Registered for Life with Jesus Christ

By Lori Franklin

Registered for Life with Jesus Christ is a powerful true memoir of a mother's tragedy, police civil rights misconduct cover up, and a guide to serving time God's way. Undoubtedly, prison was the most intense period of spiritual warfare that Lori Franklin ever encountered. During her fourteen and half years at the Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women in Pewee Valley, Kentucky, formerly nicknamed the Valley of the Dolls but prophetically it was more of the Valley of the Dry Bones as described in Ezekiel 37, full of spiritually dead women in need of leadership.

During Lori's stay, she rose to her call of spiritual warfare leader and jailhouse lawyer to defend the constitutional civil rights of other inmates as the prison's grievance clerk and an active member of Women in Mission Bible study group. Lori allowed God to use her within the prison walls as a missionary, all while battling her post-traumatic stress disorder from the tragic death of her child and by being left to suffer in solitary confinement in a cold windowless jail cell for over three hundred days straight without exercise, awaiting her trial at the Jefferson County Jail in Louisville, Kentucky in violation of her eighth amendment constitutional rights.

Lori put together the ordeals that God lead her through to guide inmates that are currently incarcerated and families that are left behind, while under a shelter-in-place order due to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. While writing her last chapter, she could hear the Black lives Matter protesters march down her street, shouting "No justice, no peace," bringing attention to the police misconduct in Louisville, Kentucky, all the while crying that the statute of limitation is up in her case, and she will be registered for Life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781639031016

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Registered for Life with Jesus Christ

Lori Franklin

Copyright © 2021 by Lori Franklin

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Leaving My Past Behind

Seek God First and He will Use You

Hot Coffee, Sugar, and Cream

Spiderman, Curious George, and God

Destiny’s Run

All Lives Matter

Spiritual Warfare

Mind Your Own Business

God’s Wall of Protection

I Am Still Holding On

Chapter 1

Leaving My Past Behind

But this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, And reaching forth unto those things which are before.

—Philippians 3:13

After serving over fourteen and a half years at Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women, living on the outside again was only a dream. My daily reality was to get enough to eat that day and keep a low profile. I never bought makeup or joined a club. I learned early on by observation that in a women’s prison, it is wise not to look too good or act too wise. It could not only lead to being sexually assaulted by another inmate but also sexually harassed by a prison staff member. I remember there was a guard who used to require the inmates to hang their tag outside their shower. The tag had our picture on it, so the staff member could know who was in the shower, and if it was a young woman or full-figured woman, the staff member would peep through the curtain. Once the higher ups found out, we were no longer required to place our tags outside the showers.

We were blessed to have a senior captain who made it his priority to protect us from staff members who were physically, mentally, and sexually abusive toward the inmates. I was a daily target for verbal and sexual abuse due to my charges. I would state the charges, but according to Kentucky law, I am not allowed to describe my charges in a book because I am a convicted felon. I never became bitter because for those who did not know me and just followed my case on the news, they would feel that I did not deserve to be left alone. I had enemies surrounding me as soon as I walked on the compound. Harassing me was a form of a coping mechanism for the majority of the residents. I do not want to be vultured or upset anyone, but inmates who have robbed banks, murdered, contracted others to kill or ate human flesh considered themselves better than me. I would state why they thought they were better than me, but again, Kentucky law prevents me from writing about my personal thoughts, feeling, opinions or emotions about what I was in prison for.

I lived in fear every single day. I was all alone. The inmates hated me, and the staff hated me. My cousin, David, wrote to me and told me to hold my head up. His mother, Joyce, and my mother both told me to trust in God. I feel comfortable in revealing my cousin and his mother’s first name due to the fact that they have both met up in heaven, and my truth will not affect them. I followed my elder’s advice and prayed Psalm 59:

Deliver me from my enemies O my God; Defend me from those who rise up against me. Deliver me from the workers of iniquity and save me from bloodthirsty men.

This prayer worked for me most days, but every once in a while, a new inmate would arrive and try to take their conviction out on me. I remember one inmate just wanted to fight me, and I knew I had to go ahead and face her or she might catch me off guard, and I might get attacked with a metal lock inside a sock. So I came up with an emergency prayer. I used to turn to King David’s cry for help from God to help me out of dangerous situations. One of my favorites was Psalm 70:

Make haste, O God to deliver me! Make them be ashamed and confounded, who seek my life; Let them be turned back and confused, who desire my hurt. Let them be turned back because of their shame.

In that particular situation, I was ready to go ahead and physically fight. I was tired of being harassed based on how the media had portrayed me. I had tried everything to stay out of trouble. I had signed up for a retreat at the chapel. But they only could take so many inmates, and I was not chosen. So I felt that the only way I could have some peace was to fight the woman. The media stated that I was a former martial arts instructor but left out the part that I only was the office manager, and I never participated in the class. I just collected the fees and planned the events and trips. The media made it seem like I was a female version of Bruce Lee. So basically, I had inmates wanting to fight me because of my charges, and the others wanted to fight me just to see me fight. I don’t think I am breaking the law for mentioning how the media portrayed me. The former President Trump, whether you like him or not, said the media is fake anyway. Plus I have not stated when or why the media portrayed me as the female version of Bruce Lee.

In this case, I gave a young lady a pair of shorts that did not have any and a bag of ramen noodle because she was hungry. I had not been in prison long, nor had I ever been arrested before. I did not know the prison code. I did not know that the young lady was somebody’s girlfriend. So I had unknowingly violated a prison code. So I felt that I had no choice but to fight. I am only four feet, eleven inches and weighed under 110 pounds, so most likely, I was going to end up in medical before I went to cellblock for fighting. That was a risk I just had to take. So I prayed my emergency prayer and headed to the yard to face my giant. Normally since I was very small and she was a huge Caucasian woman, maybe the other black women would jump in and keep me from being jumped by her friends. That’s how it would normally work. Races stuck together.

Due to the fact that I was an outcast when I first arrived at Kentucky Correctional Institutional for Women, my race treated me like an outsider. So I knew before my fight that I was on my own. There are no weapons in prison, and I would never use a