Brenda Spahn - Miss Brenda and the Loveladies: A Heartwarming True Story of Grace, God, and Gumption

M ISS B RENDA AND THE L OVELADIES
P UBLISHED BY W ATER B ROOK P RESS
12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200
Colorado Springs, CO 80291

Scripture quotations are taken from the following versions: The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The Message by Eugene H. Peterson. Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved. Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica Inc.TM Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Some names in this book have been changed to protect the identities of the persons involved.

Trade Paperback ISBN 978-0-307-73219-4
Hardcover ISBN 978-0-307-73217-0
eBook ISBN 978-0-307-73218-7

Copyright 2014 by Brenda Spahn

Cover design by Mark D. Ford

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company.

W ATER B ROOK and its deer colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

The Library of Congress cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Spahn, Brenda.
Miss Brenda and the loveladies : a heartwarming true story of grace, God, and gumption / Brenda Spahn with Irene Zutell. First Edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-307-73217-0 ISBN 978-0-307-73218-7 (electronic) 1. Church work with prisonersUnited States. 2. Women prisonersReligious life. 3. Women prisonersRehabilitation. 4. Spahn, Brenda. I. Title.
BV4340.S634 2014
259.509761dc23

2013034329

v3.1_r1

To my husband, Jeff Spahn, my children, my twenty grandchildren, and my two great-grandchildren, who have loved and supported me in who I am rather than in who they wanted me to be.

To Jason, my wonderful stepson, my hero behind the scenes, who is now with the Lord.

To all the women of the Lovelady Centerthose who are alive, and those who have died.

And to Don McGriff, who is now with the Lord, and who was with us in the early days.

Make sure you are doing what God wants you to dothen do it with all your strength.

G EORGE W ASHINGTON

I was raised in a trailer. My parents struggled to feed and clothe me. Because I grew up without having much, I promised myself one day Id be very rich.

Decades later, I had built a successful business. I finally had what I could only dream of as a childa big house, fancy cars, expensive jewelry, and all the material things I could ever want.

At the height of success, I found myself under investigation for a crime I didnt commit. I faced the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence. All those possessions I had accumulated and cherished I was likely to lose. I had always felt I was in control of my life and my destiny. Once I was at the mercy of the legal system, I realized I was in control of nothing.

I lost my business, but I found another calling. I lost my riches, but I discovered riches of the spirit. I lost my faith in the system, but I discovered another faitha faith in things that never depreciate or corrode or collapse. I found faith in God and the indomitable power of redemptionfor myself and for a group of incarcerated women whod been catastrophically abused by the system, by spouses, by parents, and by themselves.

Instead of chasing the American Dream, rehabilitating these women became my career. I learned that within each of themeven the most terrifyingly brutal felonsdwelled an undeniable spark of the divine.

Junkies, grifters, armed robbers, prostitutes, drunks, dealers, and murderers became my new social circle. They were former inmates of the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabamaanother monolithic bureaucracy that warehoused the forgotten until they disappeared, returned, or died. Its motto could have been Abandon hope.

They became the Loveladies. In the beginning, no name would have been more improbable. In time, no name could have been more fitting.

This is my story.

This is their story.

Meet the Loveladies.

Fear is faith that it wont work out.

E LBERT H UBBARD

Oh my Lord, what have I done! I gasped. I stared out the kitchen window as six violent criminals stomped up my driveway. Hunter, my four-year-old adopted son, stood on tiptoes trying to get a glimpse of what had me so terrified.

Your mama has messed up big-time, I said.

For the last month, I had pictured this moment time and time againbut it had looked very different. In my imagination, the women would skip up the driveway, giggling and talking excitedly. Id open the door with a loud Welcome! and women would race toward me, enveloping me in big, grateful bear hugs. After theyd thanked me profusely for being so wonderful, wed sit around the kitchen table, have lunch, drink tea, share laughs, and get to know each other.

But these women stomping up my driveway didnt look like they wanted tea. They looked like they wanted blood.

Had I lost my mind?

Jeff, my husband, had predicted this. Youll get yourself killed, Brenda, he said when I first told him my plan to rehabilitate female convicts. Youve had a lot of wild schemes in your life, but this is the craziest Ive ever heard. Yes, but a lot of my schemes had worked out, and besides, this was different. This time it wasnt about me.

Now six very scary women, just released from the roughest womens prison in the country, were in my driveway.

I thought I had figured it all out. After spending months helping female convicts at a work release center, I thought I understood them. I had spoken with the inmates, we had prayed together, and they had seemed genuine in their desire to turn their lives around and start over.

But now I doubted everything. How could I have been so stubborn, so driven, so foolish? How could I have put my little boy in danger?

The night before, Id combed through their jacketsprison filesand discovered with horror that the parole board wasnt sending me the nonviolent offenders Id visited at the work release center. Instead, the women who had just shown up in front of my house had spent, collectively, one hundred years behind bars for crimes such as armed robbery, possession, drug dealing, prostitution, and manslaughter. I found out later that these were the hopeless casescases stamped CANNOT BE REHABILITATED that all other programs had rejected.

At the work release center, I helped women who were struggling to get their lives together. But the women coming to my home were so hardened, so dangerous, that the system had given up on them. These were not the women I had bargained for.