawed at the edges of my mind. I struggled with my thoughts as I stood at the front door like a stranger. The rain seemed to be coming down harder.

Minutes later, when I heard the door open, I was furious. My heart is beating so fast. I feel insulted. I feel like my wife is playing some kind of "head game" with me. I don't know what her answering and opening the door, or her not answering and not opening the door, has to do with my masculinity. But somehow in my mind, I connect the two.

I walked into the house and followed my wife's footsteps. When you enter our home and make a quick right, you are in my wife's home office, where she is working—ten feet from where I was standing outside like some stranger in the rain.

I heard her say something.

"What did you say?" my voice rising.

" You don't remember the code to the house alarm to open the door?" she said. I felt like she was flipping this, like it was my fault I was stuck outside. I was torn between being embarrassed that I didn't remember the house alarm code and realizing I didn't have my own set of keys to the home I share with my wife. I have been outside the home I live in, the home I help pay the bills for, knocking on the door and texting to get in. My emotions are slipping and spiraling. I feel rejected at home. I feel dejected. It's raining outside, but a storm is brewing inside of me.

When I came home from work just a few hours ago, the front door was unlocked, and I walked straight in. I tell you I'm going to the store, and you lock the door. I come home from the store, and you choose not to answer the door until you've felt I stayed outside long enough to learn a lesson.

I'm viewing this present rejection through past experiences that trace back to years before I knew what emotional wounds were. It just wasn't about this moment. I felt like I was addressing every moment where I felt like I wasn't enough; I wasn't worth it. I had been drinking and doing drugs with a few guys from work earlier. My mind began hallucinating. I had been popping pills from a guy at work for about two months to try to take the edge off being so overwhelmed and stressed.

"Why is the door locked!" The question was racking my brain. Other questions and doubts were swirling in my head.

"Why wasn't she answering?"

"Does she want me to feel this way and crash out?

With each thought, growing frustration and anger took over slowly.

" She must be playing games with me, trying to teach me a lesson." This is what I'm telling myself. My thoughts raced in my subconscious, overwhelming me and keeping me from seeing any other reason she didn't answer the door. "She's disrespecting me." In that mental takeover moment, it dawns on me that the locked door wasn't the true source of my turmoil. It was my chaotic thinking. My endless, racing thoughts of doubt and insecurity were locking me inside a prison of my own making.

SHADOW THOUGHTS

You can assume anger is from others' actions and words, as if their actions were the main reason for our emotional rampage. True anger arises from the stories we tell ourselves about why someone did what they did, or why they said what they said. That night, I suddenly became aware of my thoughts drifting through my mind like shadows.

The shadows in my mind dug deeper. Each thought I caught was an unwelcome guest convincing me that my wife was manipulating me, playing a game. These thoughts made me think she believed I was weak. These thoughts told me she was intentionally disrespecting me, as if I was nothing and my feelings didn't matter. I clung to the belief that I wasn't being given the respect I should be as a husband.

I even felt the painful thought that I didn't measure up. Was I "man enough" to command respect or trust? I feared that I was being rejected. Am I an outsider in my home? What we fixate on can consume us and wrap around our thoughts. Instead of releasing those insidious thoughts and letting them go, I embraced them. I didn't know what to do with my thoughts or where to take my thoughts.

I fed them my fears and insecurities. I fed my thoughts to my trauma. I was feeding their growth instead of letting them go. I guarded them as if they were my children, not the burdens they are. The longer I held on to these destructive thoughts, the more powerful and dominant they became. My thoughts grew in intensity and twisted my perception of reality. I felt a threat waiting for me in the shadows. It felt so real. It began attacking my mind, aimed at peace. In this downward spiral of turmoil, I had, without warning, become the victim of my own interpretations.

THE STORM INSIDE

As the front door opened slowly, thunder rumbled over my shoulder in the evening sky. It wasn't the storm outside that was brewing; it was the storm inside my heart that was becoming dangerous. The turmoil inside me had grown into something far more dangerous than the storm above. Research indicates that many abusers often share a set of troubling risk factors: unresolved trauma that clings to the past, a childhood marred by exposure to violence, inadequate conflict resolution skills, debilitating depression, and a chaotic emotional landscape.

I found myself grappling with each of these burdens; while these factors do not justify my actions, they do provide insight into the roots of my behavior. Understanding those roots does not absolve me of my responsibilities. "He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who ruled his spirit than he who takes a city"-Proverbs 16:32

In that moment, I was anything but in control of my spirit. Instead, it was my broken spirit ruling me and guiding me through a haze of rage and turmoil, with repercussions and consequences that can be devastating. The home takes the worst hit. My anger, like a thief in the night, was robbing me of my peace. It was robbing my wife of safety. It was robbing us of our trust. And I remained unaware of the destruction it was causing; at least, not yet.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1). How has anger robbed you of peace, trust, joy, or a relationship?

2). What unresolved wounds from your past continue to influence your present behavior?

3). What warning signs tell you that your frustration is becoming unhealthy anger?

4). Are there people in your life who feel unsafe because of your reactions?

5). What is God asking you to confront yourself with today honestly?