The Song I Couldn't Find

When I first landed in prison, my brain was completely depleted of joy.

For a long time, I felt almost nothing. After years of addiction and everything I had put myself through, I genuinely wondered if I had finally taken it too far.

Maybe I had permanently damaged my brain. Maybe this emptiness was just who I was going to be now.

I wondered if I would ever feel real joy again.

Eventually, I was moved into the ASAT dorm (Addiction and Substance Abuse Treatment dorm) at Greene Correctional Facility. My cube happened to be near a window, and one of my first thoughts was that maybe I could pick up a radio station.

It took some work. I had to position everything just right, and even lay a certain way on my bunk to keep the signal. But eventually I found a Christian radio station.

Most of the music wasn't really my style. A lot of it sounded older and, if I'm being real, a little corny to me.

But then one day, a song came on that was completely different.

There was something powerful about it.

It was a live recording. I could hear this huge crowd singing in the background, and there was an energy to it that reached somewhere inside of me that almost nothing else could reach at the time.

For a few minutes, I felt something.

And I needed to know what this song was.

Searching for a Song

Every once in a while, my stepmother would send me $25, and I could use some of that money to buy music for my tablet. I wanted this song.

There was only one problem:

I had no idea what it was called.

Every time it came on, I somehow missed the part where the station identified it. I started asking people. I was attending a Christian group at the time, and I would literally try singing parts of the song to people to see if anybody recognized it.

Nobody did.

So I kept listening to that station, hoping it would come around again.

And whenever it did, I would lie on that bunk and soak it in.

Looking back, I think that's part of why the song became so important to me. It wasn't just music anymore. During a time when I was afraid I might never experience joy again, this song made something inside me feel alive.

Then I was promoted to a community leader position and moved into a corner cube.

Ironically, I still had windows.

But for whatever reason, I couldn't get that radio station anymore.

And just like that, the song was gone.

I still didn't know its name.

Getting Closer to Freedom

Greene was a very difficult place for me.

I had to learn how to accept where I was, get closer to God, stop fighting my circumstances every day, and somehow make something meaningful out of a situation I absolutely did not want to be in.

But when I look back now, I can see this beautiful progression through my incarceration that I couldn't see while I was living it.

I started in a terrible situation, wondering whether I would even make it through without getting into more trouble.

Then things slowly began changing.

I got into ASAT.

Eventually I left Greene and was transferred to Cayuga Correctional Facility.

As I got closer to coming home, I made it into the honor dorm.

Eventually I was able to go outside into the yard.

My physical circumstances almost seemed to mirror what was happening inside of me.

Little by little, I was getting closer to freedom.

Then, about two months before my release, something changed.

They turned Wi-Fi on for our tablets.

Suddenly there were podcasts, videos and far more music available to us.

And one day...

There it was.

After all that time, I finally found my song.

LION

It was “LION” by Elevation Worship.

And not just the song.

It was the exact live version I had been hearing through that little radio beside my prison bunk.

For the first time, I could actually see what I had only been able to hear.

I almost started crying right there in my bed.

My entire body was tingling. I remember clenching my fists, moving my arms around and kicking my feet like a little kid.

I was just praising God.

Because somehow it didn't feel like I had simply stumbled across a song.

It felt like God had given it back to me.

Almost like He was saying:

Here you go, son. You kept going. Here's that song you've been looking for.

That song had reached me during one of the darkest periods of my life, when I wasn't even sure I was capable of feeling joy anymore.

And now, with freedom only a couple months away, there it was again.

I remember watching Elevation Worship perform it and thinking:

When I get home, I have to see these people live.

The Curtain

Fast-forward.

I'm home.

Life starts moving quickly, and for a while I almost forget about that promise I'd made to myself.

Then one day it hits me:

Wait a minute. I said I was going to see Elevation Worship.

There's an entire story of its own between that realization and actually getting to the concert. Getting there became a struggle. Several times it seemed like it simply wasn't going to happen.

Every time I thought, That's it. I'm not going to make it, somehow another door opened.

Eventually, I made it.

Elevation Rhythm played first, and afterward there was a break before Elevation Worship came out.

For some reason, I decided to leave the arena and sit in the lobby for a little while.

I found a chair, leaned forward, closed my eyes, folded my hands and spent some time with God.

I wasn't asking Him for anything.

I was thanking Him.

Thanking Him for getting me through prison.

Thanking Him for bringing me home.

Thanking Him for everything that had happened since.

And thanking Him because, after everything it had taken just to get there that day, I was actually sitting inside that building.

I stayed there for several minutes with absolutely no idea what was happening inside the arena.

Then something inside me said:

All right. It's time to go back in.

So I stood up.

I walked toward the arena.

Heavy curtains covered the entrances.

I reached out my hand.

I pulled one open.

And at the exact instant that curtain opened...

“LION” started.

The song that found me lying nearly emotionless on a prison bunk.

The song I couldn't identify.

The song I waited beside a radio hoping to hear.

The song I lost when I changed cubes.

The song that came back to me two months before freedom.

And now I was standing there as a free man, opening a curtain into an arena as that same song erupted around me.

You can call something like that coincidence if you want.

I'm not here to prove anything to anybody.

I know what that moment meant to me.

You Can't Always See the Arc

Sometimes when you're in the middle of something dark, you can't see the arc yet.

All you can see is the bunk you're lying on.

You don't know there's an ASAT dorm ahead.

You don't know there's another facility ahead.

You don't know there's an honor dorm ahead.

You don't know freedom is ahead.

And you definitely don't know that someday you're going to walk through a curtain and hear the very thing that once helped you survive the darkness.

Sometimes all you can do is keep going.

God can see the rest of the story while you're still stuck in the chapter that doesn't make any sense.

That song didn't just remind me of where I'd been.

It showed me how far God had brought me.