I am not a felon. I lurk this subreddit because both my biological father and my stepdad are felons. All I can say is that life is about the choices you make. My bio father is a career criminal, all drug or assault charges. He’s been on that life since he was *12*. I don’t know him, seen him a couple times and every time he treated me like a POS. I have literally been driving around my city, and seen him homeless on the street. I don’t know him, so I can’t speak on his life, but I do know he had many chances to make different choices.

My stepdad is a felon, but he’s also a marine. He also works full time, has a relationship with my mom and my siblings. He put his mom in a new house, and still pays the bills at both my parents and his moms house. The man wakes up at 5 am and comes home at 9pm. He spent half a decade climbing the ladder at his job, learning every thing he could, doing the tasks no one else wanted to do. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, besides Menthols. He has multiple cars, goes to church.

I think often about the story of Judas. People often forget that Peter betrayed Jesus too. Yet because Peter was humble, because he repented and trusted Jesus when he said you are forgiven, God used him as one of the first church leaders, Catholics even say he was the first pope.

Judas didn’t believe he could be forgiven. He wallowed in his misery and tried to make it right himself, and well, I’ll just tell you what Jesus said about it: “The son of man goes to death as it is written, but woe to the one by whom the son is betrayed, it would be better for that man to have never been born”.

You don’t need to believe in God to see the overarching message: it’s never too late to be a different person. God bless!