Once a Shooter by T.J. Stevens

Author:T.J. Stevens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Salem Books
Published: 2020-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

THE NEW SOUNDS OF A NEW LIFE

The program I was being paroled under required me to work under constant supervision for forty hours every week. After working this many hours and more in Camp 26, I was more than happy to do so with no one holding a shotgun near me. I would no longer have to “shake a bush” when I wanted to go to the restroom. I also wouldn’t have to target the biggest guy in the room to make a statement to the others about my willingness and ability to fight.

I moved back in with my mother. It was surreal to have a normal bed again. To have normal conversations again. To walk outside whenever I wanted. Order a hamburger whenever I wanted. Drive whenever I wanted. For the most part, I could go anywhere I wanted, as long as I showed up on time for work, showed up for every meeting with my parole officer, and didn’t leave the state without permission.

Mom and I began catching up on lost time. She was thrilled to learn that her prayers for me to come to faith had been answered, though I still didn’t tell her about the hand experience at the school that day. It still just seemed all too much for people to believe, and I still didn’t want to be branded a lunatic, especially now that I had a newfound chance at freedom. All she really knew was that I was a believer.

I also reconnected with other family members here and there, though I certainly felt that some of them treated me a little differently than before. I suppose there was no way that wouldn’t happen. If I was in their shoes and a school shooter were to suddenly sit down across the table for a random family Sunday afternoon dinner, the conversation would be a little awkward at best.

I was out, and I was changed, but the whole thing still haunted me on an identity level. I felt an inner transformation, but I still couldn’t escape the outer existence. To use biblical terms, there was new wine within me, but I still felt like I was an old wineskin. I felt that if I were to talk too much or too freely about what God had been miraculously doing in my life, people would chalk it up to jailhouse religion nonsense—or worse, they would think I was undergoing another break from reality, even if this departure didn’t lead to such violent ends.

Then there was the guilt I felt for not fully paying the price my crimes demanded. It sounds counterintuitive to feel great gratitude and great guilt at the same time, but that was my reality. I was a changed man, but I was also a man still in the daily process of being changed, and sometimes the process of discovery and maturation can have its awkward stages. Just ask any teenager.

Most of us are familiar with the concept of survivor’s guilt—that is, one person

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