I have to thank you, StanDupp, for bringing up all these memories I haven't thought about in a long time.
It's also been said that you are a former member who was here under another name? If that's true, might we ask who you formerly were?
For anyone sick of my stories, and I can't blame you
-- please, just put me on Ignore -- for your own sanity 
, or feel free to just skip over my posts. But for anyone else who might be curious (thank you!), I hope you'll be encouraged to know that God really does work in unlikely ways (at least, to us.) I had a particular issue I had struggled with for a long time (normally I would just go ahead and name it, but in this case, I know it will just be further picked apart, so I shall refrain -- though I've talked about it plenty in past posts.)
One day I arrived to visit an inmate, and he knew that I was struggling, but he didn't pry or ask, because he also knew I wasn't in a place of wanting to talk about it. But later that week, he sent me a letter. He told me that he had asked God to put the burden I was feeling on him, so that he could experience what I was going through. He said something came on him for 3 days where he didn't know which way was up or down, left or right (due to emotional distress.)
And so he prayed. He prayed, and prayed, and he wrote his heart out, and something in that letter shook me to the core. I can't even remember everything he said -- throwing that letter away out of my own distress at the time is one of the biggest regrets of my life.
But something in it came straight from God, and I never had that issue (a certain symptom of depression) in my life again -- that was over 20 years ago.
I don't know how God did it, but He delivered me from something that had a chokehold on my emotions for years -- all because of someone willing to share my experience and pray his heart out. (And you can bet your bottom dollar that when this guy confronts me about something, I listen -- and take notes.)
The most interesting part to me is that God didn't choose to do this through the thousands of sermons and Bible classes I'd been through, the hundreds of meetings and lessons and conferences and retreats, or the zillions of people who had prayed over me through the years... Now this isn't to say that any of that was in vain. I'm sure God was all still using it.
But rather, the moment of healing was delivered via an inmate in prison.
This was the "Naaman" chapter of my life -- the moment when God delivered me from a major (to me, at least) ailment through the least likely of places, through (what we would see as) the least likely of people.
Naaman didn't want to dip himself in the "dirty" Jordan River 7 times -- it was way too beneath him. But when his servant girl pointed out that there could be a whole lot more troublesome things God could have asked him to do, he decided to give it a shot.
I didn't see myself as "above" the prison or the people in them, but I can tell you, I was scared to death. One day I was in a waiting room with just a guard at one end and an inmate mopping at the other, blocking the only exit, and I was on high alert if something went wrong.
But God blessed me with so many tremendous lessons and deliverances throughout that time, it always makes me wonder how much else I'm possibly missing out by all the things I'm reluctant to do, and places I'm hesitant to go.
I have asked several times to go back, but for the sake of safety, I know and accept that God says that time has passed (at least, for now.)
May everyone here find deliverance from the things you are struggling with -- even if it's in the places you wouldn't expect it from, or through the people you might not think God would use.
How about You 