To Fail Better: Prison to Promise

By Anmy Tran

What impossibly big dream or impossibly big failure is God calling you to take a journey circling around the promise and to fail better?

Sharing inspiring human experiences from her own journey to fail better in prison, Anmy Tran will help you uncover your heart’s deepest desires and God-given promises and unbridle them through the kind of audacious communication that God delights to give you the desire of your heart.

Hidden in ancient biblical stories and scriptures from the Old and New Testaments, the mysteries of promises revealed in To Fail Better are as raw as a reality show because they are the omens of the present; the scriptures revealed the secret is here in the present. If attention is paid to the present, it can be improved upon. And if the present is improved, what comes later will also be better. The revelations are so specific that you can forget about the future and walk each day in the scriptures, confident that God’s love always prevails and his promises to his children are always fulfilled—it’s real.

Written in an absorbing narrative style, To Fail Better opens with the appearance of a woman burdened with unexpected storm. Through it are a series of messages she has received in the form of travel photography through a pen. Each travel unveils a failure and a prophetic mystery concerning failing better that will change the way one sees living forever.

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure” (Paulo Coelho).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662418082

Book preview

Chapter One

The Alarm

August the second of 2011…

The woman’s name was Dr. Jade Temple. The morning was moving hastily as the woman dropped her two daughters off at school and was running late to her office. The patients must be anxious and upset for waiting, she thought worriedly.

She called her office while driving and cutting lanes to beat the traffic to work. She saw that all her staff at the office were so uncharacteristically unresponsive that no one came to the phone as she dialed and redialed the office’s numbers continuously.

Suddenly…

Ring! Ring! Her husband, Josh, called from work. Honey, can you come home? The house alarm went off, and the ADT company called, notifying there’s a break-in at our home. I am in the middle of an important meeting and can’t get out, he asked worriedly.

Okay! Can you call the police and tell them I am on my way home for a possible house robbery? It’s too dangerous for me to face off the robbers alone, she replied and immediately made a U-turn home.

Still, there was no answer from the office as she spent the entire drive tapping the Redial touch screen on her iPhone…

She arrived home. She turned the Honda Odyssey minivan to the end of the cul-de-sac in her subdivision, pulled up to the driveway, and she immediately noticed three big, professional-looking Caucasian men in nice street clothes (not uniforms) standing at the driveway. She thought they must be the law enforcement officers whom her husband called for assistance for the possible house robbery; they looked intimidating and stoic.

It was a quiet morning in the neighborhood. Looking around, she could see everybody was probably at work, and what an ideal time to break in someone’s house at this hour.

She got out of the Odyssey. As she walked up to one of the tall, big men, she began introducing herself and asking who he was, but before her first sentence was completed, the big man no. 1, Mr. Don’t Care, immediately placed the handcuffs on her wrists without explanation except a stoic look and said in a stern voice, Good morning. Are you Dr. Temple? We are agents for the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) office.

Yes, Dr. Temple replied. What’s happening?

We broke into your house. There’s an investigation. We don’t know exactly what’s going on, but the FBI and the OIG agents are on their way and will be here in a couple hours to explain everything to you. As soon as Mr. Don’t Care handcuffed her, he escorted her inside the house and sat her down at the breakfast nook table. She was nervous and confused, not understanding what was going on as she’d never been in trouble with the law before. She noticed that there were about three other Caucasian men and one African American woman inside the house searching the kitchen, the basement, and the upstairs bedrooms. It was as if they were searching for drugs.

Befuddled and trembling, Jade asked, What are you looking for? Why did you break into my house?

Sorry, ma’am, we can’t say anything until the FBI and the OIG agents get here to explain everything to you, responded Mr. Don’t Care politely.

Ring! Ring! Ring! The woman’s husband called her cell phone constantly. She attempted to answer her husband’s call; she was reaching for the middle of the table. That is my husband calling. He’s worried that someone breaking in the house could hurt me. Can I answer his call? Jade insisted.

Multiple times she requested, and it was the same reply each time from Mr. Don’t Care—that she couldn’t answer the call or talk to anyone until the OIG and the FBI agents got there.

I know you have a nice family and two beautiful young daughters. I don’t want your husband to get upset when he talks to you. We must wait until the OIG and the FBI agents get here, then they can explain everything to you and your husband. I will call your husband and let him know you are with us and doing fine, explained Mr. Don’t Care.

It was still overwhelming, confusing, and scary for the woman to be facing the federal government, and trying to cooperate, she believed everything would be cleared up once the OIG and the FBI arrived. It was just a misunderstanding, she thought.

Approximately three hours later…

The OIG and the FBI agents arrived. I apologize for taking so long to get here and that you’re handcuffed like this, stated the OIG agent, Mr. Entrapment, while he unhandcuffed the woman. You have a nice family. He looked around at different family portraits hanging on the walls in the hallway and the great room. I know you are a nice person and have a good family. Do you mind that we move to your den and I ask you few questions?

Sure.

Mr. Entrapment, along with the FBI agent (ex-Blue Cross Blue Shield agent), his assistant, and the woman walked into the office den in a more casual manner. She sat at the desk facing two federal government agents sitting at her left side with their backs against the bookshelves. She was trying to be helpful and not get on their bad side. Mr. Entrapment conducted the interview questions, while the FBI agent wrote them down on the notepapers. The OIG asked questions, and she answered (for about forty minutes) until Mr. Don’t Care walked in, handing the woman her cellphone. There’s an attorney on the line for you, called by your husband, stated Mr. Don’t Care. Mr. Entrapment immediately stopped the interview and said he had finished.

Please sign this paper here regarding our interview today that you speak true to the best of your knowledge. He handed her the paper to sign as Mr. Entrapment appeared hurrying.

The woman signed the paper without reading, without hesitation. She trusted the government. The OIG and FBI agents took off.

And now it was only then she learned through the attorney on the phone represent her that she had been investigated and indicted for a very serious federal crime and that she did not and should not have to speak to any federal government agent until she had her lawyer with her.

A few hours later, she was taken in a black 4 × 4 SUV to the Southeastern District Court of Michigan for fingerprint and arraignment in front of the Magistrate then returned home with a ten-thousand-dollar bond.

The woman and her family battled her legal battle for two years, contemplating whether or not she should go to trial or accept the government’s plea deal for a lesser sentence.

It doesn’t matter, she said to herself. I know other people do it all the time, saying anything for a shorter sentence because the federal prosecutor threatens to go after their loved ones with longer years of sentence if they should take it to trial. But in her heart, she knew that it did matter. And she knew that her God, like a traveling master, always found a place where there was someone who could plant the seed of faith, not bury the seed. This was the time and place for her to plant that seed of faith.

The woman prepared to go to trial without accepting the plea deal to go along with the federal prosecutors saying just anything for a shorter sentence.

*****

We need to trust God is the One who will part the water for us when we go to trial, the woman told her husband one early sunrise morning in his reading room as they were praying, asking if she should go to trial or accept the federal’s offer, the plea deal.

How do we experience ‘God part the water’ when we’re too scared to cross the Red Sea and accept the government’s plea deal, whereas I don’t really know any information about other defendants in the case to give the government? This is our opportunity to walk by faith, not by sight.

The woman sounded convincing, and her husband asked God at five o’clock every morning for the answer until the sixth month came. So the husband dropped on his knees on the floor of the bedroom and took up the Book of Life, reading the book of John about the Shepherd and His sheep.

I don’t know what ‘My sheep hear my voice’ is about, but I have my peace to go forward with your trial, said the sheep’s voice behind him on a Saturday morning bed breakfast with the woman during his quiet time in their reading room.

The woman was surprised at her husband’s decision. Maybe the church, with the sycamore growing from within, had been planted. It had caused him to have the same dream with her, and it was causing him to feel encouraged toward his life companion. He drank a bit from the wine that remained from his dinner of the night before, and he gathered his wife closer to his body. He knew that a few months from now, with the sun at its zenith of the trial against the Goliath (federal prosecutors), the heat could be so great that he might not be able to lead his family across the Red Sea. It was the time of life when all your harvest slept during the summer and there’s no spring season. The heat lasted until nightfall, and all that time, he had to carry his family. But when the woman thought to complain about the burden of its weight, she remembered that because they had the Shepherd, they would withstand the cold of the dawn, the sun of the noon day, and the wind of the storm.

We have to prepare for the worst if you should lose at trial, her husband reminded her pessimistically, but she was optimistic for the Shepherd’s protection and victory.

The Shepherd had a purpose, and so did her trial. Her purpose in life was to travel the journey, and after the years of crossing the Red Sea terrain, she would know all the enemies and promises of the wilderness. The woman and her husband were preparing, on this journey, to explain to their daughters, at least to their twelve-year-old one, that her mother possibly had to go away for a long time; that due to a simple lack of knowledge, you could perish; and that if her mother lost at trial and was convicted with a felony, she would have to go to prison.

The horizon was tinged with red, but the sun never appeared.

Chapter Two

The Verdict

Summer 2013…

Guilty.

The woman’s guilty verdict and a five-year sentence to federal prison for conspiracy to health care fraud at age forty-two was a devastating blow. Why? she asked the Lord. "Why take the woman who loves you and dedicates her life to serve you in the church and on her short-term mission, who is in the prime of life, whose impact on Vietnamese people for Jesus is in progress, and whose two precious daughters, eleven and five, need their mother bloodily? Why do you have me going to trial only to be delivered to prison, crossing the Red Sea only to go to Egypt, not the Promised Land? By faith, we crossed the Red Sea, but you did not part the water and deliver us as your word promised. Contrarily, you delivered me to prison." In the midst of grief, she had a million whys.

Not one of them was answered. Instead, through the woman’s anguished, frozen emotions, on her knees in the closet before dawn, she could not utter prayers to God. There crept still a strange promise surpassing all understanding. Through and around prison will flow discovery and newness as you had never before experienced it, the instinct told her. The Word promised her this hope. It was as if someone who knew her better than herself would wrap her round and round with his infinite care, protection, and plan that she looked forward to experiencing, which no eyes had seen, no ears had heard, no heart of man could humanly possibly perceive. She didn’t know why she felt such an instinct.

Many nights of spring during the time she was awaiting surrender to Alderson Federal Prison Camp, waiting after Josh, her husband, and the children were in bed, she sat in a rocking patio chair in the backyard, dazzled at the starry sky of the dark night, and bewildered at what was happening with a few glasses of cabernet sauvignon. She had done wrong but nothing to deserve such a harsh punishment. At least, that was what she believed then. She understood no more than before the reason for the guilty verdict and the grave sentence; she only knew that in some way that transcended reason, it was deeply and eternally all right. She looked toward the starry sky and encouraged herself, This is the race I must run. This is the fight. I must fight a good fight of faith. Without faith, I will fall so badly that I’ll never be able to get up.

It was these words based on the Scriptures that the woman had learned about and read about throughout the New Testament written by the apostle Paul, and now it certainly began to sink deep, and only by these words, she had a faint light at the end of the tunnel.

Now no chastening seems to be useful for the present, but it is painful, nevertheless; afterward, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore it strengthens the hands which hang down and the feeble knees (Hebrews 12:11–12).

She didn’t fully understand, experience, or rejoice in these Scriptures. Rather, it was the contrary. But somehow, she knew she needed to hold on to what the Scriptures promised to keep moving…

Chapter Three

Road to Perdition

You may not know your vision until there’s no going back.

—Unknown

Summer of 2014…

May 14, 2014, unleashed a torrent of the breeze changing and an abnormal whirlwind of post-conviction since summer 2013. A cold front out of the woman’s heart then descended like a swirly wind that roared down the intestine and deadened the soul to that of a dead human walking. She was driving with two church friends a day in advance on a road to perdition—Michigan to Alderson Woman Federal Prison Camp, West Virginia—self-surrender.

Goodbye, Mom, come home to us as soon as you can. We love you. They hugged and kissed each other goodbye without water exiting the occipital orbits. She dropped off her daughters at school while her husband was already at work as they tried to keep the day as normal as possible for the children. The woman recalled her daughter’s last words as she was driving and felt moisture at the corner of her eyes.

She found herself perplexed to be where she was the next morning, May 15, 2014. Looking out over a greenery-covered hilly backyard at Days Inn Hotel in Lewisburg where she stayed the previous night (about twenty minutes away from Alderson Federal Prison Camp), she heard new noises in a strange town. She stood there, staring into the steady traffic surrounded by the quiet, distant mountains of West Virginia, and took a deep breath as she absorbed the last moment of freedom.

Soon! she screamed, screamed silently into the darkening day.

First day of Alderson finally begins soon, she thought to herself. The beginning of a journey where death would have been better, and there is no turning back, no rebirth.

This I will learn. This is the lesson of life. Perhaps I should have seen it coming. But I was too busy in the world, she sighed regrettably.

*****

During the interminable driving and arriving Alderson Camp the next day, and sitting in the R&D (Receiving and Discharge), she thought about her dead days lying ahead. She only knew at the time her confused heart was condemned to uncertainty forever. The world became eternally sad.

The whole structure of Alderson Camp seemed to occupy its own space, one of solitude and oblivion, protected by the vices of bureaucracy and secrecy of federal government. The guards in the R&D seemed emotionless and intimidating with robotic structural and political correct communications that left her a chill like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Few hours into waiting for admission process to finish, she sat there staring into the air thinking, Look at the state I’m in. How are the children and Josh going to be? How’s he going to handle all of these by himself for five years?

She sat there with an absorbed look, holding a black leather-covered Bible written in her native language, Vietnamese, in her hand the whole time, contemplating her children until her eyes became moist, and she dried them with the back of her hand, exhaling a deep sigh of helplessness. But in the depth of her soul, she still had hope that a longed-for miracle would manifest from the black leather-covered book to save her from the grave dream.

A couple of hours passed; she was discharged and sent up the Halleluiah Hill to A3 unit, the A & O (Admission and Orientation) dormitory. The woman immediately noticed the chapel at the top of the hill on her right as if it were waiting for her ascending to the hill of the Lord. At that moment, it came clear to her, a distinctive voice, Are you ready to ascend to my hill? Who may ascend to the hill of the Lord but he who has clean hands and a pure heart? You are brought here for cleansing and learning to ascend the hill, not to be buried or condemned. Do you believe? She knew it was the old king’s voice because the voice came from the scriptures in the book of Psalm 24:4, and if it had been her voice, it would have been filled with disgust, bitterness, and blaming of the federal government for her own stupidity and crazy heroic criminal behavior.

You will be all right and be afraid not, the old king told her. The woman believed this. She wanted to please the old king, but she wished it did not have to be this way.

Surrounded by the impenetrable mountain chain, white and powdery in the silent morning light of the next day, Alderson Prison world was so new to her that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them, it was necessary for her to point. The red phone, the horseshoe, the snitch, contraband, etc. Learning these terms and their meaning in prison was like learning ESL all over again as the day she first arrived in America twenty-eight years ago. The woman couldn’t get out of her perplexity when she walked around the compound and saw a crowd of women wandering in despair who complained of the same pains. The pain of leaving behind children, husbands, grandchildren, grandparents, and loved ones. Although prison might be her foreseeable event, the circumstances were not. Time will put things in their place, she sighed while biting back secret tears.

Chapter Four

The Dreamer

I will give you the treasure of darkness and hidden riches of secret places.

—Isaiah 45:3

It was her first six months in Alderson Women Federal Prison Camp. The woman was not prepared at age forty-two, when the daughters were only twelve and five, for Josh, her husband, to be a single parent for five years. She was never prepared for a time in prison, for all the shame and mockery of being a convicted felon, much less to have an unbridled purpose in such a pandemonium as the Women Federal Prison.

There had been no training for any of these.

Are you ready for change? Or have you only counted the losses? Are there not certain areas of your life where rigidity is creeping in? The rough and tumble of your family life is my antidote to complacence, said the old king.

But, Lord, you said it’s not good for a man to live alone, and my daughters are too young to be Mama-less, she reasoned. I can understand if you’re taking a wife and mother away for one year, even two or three years, but five years? How can it be? And we have no relative in Michigan in case of emergency.

The woman was at her wit’s end. She saw that all Alderson women entered through the ruined gate and then told herself that she would have to start reading and finish her black leather book in its entirety, Old Testament to New Testament, to let time pass quickly.

She swept her mind with books and the black leather book and took pictures of her vision with pencils and paper. She told herself that she would have to start writing more: time passed quicker and made the place more interesting to journey.

It was still dark when she awoke, and looking around, she could hear the buzz of the flying insects and listen to the beating of the woman’s heart in the cube next door through the filmy light of the woman warehouse.

I should sleep a little longer, she thought. But she had had the same argument with the creator that night as a week earlier, and once again, she had awakened before it started. What good could possibly come out of a confused, desolate, bureaucratic, and deceiving place like federal prison camp, God?

*****

Walking up the Halleluiah Hill by the chapel, from breakfast in the Central Dining Room (CDR) in the early morning, to the highest point of the upper compound facing eastward toward the gate and the mountain, the woman sat down on a bench. Yeah, she wept internally with dry tears when she remembered her Jerusalem. The horizon was tinged with red, and suddenly the sun appeared. She thought back to that conversation with the old king and felt eternally sad.

What good could possibly come out of a confused, desolate, bureaucratic, and deceiving place like federal prison camp, God? the woman asked the same question from the beginning of her prison term in tears.

She had already heard the prevailing rumor that the BOP (Bureau of Prison) was closing the camp, accepting only prisoners who were going to the RDAP (Residential Drug Abuse Program) or who were already doing time in other facilities such as FCI and were now qualified for an upgraded minimum security camp status, and that many prisoners might get early release. But the place continued rushing with new faces and only a modest few a week leaving to go to the halfway house. She dreamed that she was one of the few leaving the gate as she scanned the mountain and the horizon.

What is your dream?

Dream?

Yes.

I have no dream. The last dream I had was that you would part the water for my Red Sea when I went to trial. But that dream is dead. Now I only have reality, prison. Not one year. Not two years. Not three years. But five. That’s right. Five years of my life will be wasted in this place. You can call that my dream.

"What’s your dream today? If you can be anything and successful, what would you be?

A dream is always a dream. I dreamed about parting the water of the Red Sea, and it only brought me prison. Should I still dream?"

Yes. Dreams are the language of God.

Oh.

Suddenly, the woman realized that things had quieted down a bit internally and that this unusual revelation was being stirred. Not all clashes in life were sporting events, but for her to be in the mix was the mystery of discovery.

If God is the purposeful Father and never makes a mistake, then Alderson for me will not be a misfortune but a purposeful opportunity for something afterward, she thought.

If dreams are the language of God, then you must have brought me here to tell me of the dream to discover. Something that I would never know or could ever know until I come here. It’s only you who can know it.

Tell me about your dream.

Am I going to know you in this place like it is written, ‘No eyes have seen no ears have heard or any man’s hearts have perceived’?

Tell me more about your dream.

You know all about me, God. I’d love to tell the world about you, but you know I am scared to speak in public, and I stammer. People will laugh at me when I speak. How can I tell the world who you are when I don’t have a dream of becoming a pastor, and I don’t have a calling to be a long-term missionary?

Who said you could only tell the world about me through the lips?

What do you mean?

She paused for a moment to see if she knew what the voice inside her said. She said nothing. She was silent for some time. Then she picked up the book inside her tote, the book with a black leather cover that she had brought with her to the camp. Leafing through the pages, she came to the stories of solitude, Abraham and Jacob having to leave their hometown and finding their dreams in the foreign land in the middle of nowhere.

The woman began to start jotting down her journey, but she was not able to concentrate. She was tense and fearful because she knew that the old king was right. There’s no shortcut to a great dream. There’s always a price. Everything in life has a price. The bigger the dream, the bigger the price. Jacob went through what he had gone through for his prize. To know where he was, in the middle of nowhere to the God of Now Here, Jacob had to flee from his brother, Esau, for his life. In the middle of nowhere, God came to Jacob through a dream and revealed his covenant to him, a promise that God is with him and would allow him to prosper in the foreign land and bring him back home in abundance. Surely after all the hardships and cheating he got from his uncle, Laban, God would bless Jacob with plenty. He only had his staff when he crossed the Jordan, but the day he returned, he had two groups of people and flocks and herds and camels (Genesis 27:41–32:12).

Abraham went through a total separation anxiety, separating from everything he is familiar to go to a strange place for his prize: Jehovah Jireh—God always provides (Genesis 22:8).

She would have to go through this journey for her dream. Regardless of her crazy thinking and criminal behavior that brought her to prison, God would turn it into a prize, but there was no shortcut that was less than five years.

There was something mysterious about sitting in the dark. In the dark, the only thing you can see is light. Sitting alone in Alderson, the tomb soon brought her to make sense of the scripture: Unless a grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it produces much fruit (John 12:24).

She was the seed that must die. She held a puzzle piece in her hand and began to envision a big picture from the puzzle a little better. There, in front of her, where the clouds had been the day before, was an endless chain of mountains, surrounding all around the entire Camp.

To follow me, you must be born again. To be born again, you must first die. The seed is planted in the ground where there is only darkness and no sunlight. And the seed dies, transformed to a tree. The tree bears fruit—law of produce, the old king reminded her.

But…if it is only me alone, I won’t be so insistent that you deliver me out of Alderson soon. There are husband and children factors, Lord, she reasoned with her Father on how she was not ready for the extreme obedience just yet. But in her heart, she sensed there was bigger picture he wanted her to see and deeper work he needed to work in her. She was afraid of the brand Failure: Alderson Prison forever marking her life, her daughters growing without a mother, and her Job kinds of friends, critics. God chastised her, and she was not so righteous after all. But most important, she knew if God granted her request, she would plunge directly back into her same old self of being quick to speak and slow to listen, a heroic people pleaser with a turbulent marriage. Alderson was just a piece of a puzzle in her life picture.

Tell me about your dream, the old king said these words slowly and gently so she would think about it. There’s a saying, ‘See it to seize it.’

How can you seize something you do not see?

The woman