From Cuffs to Christ: Freedom from Xanax, Alcohol, Depression, Anxiety, Fear, Abuse, Guilt, and the Pressure of Working in Corrections

By Kevin Zeiger and Linda Pearson

From Cuffs to Christ is a must-read if you or someone you love uses Xanax, works in a prison system, or will soon be incarcerated. Zeiger's story offers hope for so many who are hurting from addiction, depression, anxiety, and other challenges in their lives.

Kevin Zeiger knows what it means to suffer. Before he was born, his fami

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Mar 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637698259

Kevin Zeiger

Kevin Zeiger grew up in central Illinois and worked in the Illinois Department of Corrections for twenty-six years total, twenty-one years as a lieutenant. He is now retired and living with his wife, Virginia, on their farm. The couple is blessed with three grown children and seven grandchildren. Zeiger loves serving Christ and spreading the good news of the Gospel.

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From Cuffs to Christ

Kevin Zeiger

Trilogy Christian Publishers

A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

2442 Michelle Drive

Tustin, CA 92780

Copyright © 2021 by Kevin Zeiger

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked (KJV) taken from The Holy Bible, King James Version. Cambridge Edition: 1769.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For information, address Trilogy Christian Publishing

Rights Department, 2442 Michelle Drive, Tustin, Ca 92780.

First Trilogy Christian Publishing hardcover edition May 2018

Trilogy Christian Publishing/ TBN and colophon are trademarks of Trinity Broadcasting Network.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Trilogy Christian Publishing.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-63769-824-2

ISBN 978-1-63769-825-9 (ebook)

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my family and friends for their roles in the writing of From Cuffs to Christ. Whether they provided information, fact-checked for accuracy, offered feedback, encouraged me, or prayed for me, I truly appreciate their help.

A thank-you to Dr. J. Schroeder, my daughter Amanda, my daughter Tera, my son Robert, my son-in-law Pastor Bryce, A/W William (Bill) Parker, A/W William (Wally) Cox, Reca Risley, photographer Leah Wilke, artist Amanda Hurd, Dr. Tad Yetter, Pastor Terry Cain, Pastor Sharon Davis, the members of my church (Glory Worship Center), the people at Trilogy Publishing Company, and ghost writer Linda Pearson. Without Linda’s guidance, vast knowledge of literature, and exceptional writing skills, this book would not have been possible. She was a true blessing sent by God, an amazing, wonderful lady. Of course, I am thankful to my wife, Virginia, who has contributed so much to the writing and the content of this book. With her strong Christian faith, she is the best wife and mother I could ever ask for. Most of all, I give thanks to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

In the Beginning...

W

Anxiety, depression, and addiction have darkened my life. Some of the darkness was brought on by circumstances, some resulted from my own choices, and at times, I suffered at the hands of others. However, I will not cast blame on others for my trauma. If I held my problems against anyone, it would eat me alive. Instead, I want to share my story with the hope that I can help someone else. I want others to realize that no matter how low they sink, there is hope. There is redemption. There is deliverance. I am proof of this.

I was born into a good family. However, even good families can struggle at times.

I can remember back a long way, as far back as age three or four, when things were good. I had three older brothers. I was at home alone with my mother through the day, and then when my brothers came home, I got all kinds of attention. It was a good life filled with wonderful memories of taking family vacations, playing in a sandpile in the backyard, and spending time with my loving grandparents. We had some really good times. When I was a child, one of my favorite possessions was a record player, along with a collection of records that I kept in meticulous order and played over and over. I also had a pedal car that I rode up and down the sidewalk on hot summer days, and I used to wash it regularly to keep it shiny and clean. These innocent childhood days were happy, safe times. No one could have ever imagined the pain and darkness ahead of me.

My dad’s parents grew up in Adams County, Illinois, not far from where I live now. My grandpa, Bryan Zeiger, was born in 1900 in a large, two-story farmhouse, along with his six siblings. That generation usually did not go to a hospital for their children’s births, so all their children were born on the farm with someone, perhaps an aunt, serving as the midwife. He married my grandmother, Ethel, and they began their married life in that same farmhouse, living with my great-grandparents. My dad, Robert, and four more children were born there as well. When Dad and his siblings were still small, a neighbor offered my grandpa a job on his farm, and he even had an empty house for them to move into. That had to be an appealing offer; their family could have a little space and privacy. However, when my great-grandpa heard of this offer, he pulled out the Sears and Roebuck catalog and told Grandma Ethel she could pick out any of the model homes in the catalog, and he would have it built on the farm for their family. Great-grandpa was rather wealthy and generous enough that Grandma could have picked out a four-bedroom design, but she was more conservative and chose a small, two-bedroom plan for their family of seven. Grandpa and Grandma were appreciative of having their own place. Decades later, my wife, Virginia, and I lived in that very same house for four-and-a-half years with our own small children. Even as adults, Dad and his siblings did not wander far from the homestead, choosing instead to live in the general area.

This close, happy family suffered a terrible tragedy when Dad was eighteen years old. On November 13, 1942, his sister, Norma Jean, the youngest in the family, died at age eleven from an accident on the school ground. An inquest says that the children were playing a game of Andy Over (also known as Ante Over, Annie Annie Over, and various other titles) when Norma Jean and a boy collided, and Norma Jean received a head injury. Her parents drove her to Golden to see a doctor, who, finding no apparent serious injuries, told the parents to take her home and put her to bed. After Norma Jean reached home, she grew worse and died before medical aid could come. The official inquest determined the cause of death was a concussion of the brain, accidentally sustained.

My dad and his sister, my aunt Ruth, filled in more of the story for me over the years. After Norma Jean was injured, she was hurting so badly that she just sat while the other children continued playing. A school board member happened to stop in at the school, and the teacher shared how concerned she was about Norma Jean. The board member agreed that Norma Jean needed to go home, so he drove her there. When my grandparents saw how sick she was, they immediately took their little girl to the doctor. He looked her over, checking her vitals and looking at her eyes, and he assured my grandparents she would be all right. He told them to give her plenty of rest and to not let her play for a while. However, by the time they got her back home, she couldn’t walk. My grandpa had to carry her from the car to the bedroom. Norma Jean, crying hysterically, told her parents, I’m going to die! Dad, who was a senior in high school at the time, came home from school to see how dire the situation was. When pink fluid began to flow from her nose, both my grandpa and my dad knew that Norma Jean would not survive; they had witnessed the butchering of hogs, and this pink fluid from the nose meant death was imminent. Norma Jean died in her mother’s arms, and my grandma went into a state of hysteria; her baby girl was gone. The funeral was held in the home, with Grandma dressing her and fixing her hair.

This event deeply affected all the family. For one thing, it happened on threshing day, which was a big day for farmers. Neighbors would gather to harvest their crops, and it became a social event, with a huge meal and children playing together. Norma Jean had wanted to stay home that day to enjoy all the activity, but her parents told her she needed to go to school. They always regretted not letting her stay home. Also, it was Friday the thirteenth, and superstitious or not, that impacted Dad. Every Friday the thirteenth reminded him of their loss. I remember one summer day I wanted to play basketball, but Dad had taken off work that day and said instead of basketball, we would go fishing. I later realized it was Friday the thirteenth. When my brother Terry was playing Little League Baseball one year, he was in the outfield and collided hard with another outfielder. Terry was semiconscious for a while, and my folks rushed him to the hospital to be checked out. Fortunately, Terry was okay, but his accident was extremely distressing for my dad. He relived Norma Jean’s death. From that point on, he would not let us play baseball. Even if we were at a family reunion and everyone was playing a friendly game of softball, my dad would pull me off to the side and play catch with me. Being forbidden to play baseball tended to alienate me from my peers. I was left out of all the fun and camaraderie of Little League and school baseball. My peers looked on me as weird when my dad was so overprotective. Aunt Ruth, who had been seventeen at the time of Norma Jean’s death, said that sometimes she would be in the grocery store in Quincy with my grandma, and Aunt Ruth would hear what seemed to be her mother screaming. Naturally, she would rush to find my grandma, but when she found her, Grandma had been quietly shopping without a problem. The screams were Aunt Ruth’s hallucinations. My grandpa related a story to me about a particular moment that was hard on him. The spring after Norma Jean’s death, he walked into the barn to get out the wagon, and there, in the thickly layered dust on the wagon, he could see impressions from a little girl’s knees and hands. Months before, Norma Jean had climbed on it, and her prints were still there. Grandpa said he broke down right there in the barn.

Everyone in the family was damaged by this trauma, so it’s understandable that Dad had some effects that lasted into his adult life. As long as I could remember, Dad was flighty or uneasy. He also was intense in his business dealings and was often filled with anxiety. I believe these traits may have been rooted in this early tragedy.

My dad farmed when he was a young man. In 1948, he married my mom, Florence. My brother Dennis (Denny) was born in 1949, and my brother Terry came along in 1952. In 1953, Dad went to work at MoorMan’s Feed, which was a huge animal feed company. Mom, Dad, Denny, and Terry moved to rural Rushville, Illinois. Dad had a talent for sales and was quite successful, earning a promotion to district manager and moving the family to Havana. Robert (Bobby) arrived in 1956. I was born on August 31, 1960, and then my sister Kimberly came along in 1965.

My parents were older than my friends’ parents and had lived through the Depression. I always felt like my friends’ parents were rather lenient and spoiled their children, while we were taught to work hard and not be wasteful. Dad was Lutheran, but my mother was raised as a devout Catholic, and her strict upbringing influenced how she would eventually discipline her own children. Even though we grew up with rigid rules and a firm hand of discipline, I always knew my parents loved us and wanted what was best for us.

My early childhood years were filled with love and security. I was especially close to Denny, who doted on me. I was his little buddy, and I got a lot of attention from him when I was about four or five. When he got a car, he would bring me along with his friends everywhere he went. He would do just about anything for me. I remember once I woke him up in the middle of the night and said, Let’s go camping. Typically, a teenaged boy would tell his little brother to leave him alone and go back to bed, but not Denny. He said, Okay, and we went into the backyard, laid out an old mattress, and camped.

Overall, when I was a little boy, I saw the world as safe and filled with love. However, in first grade, I stepped into another sort of world, one where hurt and uncertainty crept in and marked me for life.

Dad, Bobby, Mom, and me in front of our home in 1965 or 1966

School Struggles, Pain, & Fear

W

I started kindergarten just as I turned five years old, and this first year in the school system was not bad, but things changed drastically the next year when I entered first grade in the old elementary school building in Havana.

First grade was a nightmare, the first adversity I faced. I was one of the youngest in my class, turning six at the start of the school year, while nearly all my classmates had their birthdays well before this. Everyone seemed older and bigger than I was. I matured late, and I believe my teacher felt it would be difficult to teach me anything; she didn’t have the patience. I remember Mom and Dad talking about this teacher wanting to hold me back. Mom was against this. I think part of her reluctance was that her mother had Mom’s little brother late in life, and he had Down syndrome, the mind of an eight-year-old. This seemed to make an impact on my mother, and she in no way wanted me to be held back.

My mom’s highest education was eighth grade, and to her, school was just not that important. She probably thought I would eventually catch up. It was also an issue of pride. If I had been retained, that could have been a black eye on the family, with others labeling her son as stupid or slow. I think she was always far too worried about what other people thought. This insecurity she felt was not her fault, but that’s how she approached my troubles at school. When my first-grade teacher mentioned something about possibly holding me back, my parents should have pulled me out of school and started me again the next year. Doing this in first grade would have been the best scenario for me. Each passing year would have been tougher on me, with more social stigma attached to a retention.

All the teachers in first, second, third, and fourth grades appeared to be old and burned out, nearly the age of retirement, and this first-grade teacher seemed very frustrated trying to teach me how to read. I believe I was hyperactive as a child, and this did not help matters. Instead of this woman using caring, loving ways to help me in my struggles, she would hit me. I can remember one day I sat at the wrong desk in first grade, and she started striking me in the forehead with her fist. I had never been abused like that before. As a small boy, I saw the teachers as huge giants. Think how frightening it would be for anyone to face someone who is three times their size. When I look at my small grandchildren today, I see a clear image of the size contrast, and I understand the impact my fear had on me. The world of a six-year-old child is just as big as the world of a sixty-year-old, and this incident filled my young world with trauma.

During this era, the school I attended was ruled by fear, using corporal punishment regularly, and the boys had it worse than the girls. The rumor was that there was a wooden paddle with holes drilled in it. My brother Bobby assured me there was a paddle that they would use on us. The fear was real, and it was every day. Sometimes the teacher would not let me go to the restroom when I asked. I remember at least two times I held it for as long as I could until I could not hold it any longer, and I wet my pants. I sat in my wet clothes for a good portion of the day until they finally dried out. I don’t know why the teacher didn’t call Mom to bring dry clothes. Mom eventually found out about the incident through one of her friends who had a daughter in my class, but nothing was ever done about it. Of course, everyone at school knew about it; that was so humiliating.

The school also had a huge black chair, twice the size of a regular student chair, for students to sit in if they were in trouble, which magnified the humiliation of time out. The teacher would, at times, make me sit in that chair and put me on display in front of my class or in the doorway. I assume she was making an example of me. To make matters worse, sometimes I was placed in the hallway so the other classes going to recess would see me and ask why I was there.

Another punishment was to make me sit still at my desk while the other kids played outside during recess, which was especially cruel for a boy like me with my immaturity and hyperactivity. I had so much energy inside me with no place to go, and I needed socialization with my peers. Sitting there was a form of torture to me…alone in the room with the teacher, scared and miserable, longing to play with my friends. Today’s elementary classes incorporate movement throughout the day whenever possible, especially for students with hyperactivity and attention deficit disorders. However, when I was young, things were certainly approached differently.

Going from such a wonderful world to this type of environment was painful for me. However, not everyone was treated this way. Only a few of the boys were targeted…the slow ones. I was in that category, making Ds and Fs. We were the ones who received most of the punishments. A psychiatrist told me that when you encounter fear in high levels as a child, as an adult, you will experience fear, anger, depression, or sadness, and this has certainly been true for me. It is a form of posttraumatic stress disorder.

This is how Oak Grove School appeared in January 2000. It was the oldest of three neighborhood schools for grades one to three.

First grade was worse than second and third, where the teachers were a little less abusive. However, during third grade, I often sat in the black chair in the hallway, and other times I had to stay in from recess, sitting at my desk. Using corporal punishment and humiliation on a select few was the way teachers at that school had been taught to keep control, and in later years, I, unfortunately, saw the same thing happen with adults in the prison system. I witnessed inmates get targeted. Staff would go after certain inmates, and this tactic was most prevalent at the work camp. I also worked at a high-level medium-security prison, but there I did not see the staff target inmates as often. In the medium-security prison setting, there is so much more going on. Prison staff didn’t have time to play games tormenting inmates. They were also fully aware of how much more dangerous these prisoners were than those at the work camp. In the work camp, staff would zero in on certain ones and make their lives miserable. I could not help but relate to the targeted inmates because of what I had been through as a child.

During my youth, Dad was busy working with his salesmen to increase sales in his territory, going on sales trips, or tending to one of the rentals he owned, so he left the disciplining up to Mom. Dad got much more involved with my discipline about the time I turned sixteen, but before this, it was all up to Mom. I am sure Dad had the ultimate decision on whether I would be held back or not, but he was probably going along with whatever Mom said. Even though she was the ruler of the household, my mother did not ever step in to help me at school. I didn’t dare tell her any problems I had for fear of making her angry. For instance, she knew I wet my pants, but she did not address it. If I got spanked at school, I would not breathe a word of it to Mom; I knew I would have been in trouble again.

In Mom’s mind, the teacher was always right. Period. Mom grew up in a Catholic school and was the valedictorian of her eighth-grade class, but still, she did not seem to see the importance of my school experience or my emotional well-being. When a child who is only six, seven, eight, or nine years old achieves nothing but Ds and Fs, it is not the fault of the child. It is the teacher and the system. A parent and a teacher need to work together for the benefit of the child. Virginia and I raised three children who all did well in school, and I was always involved in their schoolwork. My mom and dad and their generation were not brought up with that mindset. Their parents did not stress the importance of academics. My grandparents only needed them to be able to add up what they sold for crops, know basic math, and be able to read and write adequately for everyday tasks. When my parents saw me struggling with grades in these early years, I feel like they could have tried to get me some help. I had older brothers who were good students, and they could have been paid a few dollars to tutor me, but that did not happen. That would have been an easy way to help me, but I do not think my parents realized how much I suffered from my low grades. My academic struggles ruined my self-esteem and sowed the first seeds of anxiety in my life.

First-, second-, and third-grade students in Havana attended the old elementary school building that had been built around 1900. Each morning at the start of the school day, all students would gather outside in front of the flag to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Then the principal would talk to all of us. I think the purpose was to give announcements and information for the school day, but it came across as a lecture, with the principal going over rules and regulations for the students to follow. For some reason, this morning routine scared me. The cold winter days were the worst. These mornings were gray and dismal with less daylight to brighten things up, and the air was bitter, chilling me to the bone. The principal’s speeches seemed threatening to me, and this usually added even more tension to my already miserable school experience.

During all the trauma, stress, and misery, I did have a wonderful bright spot that really helped me to cope. In the spring of my second-grade year, I was walking home from school, and I spotted a puppy beside the road. The little guy was around two or three months old, and he followed me home. I was crazy about this pup, and I really wanted to keep him. I knew I had to convince my dad to let me keep him. I told Dad that the puppy could do tricks, and I tried to put on a show. I said the dog could sit, but he was so excited that he couldn’t sit still. Then I said he could jump, so I held a cookie up to get him to jump, but he wouldn’t do that either. Then I held the cookie in front of the dog’s face, and he snatched it and gobbled it up. I said, Well, look! He can eat a cookie!

Dad chuckled and said, That’s it. You can have him. If he ate the cookie, that’s good enough for me! Dad enjoyed telling this story over the years. At first, he did not really want to keep the dog, but he, too, fell in love with Mike, which is what we named him.

Mike was a mixed breed with a lot of miniature collie in him. His red and white coat was patterned a bit like a paint horse, and he weighed around thirty pounds. Mike went with me everywhere from that day on. During the times of my deep struggles, he was a real comfort to me. Mike would be waiting for me when I got home from school. Boy, was he a joy for me to see! Then on the weekend, he was with me all the time. He followed me to school every day, and the whole family loved him. I was responsible for taking care of