There are different ways to disappear. You can run away. You can hide. You can fall off the face of the earth. Or you can get arrested and transferred to the Jefferson County Jail, which accomplishes all three without requiring any planning on your part.
The strange thing was that I had not gone anywhere. I was right there in Birmingham, Alabama, a few miles from my own kitchen. But as far as the outside world was concerned, I might as well have been on the moon. At least the moon has better visibility.
When I arrived, my phone was confiscated. That may not sound like a big deal. People survived for thousands of years without cell phones. But somewhere along the way we stopped remembering telephone numbers. We outsourced our memories to little glass rectangles. And without mine, I made a remarkable discovery. I did not know how to call anybody.
I knew one number I was willing to dial. My friend Billy’s.
Think about that for a minute. A grown man with friends, family, business associates, a master’s degree, and an entire lifetime of relationships, reduced to one phone number. One line to the outside world. And even that was not guaranteed. I had a degree in creative writing and could not creatively write a single other set of digits. My teachers would have been so proud.
Meanwhile, people were trying to find me. I know that now because I have talked with some of them since getting out. They called. They tried to reach me. They tried to figure out how to send a message. And they kept running into walls. Not literal walls, although there were plenty of those where I was. Bureaucratic walls. Phone systems. Procedures. Questions nobody seemed able to answer. Please hold. Your call is important to us. It was not.
I do not know whether the system was overwhelmed, poorly designed, or operating exactly as intended. I can only tell you what it looked like from my side. I was inside. People were outside. And we could not reach each other.
It is a strange feeling to be surrounded by people and still be completely alone. There were officers. There were other inmates. There were people everywhere, at all hours, mostly loud. But the people who knew me were not there, and the people trying to reach me could not get through. I had effectively disappeared, without the benefit of a witness protection program or a new name. I would have liked a new name. I had some ideas.
The irony is that we live in the most connected civilization in human history. We can send photographs, videos, messages, and money across oceans with a tap of the thumb. But take away that rectangle, put a man behind bars, and the whole system of human connection can collapse. Mine did. It collapsed to the size of one man named Billy.
When people cannot reach you, they cannot know whether you are safe. They cannot hear your side of the story, ask what you need, or tell you they are thinking about you. And maybe worst of all, you cannot tell them you are still there.
So if you ever find yourself about to face a situation like mine, and I pray you do not, here is my advice. The first part is practical. Memorize some phone numbers. Not one or two. Write them down on paper and keep them somewhere safe. It sounds old-fashioned. It is old-fashioned. It may also be the thing that keeps you from vanishing. Your phone will not be there. Your memory will, more or less, depending on your age and your habits. Mine was running on fumes.
The second part is harder. Invest in your people before you need them. Billy answered because he had been my friend for years, not because I called him for the first time from a jail phone. The relationships we tend in good times are the ones that hold in bad times. I cannot say I tended all of mine well. Billy held anyway. That is grace with a Birmingham area code.
I also think about the people on the outside who kept trying. They did not give up when the system put them on hold. They kept calling. They kept asking. A few told me later how maddening it was. I am humbled by that. At the time, I had no idea anybody was knocking. Now I know there were people pounding on doors I could not see.
There is a picture of grace in that. Sometimes God is working on our behalf in ways we cannot perceive. We feel abandoned, cut off, forgotten. Meanwhile, on the other side of the wall, people are praying, calling, and refusing to quit. We just cannot hear them yet.
Since getting out, every conversation with someone who tried to reach me has reminded me of something. I had not been forgotten. I had only been unreachable. There is a difference, and I needed to learn it. Forgotten means nobody is looking. Unreachable means people are looking, and the walls are in the way.
There is a lesson in the phone numbers, too. Most of us already know exactly who we should call. We know which relationship needs attention, which apology is overdue, which conversation we keep postponing. The number is already in our heads. The question is whether we will pick up the phone. I am working on that. Some numbers take longer to dial than others.
Jesus said God knows the number of hairs on our heads. In my case that is a declining figure, and God has had to update the count regularly. But the point stands. Nothing about us is lost to Him. No cell is too far, no system too tangled, no silence too deep. I was lost to the world for a while. I was never lost to Him. He knew my cell, my floor, my fear, and every prayer, and He never once put me on hold.
“If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.”
Psalm 139:8 (KJV)
— JC
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