My mother’s screams pierced my ears as I sat at the top of the stairs, holding my siblings for comfort.
My stepfather repeatedly slapped, slammed, and choked her until she was nearly unconscious. Between her cries and the shattering of broken picture frames, I struggled to keep my violently pounding heart from breaking through my eight-year-old rib cage.
Many of these fights resulted from my stepfather’s infidelity and blatant disrespect of my mother. Whenever she confronted him about coming home at three in the morning or sleeping with other women, he would respond with anger and aggression. On many occasions, she would apply makeup in the morning to cover the scratches and bruises on her face.
For years, my mother worked tirelessly at multiple jobs to provide for her family, giving everything she had to take care of her children. Unfortunately, she went months without knowing about the frequent beatings I was receiving in her absence.
Whenever she would leave for work, my stepfather would accuse my mother of sleeping with other men—an obvious projection of his own wrongdoing. Because I was a child from my mother’s previous relationship, he began accusing me of covering up her alleged affairs, despite the fact that I was too young to process the concept of adultery.
Ideally, home should have been a refuge from the harsh realities of life in the outside world. Instead, it became the source of my trauma. Beatings and brutal words were the norm. When my mother finally noticed the black-and-blue marks that decorated my body, she confronted my stepfather, only to be met with more of his brutish attacks, the consequence of his toxic masculinity.
Believing I had nowhere to turn, I suffered in silence, stuffing my hurts, pains, fears, and anxieties deep inside, trying to make sure my mother wouldn’t get punished for trying to protect me. I had no idea these traumatizing experiences would crack my internal mirror, distorting my view of reality and fueling a twisted sense of self.
Somewhere deep within me, I believed that God was real, but he didn’t seem relevant in my struggle to survive. I endured the feelings of emptiness alone, which set me searching for anything that would fill the hole in my heart.
Hanging with the ‘big boys’
The ceiling fan did nothing to clear the cigarette smoke that filled the air. Beer cans and alcohol bottles covered the countertops, and no one seemed concerned about the three-year-old toddler wandering in the living room. I had just sat down at the black wooden table in the kitchen after being invited to play dominoes with my older cousins and their friends. Most of them wore blue bandanas around their heads and necks, indicating their affiliation with the Crips, a neighborhood gang based in South Seattle.
While Dr. Dre’s “The Next Episode” blared over the sound system, a spark from a clear blue lighter illuminated the tip of a brown cigar filled with marijuana. My cousin took a pull, holding the smoke in before passing the blunt around the table. When it finally reached me, I leaned back, expecting to be excluded from their smoke session.
When my older cousin, whom we called E-Tray, noticed my hesitation, he began calling me “Lil’ Chow Chow,” a knockoff of the kid rapper Lil’ Bow Wow, and everyone at the table burst into laughter. “What, you can’t hang with the big boys?” he asked, adopting a high-pitched voice meant to sound unmasculine.
On the surface, it was fun and games, but he didn’t know about my unhealed wounds of rejection, the deeply rooted insecurities I had developed after years of being abused by my stepfather. Although my 13-year-old conscience told me not to give in, my hunger for acceptance won out.
I took the blunt and placed it to my lips. Within seconds, I began coughing uncontrollably, as if someone had vacuum-sealed the air from my lungs. Nothing was enjoyable about that experience. But the unpleasant feeling of getting high was overshadowed by the cheers, fist bumps, and pats on the back I received from those around the table. When they passed me the alcohol, I took that too.
Gradually, the intoxication settled in, not merely from the drugs, but from feeling validated. For that reason alone, I kept smoking, determined to show the fellas that I belonged. In retrospect, I realize the insight of Proverbs 27:7, “To the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet.” I was starving for love and acceptance, and this bitter introduction to drugs, alcohol, and gang association appeared to provide both.
Weary and unfulfilled
It was a little after 2 a.m. when I made it back to my duplex. Opening the bedroom door, I found my two-year-old son and his mother sound asleep. Before getting undressed, I emptied my pockets, pulling out a gun, some drugs, and money I had collected from the women I prostituted. Together, the items gave a snapshot of my life as my 21st birthday approached.
Sitting on the edge of the bed—still high from the pills I took earlier—I contemplated the road I was traveling. A lot had transpired in the previous four years. I had been shot at, held at gunpoint, and assaulted multiple times and had lost close friends to senseless violence during my high-school years.
I had gone from smoking and drinking to womanizing, pulling off bank scams, dealing drugs, and popping ecstasy pills—all intended to numb the pain of the lingering void I felt inside. I had the money and street cred I longed for as a 13-year-old, but none of these things provided fulfillment.
Compelled by my weary soul, I slid from the edge of my bed and onto my knees. While resting my head in my hands, I began praying to a God I had never met, speaking with an unexplainable confidence that he could fill the emptiness within me. After praying, I wiped the tears from my eyes, returned to bed, and fell asleep. But less than three weeks later, I would be caught in a situation that would alter my life forever.
It began with a devastating phone call from my son’s mother, who delivered the news that my best friend had been shot multiple times at an auto parts store. I squeezed the phone in tears as she related the details, exclaiming, “He might not make it!” The shooter had fired on my friends and me numerous times before, leaving 25 empty shell casings at one of the crime scenes. Despite our attempts to defuse the ongoing tension, which sprang from a senseless argument, he was bent on establishing his street credibility, even at the cost of trying to murder someone I loved.
Hours later, my friends and I prepared to take our revenge. We climbed into our Ford Taurus, one of us armed with an assault rifle and the other two (including me) carrying handguns. As the car stopped at a red light, pulling close to our target, we jumped out. Filled with grief and anger, one of my friends approached the other vehicle, firing multiple rounds in its direction.
When I lifted my handgun to join in, I thought about how often this man we were attacking had threatened my life. I thought about the friend I loved lying in a hospital bed after this man had shot him seven times just hours before. My 21-year-old mind was consumed by fear, pain, sadness, anger, and frustration. Mindlessly, I chose to squeeze the trigger. By the grace of God, my gun jammed. I didn’t realize that on the other side of those tinted windows was a two-year-old child.
Healing behind bars
Within a few days, I found myself lying on a concrete floor of an overcrowded county jail cell, watching the headlines flash across the screen of an old television hanging from the ceiling. Above the “Breaking News” of my capture was a mug shot, showing an intoxicated 21-year-old whose fuzzy French braids and glossy eyes fit the media’s image of a criminal.
I closed my eyes in disbelief, wondering how my life had been reduced to the label of murderer. As I contemplated my reality, a waterfall of depression poured from my chest into the depths of my bowels, and I felt overwhelmed by fear as I envisioned life in prison.
Getting up from my cot, I asked the young man in the cell for the Bible that he had offered and I had rejected, just hours earlier. I had always believed in God, but I had never considered what he required of my life. I was too angry and bitter, never realizing that my pain had become my prison, first figuratively and then literally.
This Hispanic kid handed me the blue book, with a warped partial cover. Beneath the title, The Message, were broken handcuffs torn from a man’s wrists, symbolizing the freedom I desperately wanted. For the following week, I lay on the floor, reading the Bible for hours. Its truths cut me like a surgeon’s knife, removing the moral cancer that nearly consumed my heart through years of trauma.
I felt exposed before God’s Word. It penetrated through everything I had used to hide my childhood scars. I saw the truth of my brokenness, pointing me toward the cross where God promised wholeness through faith in Jesus.
The night before I was extradited back to Seattle, I sat up wrestling with a series of questions. How can God love a murderer? How can he accept this flawed and fragmented person I’ve become? Can I come before him utterly broken and empty-handed? My heart ached for mercy and grace. Before long, I had dropped my head in prayer:
God, if you’re real, I want this new life you’re offering through your Son. Please forgive me for the things I’ve done, and give me the heart to be the person you created me to be.
In that dark jail cell, I wept until my eyes were swollen. This time, a sense of peace flooded my heart like water bursting through a broken pipe. I knew I was accepted—not by the men whose affirmation I once sought but by the God who held my life in his hands. From that day forward, I studied the Word of God like my life depended on it, and through my relationship with Christ, the holes in my heart began to heal.
‘Walk with me, Son’
On September 24, 2011, I was found guilty of all charges and sentenced to 63 years in prison. Before I was transferred from King County Jail to Washington State Penitentiary, I poured myself out before God yet again, praying that he would give me the grace to endure what he had in store for me.
I’ll never forget the words the Lord placed on my heart in that jail cell: “Walk with me, Son, and I promise to work it out for your good.” I didn’t fully understand the details of that promise, but I clung to him without compromise.
It’s been 16 years, and my imprisonment hasn’t been easy. But God has been faithful. After receiving my Certificate in Christian Leadership from The Urban Ministry Institute, I became a licensed pastor, working under the leadership of my senior pastor, Zachary Bruce Sr. of Freedom Church of Seattle. I’ve been privileged to minister to countless folks who have been hurt, broken, and overwhelmed by their traumatizing experiences. And I’ve watched the gospel message radically change the lives of fellow prisoners who, like me, were dismissed as irredeemable.
As a child, I never imagined that God would use someone as broken and messed up as I was. But I have found that even in the messiest lives, God can produce a message—if only we have the audacity to trust him.
Antoine Davis is an incarcerated writer and journalist serving a 63-year sentence in Washington state. He is the author of Building Blocks: Curriculum for Creating Wholeness.
