My birth mother abandoned me in a motel room when I was three years old.
One of the earliest indicators that something wasn't right was as soon as I was adopted,
one the first things that I did was threaten my sisters with a blunt pocket knife.
I graduated from high school and joined the army.
In terms of my life as a soldier, things were going well, but my heart wasn't changed.
I was involved in drug use, and began to sell drugs, and eventually was charged by the military
with sixteen felony counts; and so, I went AWOL, and purchased plane ticket to Los Angeles
California.
Met some men there who were doing robberies.
We began to rob places from Los Angeles California state-by-state all the way to Texas, where
I was arrested.
And I was sentenced to seventeen years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
The first weekend that I was in prison there was a riot, I'm looking and seeing that guys
are getting stabbed.
I found myself living in a world in which you have to take sides.
I didn't have the hope of the gospel, and so I was beginning to become more and more
self-consciously racist.
I saw no other option available to me, and that was eventually what led me into a white
supremacist prison gang.
Every tattoo that I have, it has some sort of connection to the gang.
This is actually a swastika made out of sickles—this is what remains of a Ku Klux Klansmen and
a burning cross.
I've been having these removed, but that's what remains of them at this point.
So, I was transferred then to a maximum-security prison, it was what was called a gladiator
farm.
When I arrived on that unit there was already a war going on between blacks and whites.
My next-door neighbor yelled at me "I know you have a shank!"
I didn't have a shank, I didn't have anything at that point, but I thought I better get
one… and so I did.
There came a point when the door to my cell and his cell were opened at the same time—wasn't
supposed to happen but it did.
I came at him with a shank, and thankfully, a guard was able to step in-between us just
in time; but I was put in solitary confinement as a result of that.
I was confirmed as a gang member—what that means is they have the evidence of my tattoos
for one thing, they have the evidence of what I've done, and so, they're able then to confine
me essentially indefinitely.
One night I was scanning the radio dial and the Lord used a radio program called "Here
Comes the Light" to shine the light of the gospel into my heart.
And the thing that He dealt with in my heart, first and foremost, was the issue of racism,
there was a moment of total despair when I said "I can't do this," and in that moment
of despair I realized I'm going to hell.
And suddenly something changed within me.
The Lord did it, and I simply fell on my knees before Him and I said "Lord, change my heart.
Take this away and help me to follow you."
What I'd later find out, of course, was that the only group in prison that doesn't segregate
according to race, were the Christians.
I was still in solitary confinement—which is where I needed to be—the Lord used it
to mature me and grow me so that when I did get out of solitary confinement and go back
to general population, I was prepared for the hardships that would come.
I spent ten years in solitary confinement, but I used the time to read, to study.
The Lord was growing me in my fellowship with Him.
It wasn't wasted time.
I simply began to read the Bible for myself, and I started listening to the radio.
So, I listened to Christian programs on the radio.
And I wanted to understand the Bible better, and that's of course where I came across a
program called "Renewing Your Mind."
Though I was in that cell, the Lord was there with me.
Despite all the wickedness of my heart, and all the evil things that I had done, all the
people that I had hurt—especially my own family—He set me free.
my name is Lowell Ivy.
I was set free in prison by God's grace.