Send us a text A warm meal around a neighbor’s table. A cold cell under fluorescent lights. A helicopter ceiling you can see from outside your own body. Joel’s story moves through them all, tracing a jagged path from childhood trauma and hustling on Van Buren to prison politics, catastrophic injury, and a fight with PTSD that lasted years. What kept surfacing—often quietly—was presence: a family that called him mijo and made room for one more plate, a steady voice in the chaos, and a God who refused to let go. We walk with Joel through juvenile time, a Tennessee boys’ ranch, relapses, and the lure of the street. He talks openly about addiction, segregation behind the walls, orders made in whispers, and the moment everything changed physically: a “face meets concrete” accident that led to reconstructive surgery, vision loss, and an out‑of‑body clarity he still remembers. Healing wasn’t instant. It took county jail, New Freedom, EMDR, equine therapy, and a thousand small choices to rebuild attention, patience, and trust. Along the way, prayer stopped sounding like a performance and started sounding like work talk—asking God for a clean line while taping trim, for calm in traffic, for the next right thing. Out of that grind came purpose. Joel helped lead a painting lab for reentry, proved he could run it lean and excellent, and then launched Prodigal Sons Painting—a second‑chance employer built for graduates coming out of prison and treatment. Think real wages, shared ownership, housing and credit support, and on‑the‑job mentoring that reduces recidivism and restores dignity. He’s back inside facilities now, not as a number but as a messenger, offering a practical path forward and a witness that redemption is more than a word. If you care about addiction recovery, prison reform, second‑chance hiring, trauma‑informed care, EMDR, equine therapy, vocational training, and faith that shows up with a lunch pail, you’ll find something here. We pray together, wrestle with labels, and choose love over noise. Listen, share with someone who needs hope, and leave a review so more people can find these testimonies. Subscribe and hit the bell to catch the next story, and tell us: where have you seen redemption take root? Support the show
