I was six-foot-four, 150-pound skinny kid, with a bunch of zits all over my face and you know, while I was in school, braces on my mouth and glasses on my face. My parents didn't hand me the new Corvette and say go. You know, So I didn't fall into that group I wasn't one of the guys that would just walk up and talk to the girl he liked or go out and make friends with some guys he had never met before. I wasn't that guy. Doing the drugs seemed to bring people around and of course, you don't have any inhibitions when you’re high or when you're drunk or whatever the case may be. So it was a lot easier for me to talk to people. It's was a lot easier for me to make friends.
I stole from my family. I stole from people I cared about. I did whatever I needed to do once the addiction really set in to stay high. My poor Mom, she had a ring that my dad bought her for an anniversary and I went and stole that ring and went and traded it for just a couple hundred dollars of cocaine at the time. I was going to go all out until I killed myself or went to prison. Thank God that he chose to put me in prison rather than let me keep going like I was. I went into my cell that night and I stood there and I just cried out to God and I said; "Hey, I've made such a mess but from here on I want to do what you want me to do."
You know, they said; "We pray that you get home real soon Luke." I said; "Don't pray that. Don't pray that I come home real soon because if I come home real soon I'm gonna mess up again really big. So, so just let me, you know wait on him and his time.
But finally, I knew what I had to do it was ninety-two months. You know, it's a relief on one hand and on the other hand I was barely 26 years old at the time and I was thinking; "Man! I'm going to be pushing 40 when I get out of
this place." So you know, I kept thinking; "Alright God. I don't understand it but if that's what you need that's fine."
The chaplains there were just outstanding men of God. I mean super intelligent great apologists and everything else. I mean, men that were textual critics that have been all over the world looking at the original documents and now here they were in the prison teaching me who was so interested in the things that they had been studying all of their lives.
And you know, I learned to do upholstery work while I was in Pensacola. So the day I left the prison I make one call and I had a job ever got back to Chattanooga.
I'm not proud of the things I did in my past and I'm not proud of some things that I'll do my future. But I'm proud of the man Gods made me.
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