Freedom Behind Bars

My husband, Daryl, and I served for 20-plus years in ministry, going into detention centers and prisons. Never once did I think I myself would be incarcerated. Daryl and I didn't grow up with learning to budget. Matter of fact, we learned the exact opposite. We saw our parents using credit cards. We saw our parents being in debt. We always struggled with still learning to budget. What did it look like? How are we going to pay bills? How are we going to get the car fixed? Because we never had that training. I would listen to Larry Burkett and get tips and help, but it was definitely wobbly at points. So the spiral down was we didn't have health insurance, and I had an injury. I needed a second back surgery. So as I waited for us to get insurance, the two doctors were arguing over my situation. They kept me at pain management. Their solution to my problem was opioids. Opioids rewire the brain, and it takes away stressors, and you make decisions that you normally wouldn't make. I just began pawning, and then that money would go for opioids on the street. I mean, it's Florida. You can find the pill mills. All of those unhealthy behaviors, walking independently from God,

not trusting Him with finances, eventually led to an arrest of grand theft. Sitting inside the county jail was one of the toughest things. There's so much demonic influence and just cussing and yelling and fighting and so much selfishness. We didn't have anything in our county jail when I was in there. We had a discipleship class and some volunteers that would come in. But as far as anything for financial classes, addiction, recovery, there was nothing, nothing in there. It just made my heart ache at how people spent their money. Finances have a lot to do with the drug addictions. Finances have a lot to do with unhealthy marriages. God just started speaking into me of, when you get out, Dana, you're going to go back into that jail, and you're going to teach, and here's what it's going to look like. I wanted to make a difference in our community over the emotional poverty mindset. I knew that I had to become the change, and I wanted to get out and make a difference. After the dorm, after taking the Crown Financial and learning the biblical aspects of money, it's really changed my way of thinking. Of course, I'm just four months out now. The money that I get nowadays has not come by as easily. I actually have to work for the money that I make,

but I am completely dependent on Christ and I know that what He gives me is exactly that. It's what He gave me. It's not anything I did in my own strength. Now, I've got plenty of money in my bank account. You're saving for a car. I'm saving for a car. And then car insurance, and that's not cheap. Well, I'm actually getting blessed there. I found something pretty cheap where I'm going to be able to pay all of it at once. That's another thing that I kind of got from the Crown Financial is adding into the amount that I'm trying to save. I'm adding the amount of my insurance for a year and stuff like that so that I can just pay all of it outright. Absolutely, no debt. That's the whole basis of financial principles, walking this Christ life principle. So Emerald Coast Life Center, we're a recovery community organization. We're here to help. We're here to bring our community closer to Christ. Just being a peer-to-peer and saying, I've been there, I've done that, I've been in your shoes makes a whole different connection for these guys. I met Fred at the homeless shelter when I got out of incarceration. I was the program's director at the homeless shelter and I said, you know, Fred, we're getting ready to start a dorm at the jail and I said, I think it'd be really cool for you to teach and that's where Crown Financial came into the picture. People who've been incarcerated generally are there because of the misuse of money.

They were either stealing money, taking money, or they were hurting somebody to get money. So the beauty of it is that as they are learning his principles, then they are being changed by learning those principles. I don't know that there's anything more important in life that you can do than help a person to fulfill the purpose that God has created them to do. Our dorm at Okaloosa County Jail is a whole pod of 42 incarcerated men where they're living in their cells and we have a day room and we are blessed as Emerald Coast Life Center to go in and daily teach and we're talking about finances, relationship education, substance abuse. Christ is the center of our dorm. We know that we can do all things through Christ and He enables us to get our life back on track. We carried a bag around and went cell to cell, inmate to inmate, and said, Hey, would you like to tithe the bag? Would you like to tithe? I couldn't tell you a percentage, but everybody pretty much took stuff that they had been given or had gotten on commissary and threw it in the bag and then they dumped it all out and they split it into two. There were a couple of occasions where we had three and four bags because it was so much tithing that happened and only the people that didn't get commissary would throw their names in the hat and we'd randomly draw out two or three or four names, however many bags we had split it up into and that person would be the recipient of the tithing. So it was a matter of the heart, of course, we were giving from the heart to people in need and it was just a big circle of love, really. I just sat there, just like him now, my heart was just full and these guys get it. So I get to see men be transformed right before my very eyes and learn to be good stewards of God's money and being in God's Word, learning to be a financial steward. They grow stronger as men closer to God and they're depending on Him and not theirself and how they can hustle to make money. They're depending on a whole higher power to provide their needs.

Since I've met her, it's just been one thing after another of me trying to do the next right thing for others rather than just for myself. I used to live a purposeless life. I used to always be trying to find what I was put here for and now I know and I have that confidence that I was put here for Him to glorify His kingdom and to spread the Word to others. I feel whole now rather than searching for something that I'll never actually grasp. Stewardship is important because we will stand before God one day and give an account of ourselves and if we have learned the financial principles that Crown teaches, which come all out of the Word, then we will be able to give an account to God as to how we managed His money. Money is to be used to help the lost and the poor. There's a lot of hurting and suffering people out there that need the light of Christ and money is a tool to push God's kingdom forward. So many times people ask me if I've had to go through this experience in order to be where I'm at. Hands down, I'm going to say yes, because for 20 years I was doing this, going into jails in Colorado, 20 years doing mental health. I was lacking one thing and that was experience. So I had to gain that experience of losing myself in order to find God. find myself to even be able to speak into someone's life. I know what it's like to sit in county jail. I know what it's like to do without. I know what it's like to go through trauma. And the difference for me is I know God was with me every step of the way. I know He never left me in my situation. He was with me stronger and showed Himself more in my darkest hours. It is so amazing to let the invisible spirit of God in me

become visible to these men. And through financial principles or just God's commands, what He's given us, I love going back in. It's amazing. It's fulfilling. I know I'm walking out God's calling, because He's called us all to do something. And I feel belonging by bringing these principles in to God's kids.