Everybody who had lived a hard man's life in Lofton County knew who Carl “The Crusher” Colson was.
Few had heard his story, because he wasn't looking for acclaim.
But, the few that had, relative to the people who had heard of him in his 50 years of life, always remembered it.
“I got the nickname in high school, the first time in my life I felt like I had things together,” he said. “My mother died when I was five, and my father was so devastated by that he just didn't have much left to comfort me. I understand it now, but I couldn't then. I basically lost both parents. I was so angry, angry at my mom for leaving me, angry at my dad for neglecting me, and since Dad kept dragging himself and me to church, that let me know who God was so I could be angry at all the other kids who had their parents and angry with God too. But until football, I couldn't do the kinds of things I wanted to with it.
“I was never a bully in school because I knew my father wouldn't have that, but on that field, forget about it – that's how I got the nickname, because I enjoyed the opportunity to come just short of killing people on the field. It felt good. My team loved it! We went to the championships in my freshman year, and it only got better and better. I had it made, according to me.
“But see, if you feed that anger, you don't heal. It just gets bigger and bigger and demands more food. Football gave me the discipline to both contain it and utilize it – but summers were dangerous. I started running with a rough crowd, and we started doing robberies. We got away with all of this – natural athletes, so we were fast. We stole consumables, so we left no evidence, and just started living the high life in terms of physical pleasures – swapping goods for girls and other things – again, I had it made, according to me.
But then came college. I hadn't kept my grades up all that well in high school, and I wasn't attentive to the finer points of the game, so I didn't get a scholarship. Dad didn't have the kind of money necessary except to go to community college. But then I found out the Army has a football team – so I enlisted!
“I played football for the United States of America, and let me tell you: they tightened me up in terms of the game and every other way. Again, they provided discipline I needed … and then they put a gun in my hands and sent me to Iraq in 1991. They were actually going to let me kill people. I loved it. Now I could project all my rage on enemy combatants. I had it made, according to me.
“I stayed in the military 20 years, y'all. I have a fabulous record, awards, and all the rest. I got out in 2011 owing to injury, actually – I would have stayed until they put me out, otherwise. I loved being a master sergeant. I loved everything about bringing shock and awe to America's enemies. And I hated God all that time and even more for creating a situation where I would have to leave. Minus football, minus the military, minus that external control, all I had left was that anger.
“It took me all of three months from honorable discharge to land in jail, on my way to prison. I got back home and got into a bar fight with a civilian. I'm told it took three four men to keep me from completely destroying that man with all the skill from football and Army life – as it is, it took three years before he could walk again. I spent those three years in prison – it would have been more, but the judge accounted for me having been in the Army and for PTSD.
“So, here I am in prison, and some of you remember hearing about me there – six feet nine, and no problem establishing that I was not the man to mess with. I had to learn the prison rules, but I've been scrapping since I was five, so that wasn't hard. Some of you know the things I did in prison and got away with. I was still winning, in my own eyes, as Carl “The Crusher” Colson, until I ended up in solitary confinement. I didn't get away with everything, after all.
“In the hole, as they call it, it's just you and God – no one to vent your anger on, except yourself. I ended up in a padded cell tied to a bed after about three months, because I was trying to see if I could kill myself by running head first into the walls. After that, there was no escape. Nowhere else to run. God and I had to work this thing out, and see, I wasn't built for that. None of us are. The Bible says we are at enmity – violent hatred – against God. I had no desire to do anything but lie there and cuss Him out for all the things He had let happen to me all the way back to my mother's death, and then taunt Him as powerless for not killing me on the spot.
“It was about the third month of all that the thought came into my mind: God wasn't going to let me have my way, even about dying. He wasn't reacting to my tantrums. He clearly had something else in mind. My mind started going back – I had survived 20 years of off-and-on war, football, and the bar fight. Nobody had yet thought to whip out a gun on me in the civilian world, and given that I'm six feet nine, it should have dawned on somebody that a gun was the only way to deal with me. It never had, though.
“So, what had I done with all this? Nothing but gotten myself tied to a bed in the padded room of a prison hospital. A total waste of a life. Blaming God wasn't making things any better. Being angry with everybody else wasn't making things any better.
“I still remember looking up into Heaven and asking the most dangerous question ever: 'Whaddya want from me anyway, God?' Don't do that kind of stuff unless you are ready for His answer! He wanted to save me – me, the crushed crusher – and He was willing to crush whatever He had to in my life to do it!
“So there I was, a crushed and broken man, with nothing to look forward to, everything good I had built trashed. I remember I went to sleep, and woke up, and had a visitor – generally against the rules, but what had happened was that my father had been desperately trying to get me the help I needed, and had told the people at the Veteran's Lodge about my situation. When I attempted suicide, the Lodge petitioned the county to have me transferred to their facilities for veterans in special situations. The petition had been approved, and so Sgt. Tom Barnes had been sent to explain the situation to me.
“The spirit of my fellow master sergeant was different than most men I have encountered – this little five-feet-five-inch man was not at all intimidated by me. I could feel that. I didn't hear anything else he had to say because all I wanted was for him to shut up so I could ask him why he wasn't afraid of me.
“Sgt. Barnes didn't mention it was because I was tied to the bed. He smiled and said, 'I get that question a lot! Until the mission I'm on from the Captain of the Hosts of the Lord is done, He'll keep me safe down here, so why should I be afraid of any man?'
“Oh, I thoroughly hated him for enjoying a security in his life I hadn't known since five years old, and hated him even more for leaving it right there – he left just then, and I had to ponder the question all the way to Fruitland Memorial Park, but not through the park … when you have been in prison for three years, and somebody drives you through paradise in all its summer glory, that changes your mindset a little, even if you are going to the stockade at the edge of said paradise.
“Fruitland messed me up, y'all – no way in the world was somebody like me supposed to be even in prison at the edge of a place like that. This was too much grace for me to play pretend, and then I got there, and my dad was waiting on me, just to wave and let me know he loved me.
“See, I didn't tell y'all who the civilian was. My dad had come to get me out of that bar because he knew what kind of guys were there – REAL professional killer types, not just enlisted men like me. He knew I'd get killed in there, and came to try to talk me out of being there and coming home. I snapped on him and nearly broke his back. I did that to my father. I thought he deserved that for neglecting me, so when I came out of my blackout I can't say that I regretted it. Not for three years. I heard Sgt. Barnes say my father had gotten me transferred to the Veteran's Lodge facilities, but that didn't mean anything to me.
“But when I spotted my father in that wheelchair, looking for me to arrive on my transport, and then he waved at me when I got out, that ended me, y'all. I wept all night, in my cell, with a view of the stars and paradise.
“The next day, I met the warden – a bonafide retired general, General G.E. Butler. He had some things for me and my cohort of newer prisoners.
“ 'If you are here, you are all fallen soldiers. I give you that respect as fellow servicemen, because without a good record, you couldn't get in here.
“ 'But let's be clear about where you are now. It used to be said that 'when you break the rules, you go to prison. When you break the prison rules, you go to Alcatraz.' Alcatraz is closed, and because someone in your family or someone who you served with loves you and did the legwork, you are here – but if you try to break the rules here, I'll make sure your soul will be in Hell wishing for Alcatraz.
“Let me get you clear on where you are once again: the country is done with you. You've served, you came home and made that service look bad, and the country would like nothing better than to get those of you drawing a pension off of that pension. You're felons – according to the 13th Amendment, you have no more rights than a slave. You're also tagged as violent, so everyone will understand if I have to do away with you to maintain order and safety. In your present condition and situation, you are nothing but expendable. I've got a thousand applications coming in behind each of you, and I get paid either way. You try me, you're dead. You try the guards of your section, you're dead. The Maximum Security Veteran's Lodge Stockade is not the place to do the foolishness that got you here.
“All that said, your present situation is not permanent. All of you are due to be released from prison within ten years, and all of you have PTSD contributing to your condition, some of which stems back to before your service. So: we are going to have order and discipline, and if and when and as you respond to that, we will help you transition back into society successfully. Like I said, you served your country faithfully, and there is an obligation the country has to you – and that I have to you, as your fellow serviceman and de facto commander. You set yourself up for hard time, and gentlemen, you going to get it, but if you will respond to correction, then when this is over, we will have you ready to return to life.
“General G.E. Butler kept his word. They let me recover in bed from the injuries I had given myself for one more week, and then – working, drilling, marching – that's all there was to life. It was like basic training on steroids: General Butler worked us like the slaves we were close to being owing to our felony status, six days a week, and when we weren't working, we were drilling and marching, hours a day on Sunday, and any day there were no jobs to work. We were so tired that we scarcely noticed the armed guards – they were there for show, because we were too tired to rebel!
“In the midst of this for the first six weeks, we couldn't have visitors … but just as soon as we were judged ready, here came my dad to visit. He repented to me for his neglect as soon as we were settled in, and this shocked me. I cussed him out anyway. He still came back the next week. This went on for a while, until I asked him another one of my dumb questions: “I hate you. Why do you keep coming?”
“My father said something that shook me to my core.
“ 'Think back to Sunday School, Carl – you learned about God and that even when His children were misbehaving and acting like they hated Him, He still loved them and never gave up on them. I'm not God, but I am learning to be like Him, and you are my son. I'm not giving up on you, even if you've given up on me. God the Father doesn't give up on those He has chosen for Himself either, so I'm not going to give up on you. '
“I remembered it all then … and Dad kept coming and kept coming and kept coming. Meanwhile, at this same time, group therapy sessions opened up – none of us would have gone to those except that we could get time off to go, because those sessions were during the heat of the day on the weekdays! I went on over there after working all morning and found cool bottled water and farm fresh produce, most of which was from Fruitland right next door! We never got to have those things at the stockade, and if we were working in Fruitland and touched any of the fruit on the trees without permission, we got sent into isolation. But over at group, there the fruits we wanted were available in abundance!
“I saw some of you tense up when I started talking the God stuff, so let me say here – you can't pray away a broken heart and broken mind any more than you can pray away a broken leg. You have to go through the process of healing, of treatment, even if that is just finding or being brought into an environment like this, or a caring relationship, getting an understanding of your part in your situation, and taking responsibility for what in the situation belongs to you, responsibility in terms of what happened and what you can make to happen in the future. Everything that you are being offered the chance to do in both the re-entry program and Edge of Safety is part of that process – stay with the process, every step! You're here today with people that you can connect with and trust, so you're doing well.
“Maybe all of you are stronger than me, though. A year into life in the Veteran's Lodge, I blurted out another stupid question to my dad in the middle of counseling.
“ 'Can't you just stop coming to see me and doing all this? How am I supposed to justify staying mad and letting everything be your fault and God's fault when you're doing the things I need for you to do?'
“Oops, y'all … I was so frustrated I let that out. I had been tied to a hospital bed after a suicide attempt, in the lowest place in my life, and I had been brought out of that to the edge of paradise to live and work and heal – and I wanted to stay mad because I wanted to. I didn't want to acknowledge the work my father had done behind the scenes, and I didn't want to acknowledge that God had answered my question before: I knew what He wanted of me. He was after me.
“Believe it or not, gentlemen, it all comes down to this: you can go on in a messed-up world pretending to be God and thumbing your nose at Him, or you can acknowledge God as God and come to Him the way He said to come in Christ, acknowledging your responsibility for your own sin and your need to believe entirely in Christ and that His cross death and resurrection is the only way of salvation and your reconciliation to God in righteousness. I could keep on trying to do things my way, but I had to admit to myself: my way got me onto suicide watch in solitary confinement tied to a bed, and if it was up to my power, I'd still be right where I had been or had succeeded in killing myself.
“See, I had come to realize: I was one of those helpless, hopeless sinners, on my way to completing the journey to Hell I had put myself on. But the Lord had detoured me to a prison at the edge of Fruitland so I could consider His way of salvation and how much better it was … so, about two weeks after I asked those last dumb questions, I knelt down in my father's presence and came to my Heavenly Father through saving face in Christ.”
“Is everything all better – nah. Dad is out of the wheelchair, but he'll never walk straight again. That's my fault. I still have to complete serving my time – I'm out for the afternoon, for the Veteran's Lodge lets members on good behavior go minister in various ways to other men's groups and talk about how they have changed their lives through whatever. If I had gone to a secular group to speak, I would have talked more about the therapeutic aspects. But I'm not about to become a well-paid motivational speaker just yet. I'm a felon who disabled his own father. That's never going away in terms of consequences, and, I don't get out of prison to start taking care of him until 2022.”
“But, gentlemen, I have peace with God and man now. That anger I lived with all my life that was killing me and moving me to kill others is gone. All the therapy and counseling helped me understand what I was angry about, and all the group work helped me reconnect and trust again, but the power to get the most out of all of that, and the peace and security on the inside, comes from Christ.
"Like I said, y'all know of me as Carl “The Crusher” Colson, but I'm telling you: helpless, hopeless, broken sinner is who I was. If that is you too, you don't need to be ashamed because you can't be as bad as I was, and Christ saved me anyway. The Gospel – that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures – is for hopeless, helpless sinners. Now if that's not you as you understand yourself, this isn't yet for you – yet here is your blessing for the day: stay with the process of doing the work put before you in each of these two programs. God led me to all of that, and I needed it, and so do you. I hope that someday you will acknowledge Him – but in the meantime, thank you for listening to me, and for leaving me some of these mottled red and gold apples – y'all can really eat, so thank you!”