From prison to pastor: Mom says incarceration saved her life thanks to the 'gift' of Christ
Rochelle Glover endured many trials in her life before she fully accepted Christ.
After having kids at an early age, suffering abuse and serving in the Gulf War, it was in prison where God eased her fears of abandonment and rejection that gripped her since childhood.
"Prison saved my life because it put me in a place where God put me under arrest in my heart to really do some self-discovery, but along with Him," Glover, who is now the justice ambassador specialist at the national Evangelical ministry Prison Fellowship, told The Christian Post. "And just the work of the Holy Spirit and what it did for me was transformative."
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Growing up, she went to church every Sunday with her parents but did not have a deep relationship with God. Throughout her childhood, Glover suffered from feelings of instability as her family relocated often. By the time she graduated from high school, the teenage Glover was already a mother of two children.
After high school, the mother joined the U.S. Army, where she served three tours in Operation Desert Storm. During her service, she met and married her first husband, who she says was abusive throughout their marriage, a truth Glover tried to conceal from her children.
The couple moved to Crossville, Tennessee, after marrying in the early 1990s.
In 1999, Glover was incarcerated at a prison in Nashville located hours away from her family. Glover said that at her husband's request, she set up dummy accounts that looked like businesses, which he used to engage in fraudulent activities. Glover was charged with the theft of $50,000 and sentenced to 14 years in prison.
During her incarceration, a volunteer leading a Bible study with Prison Fellowship, a ministry founded by the late Chuck Colson that brings ministry programs to prisons throughout the country, visited and gave Glover a Bible.
"That Bible became the key to God tugging on my heart and bringing me to a place where I did not feel the abandonment and rejection that I had felt as a child," she said.
At the time of her incarceration, Glover had three children, ages 13 and under. Her marriage had dissolved, and Glover's father and stepmother took in the children while she served her time.
Before her conviction, Glover had a good relationship with her children, and the separation was hard for both parties.
One Saturday afternoon, the organization's volunteers invited Glover to participate in Prison Fellowship Angel Tree. The program made it possible for the mother to send a Christmas gift and a handwritten letter to her children, which a local church then delivered to them.
"It made me think of how Christ came as a gift from the Father for us," Glover said about the program. "And that He had taken the burdens of the things that I personally and everyone in the world had done, but yet that gift helped reconcile and gave me the relationship that I have with God today."
After her release from prison in 2004, Glover began volunteering for Prison Fellowship, becoming a full-time employee in 2020. In 2012, she followed a calling from God to become an ordained minister, a path that led her to her current husband, a pastor overseeing ministers in the local area.
Today, the couple has six blended children and seven grandchildren, a blessing Glover believes Prison Fellowship made possible by exposing her to the Gospel.
"What's most important is that we understand that God is the God of mercy, and He sees our flaws," she said. "I think Prison Fellowship Angel Tree understands that mercy."
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
