Prayers for a Solider and his Mom

An entry from the journal that I kept while in Pekin Federal Prison

March 21, 2004…

“I’ve been praying for Dustin since Kim arrived.
Her son was headed overseas. She was trapped inside this prison. The separation bigger and deeper than mere imprisonment divides. I wrote her a prayer straight from scripture…"hide him in the shadow of Your wings until these calamities have passed…let no weapon be formed against him…etc” She hung it on her bulletin bored and prayed it every night – a sincere fervent prayer from a mothers heart.
He died. Shot and killed in a training accident.
A brash employee delivered the news. His body is still in Germany – out of Iraq in a body bag. Her tears. Her anger. She tore down my prayer from her bulletin board. She called out to me when she saw me stand by her bed. “You know…Rocki…You know how much I loved him.”
How could this happen. Did my prayers come back void? Why God?
She is strong. This administration is weak. The circumstances sting.”

Kim Legore's stay in prison was tragic. She arrived to Pekin Federal Prison Camp about a week or so after I did. She and I spent time in the "bus stop" together. The "bus stop" is a 13 man room where inmates live when they first arrive in prison before being assigned a bunk. Our stay in the "bus stop" lasted a little over a month. Kim was in prison on a paper crime. She was a bail bondsman and she insisted on cash for a bond from a particularly sketchy client. A prosecutor then accused her of accepting drug money, and Kim was convicted of money laundering. Kim believed she wasn't responsible for determining how her client had raised the money. She did not get a lengthy sentence – I think it was 9 months. But it still seemed excessive to me.

As she was going to prison her son 19 year old son, a solider in the U.S. Army, was headed to Germany and then to Iraq. He was in her every thought. She was worried about him and we discussed her concerns often. On the page before this journal entry I scratched a prayer list, “Dustin in Iraq” is part of that list.

He was killed in a training accident in a city north of Baghdad. See a memorial page for him here.
I can remember when the news spread across the prison. I literally felt like the wind was knocked out of me. I was certain that the information was incorrect, after all I had been faithfully praying him and I had all the confidence in the world that God's hand was protecting this solider. My faith was shaken and then strengthened as I let Jesus speak to me through my anger. I found myself able to not question why God had let this happen but to believe through all things that God was good, all the time. Kim was given a short 3 day furlough to travel back home to watch her son be buried and then brought back to finish her prison sentence.

72 days later Kim’s other son, Sean, who was 29, died from complications during back surgery.

I do not even know how to comprehend what Kim went through. A woman who lost both of her children within three months time while forcibly separated from her relatives and her community. Grief was an understatement.

I have not thought about Kim in a long while. I pray that Kim has let Jesus speak to her through her anger and that she has come to believe that God is good, all the time.