Costume Jewelry
Good Ole’ Granny.
Boy, did my grandmother reflect the essence of the word “gaudy.”
Heavy, shiny, and overdone was the jewelry she wore. If it was a Sunday-go-to-meeting event at her church, then add more weight to her sagging earlobes with a hunk of her costume jewelry. That was Granny.
Thank God for Granny and her prayers for me.
The following account of my time with her became prophetic. It is a bitter-sweet time.
Me, two days after being released on bond at Granny’s apartment, March 1975.
I was out on a $250,000 bond from Dallas County, Texas. My Uncle, Grandmother’s son, helped me get out of jail in early March of 1975.
I had committed my first attempted murder, to come into my pathetic, drug-addicted life.
I spent time in the Dallas County Jail from December 27th of 1974, through early March of 1975, before the bond could be issued. Part of my bond was where I was to live. Granny’s apartment became my dwelling place. My job was at a machine shop, 30 minutes away from the apartment I shared with my dear Grandmother.
Every Sunday morning, even though I was hungover from booze and Meth, she dragged me out of bed to go to church with her. I remember her saying, “Joseph, get up. It is Sunday-go-to-meeting-time. Hurry up, Grandson.”
Sometimes, she had to physically pull my ear to get me to get up. Ouch.
While in the service at her Baptist Church, I would listen with deaf ears. Yes, deaf to anything spiritual back then. I was a maniac, and she knew it.
Bless her heart, she tried to cope with an insane drug addict.
Me.
The old preacher would come out and begin his sermon. I was surprised (in my mind then) that he did not need sunglasses to block out the bright lights coming from all the purple and grey-haired folks in the congregation. Seriously. I was the only young person there. All elderly. All purple or grey hair.
I saw all of this and really didn’t care. I was there for Granny, not me.
Little did I know, later in life, that being at this Baptist Church would have such an impact on me, prior to finally ending up in prison. If only I would have had real ears to hear with. I would not have ended up in prison, had I taken a simple step.
The Pastor would give his message, which I totally ignored. Then, when he was done, he would grab the chair behind him and maneuver it to the front next to his pulpit.
He would then say with a booming preacher voice,
“If there is anyone here, anyone at all, who does not know the Lord Jesus as your Savior and Lord, I encourage you to come up and sit in this chair. I would be honored to pray for you. Please come?”
His appeal was strong on me.
The Holy Spirit (didn’t know this back then) was bringing heavy conviction to my wicked heart. I stood up, like everyone else in the crowd, during this invitation to be prayed for.
The cloth pew in front of me, as I stood became my victim. I dug my fingernails into the cloth as I leaned my weight on the wood and cloth of the pew lean-back.
I dug in so hard; I tore the cloth.
I wanted to go sit in that chair. I needed to sit in that chair. God needed me to respond, and I ignored it all. Only anger replaced conviction.
The costume jewelry that Granny wore reflected the fake life I was living.
The weight of her earrings was heavy, just like the heaviness of my sin upon my young, 18-year-old life of addiction and insanity.
“If anyone among you thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is useless.”
“Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this; to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.”
James 1:26-27.
Coupled with this scripture, is in this same chapter,
"For if anyone is a hearer of the Word, and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.”
Verse 24, James 1.
I quote these for a reason.
Number One: I was a fake person, all along.
I was like that jewelry Granny wore.
Not real. Never to be authentic.
Shines, yes. But it was not a genuine article. Counterfeit living. I didn’t visit any orphans or widows in their troubles. I was the orphan in need of a visit by Jesus. I ignored the voice and pulling or drawing of the Holy Spirit in that Baptist church in Richardson, Texas. It was just North of Dallas.
I was about to be orphaned fully once I got to prison. But for those Sunday mornings, I had a chance. Like Jonah, I was running to Tarshish, instead of Ninevah.
Was I to get a second chance, like Jonah?
Time would tell. In prison, I had lots of time to think.
I observed myself in a mirror. I was a drug addict. Eyes sunk back into my skull. Hard shell, for sure. The hard headedness was pale, in comparison to my wicked, hard, concrete heart.
Number Two, I had forgotten what kind of man (young man) I was. Why?
I forgot, because there was nothing to remember.
I was not a man. I was an 18-year-old, broken-hearted boy, who had a multitude of issues.
You can’t remember something you never were.
No memory loss there. Just no memory.
The best thing that ever happened to me were those Sundays with Granny.
That preacher did preach God’s Word, though I did not listen with spiritual ears then. The Word of God never comes back void, without any fruit attached. The issue was me and my ability to produce anything good.
No fruit yet, but it would come inside of a maximum-security prison, soon to be in my young future.
1st John1: 6-10. "If we say we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the Light as He is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the Blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.”
It was not God who sent me to prison.
I sent myself there.
How?
I rejected Christ in the Baptist church.
My sin took me further than I wanted to go, and it did cost me more than I was willing to pay. It is called, reaping what I had sown.
I needed cleansing from the inside out. I needed hope, in a hopeless place called prison. Not just any prison. The “Gladiator Farm,” called Ferguson Unit, in 1976. “Horrible” does not describe this criminal, insane asylum.
I need His cleansing.
I needed His light, to burn away my darkness of sin.
His Blood did both.
It began the healing process in my wicked heart.
One beat at a time.
What costume jewelry do you wear, that is not seen by anyone outwardly?
Are they earrings of emotional suicide?
Is it, perhaps, a broach of bitterness?
Maybe, it has elements of shiny stones in it.
It can be a necklace.
One of many strands of fake pearls.
Possibly, the necklace you wear in your spirit is really a hangman's noose. I suggest you untie it and throw it away.
It is costume jewelry, and worthless.
The problem is, so many people consider the fake as real. They substitute the truth for a lie. We sometimes, not wanting to, become complacent and bitter.
The Blood of Jesus can fix all of this.
Good Ole’ Granny.
I found out from her daughter, years later, after she passed into eternity, a truth. My dear, Aunt Wanda told me the truth about what happened when I lived with her in 1975-1976.
“Joseph,” she said to me, “my mother did not eat for days when you lived there with her. It was not her choice. She could not afford to feed you and feed herself.
She took you to church in her 1973 Chevrolet Vega, with no gasoline in the tank. She drove, by faith, to see her Grandson in church.
She was forced, because of hunger, to fast, unwillingly, for you. She prayed a lot for you Joe. She told me while you were in prison, that she spoke in tongues all night long for you. She loved you. More importantly, she wanted the love of Jesus to love you more. “
After my aunt told me this, I was floored.
Not because of guilt or shame of how I put her through so much hell living with her back then. I was an ungrateful grandson. I could not help myself in my addiction. She never really pressured me to do anything except go to work, stay out of trouble, and go to church with her.
I never realized back then that she was losing weight because of me.
Yes, fasting helps with weight loss. Granny only weighed 80 pounds before I moved in with her. She did not need a weight loss program called: a selfish grandson.
She must have weighed 60 pounds when we went to church the last time before I left her and did my last attempted murder.
She never frowned in her weight loss. She sang hymns most every day we were together.
Especially in the evening, after I was off work.
She never complained about being hungry. She smiled the whole day long. Yes, smiled in her hunger. Her true hunger was to see her Grandson Joe, saved.
My Aunt Wanda told me that, when the news came to her that I had received Christ as my Savior in 1977, while still in prison, she wept.
Wanda was with her mother that day when this news came.
Wanda told me that she collapsed on to the rug.
With her face in the fibers of the rug, weeping and Glorifying Jesus.
Her kneeling bench in the apartment I lived in with her was in the closet. In her room late at night, I would holler for her, and she did not answer right away.
I hollered because I was hungry. She would eventually come out of her room and cook me something.
All the while, humming a song. Another hymn.
I selfishly ate my food in my room, away from this tongue-talking Granny and her two poodle dogs, Sissy and Papa.
Granny. Good ole Grandmother.
Her costume jewelry was fake. So be it.
Her prayers were real though. They did get answered in God’s timing.
His timing is always perfect. He is the Lord Our God who heals us.
I never knew she spent hours in her prayer closet with a kneeling bench.
I did remember one thing.
She rubbed ointment on her knees every evening, watching Ed Sullivan reruns.
Her aged knees hurt. Not from old age.
But from praying for her Grandson.
Me.
Her prayers worked.
No costume jewelry here.
Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins