After Arson: Finding Faith Inside Prison Walls | Jon Antonucci – Transcript
Kristi Lowe:
If you have ever thought that the mistakes you’ve made are too bad or unforgivable or if they have rendered you unusable by God, well, today’s episode is going to be just right for you. Right up your alley and what you need. my guest today is Jon Antonucci. And At 19, he had everything going for him. He was the son of a preacher, a black belt in karate, and he had a natural leadership gifting that he had really had since he was a child. And He had a promising life ahead of him until June 14th, 2009, where he made what he describes as the stupidest decision of his life. He and three of his friends committed arson. They set fire to a building in Phoenix, Arizona, which left his best friend dead, and it sent Jon to prison. Thankfully, though, That wasn’t the end of Jon or his story, because his story is one of hope, and it’s one of redemption, and without further ado, let’s dive in. Hey Jon, I am so thrilled to have you here today.
Jon Antonucci:
Hey Kristi, it’s great to be here. Thank you for having me.
Kristi Lowe:
Yeah, absolutely. I’m so glad we could make this work and I’m so looking forward to hearing about your story and hearing more about what the Lord has done in your life. But I want to jump in first by, let’s just start out by telling the listener a little bit more about you and you went to prison for committing arson, but were you a believer when all of that happened or did you come to faith afterward?
Jon Antonucci:
I thought I was. I thought I was. so at 12, I made a profession of faith after watching a scary movie. And I did not love the idea of going to hell. And so I was raised in church. As you mentioned, my father was a pastor. And so the thing that you do when you don’t want to go to hell is you get saved. And, that was about as far as it went. And it wasn’t until after my incarceration that I kind of recognized that there’s a huge difference between acknowledging Jesus as a Savior, or even your Savior technically and really recognizing Him as your Lord. And you can’t have one without the other. You can claim one without the other. the other, but you can’t actually have one without the other. And so my personal relationship with God did not begin until after incarceration. Even though if you had asked me prior I would have told you I was saved and I was serving in the church and doing all the things that you do when you, when, when you are raised in that environment. But yeah, the actual coming to personal faith didn’t happen until after about two months into my incarceration when, just kind of had to look around and go Apparently I don’t have all the answers, shucks, and my prayer wasn’t elaborate, it wasn’t King James Version ish, it was, I think, very simple, and it was, God, my way’s not working, and it’s gonna have to be your way from this point forward.
Kristi Lowe:
I think that that’s probably a pretty powerful place to be. You know, we know that what happened was you committed arson, but, What happened surrounding this? No one just wakes up one day and says, you know, I think I’m going to go set a building on fire. And so, can you share with us part of that and what happened that led up to that? Yeah.
Jon Antonucci:
Yeah, Basically, to make a long story short, myself and all three of the other people that participated in the arson all worked for the same organization. at least two of us were committing embezzlement as well. I don’t know if the other two were or not, ultimately does not matter. I had already been terminated from employment there, was beginning my own, school, we were martial arts instructors, I was beginning my own school. The other was under investigation still, and the chances are, since he was nine years older than the rest of us he, that was my best friend, kind of the older brother I never had he’d been doing it a lot longer than I had, the chances are his sum of money that he had taken was significantly larger, and they were going back through a decade of records instead of a year or two of records with him. Now. Everybody wants to know the reason, and I really wish I could give like this just very nicely succinct, this was why we did it. I don’t even have one. I think from a personal perspective, it was a lack of character, lack of courage, wanting to be cool, being involved with something that seemed maybe exciting or bigger than me. If you watch any of the news, and there was plenty of news around it, they will tell you it was an attempt to cover up embezzlement. I don’t have reason to believe that’s what it was. I know that wasn’t my purpose, because my embezzlement was already discovered, already in a lawyer’s office, and I was already in talks for restitution in exchange for no charges being filed. So, I can tell you definitively, there was no advantage to me in that regard. But Josh, on the other side he… Never mentioned that being the main issue. What he really wanted to get rid of was his employment contract because as weird as this might seem, we all signed non compete clauses in our employment contract. Now, now I know, especially in the state of Arizona, they would have been really hard pressed to actually enforce his either because it’s a right to work state, which means non compete clauses. There’s very little that can actually be enforced unless you’re doing exactly the same thing and just stole all of their clients. Which is a whole different conversation. But bottom line is that’s Best reason and you can I’m kind of rambling and it’s like it’s because I really don’t know I really don’t have like this succinct Hey, we did it for this reason. But what I can tell you is that it didn’t happen overnight. You’re absolutely right And I think that most of us didn’t think it was going to happen at all. I think most of us kind of felt like it was an idea, maybe an idea born out of frustration, maybe an idea born out of fear. I can speak for me personally. I know that josh, whose idea it was he was an idea or he always had a big idea. He always had something he was working on and almost never Did it come to fruition?
Kristi Lowe:
Well,
Jon Antonucci:
And me being the, the younger friend, the, the, the younger brother, if you will, in that, that pair, I got really tired of being the one that told him why his dreams weren’t going to work. And it was probably about six months before this incident that I had realized like, you know what, I’m really tired of being the one that he thinks is, you know, the bad guy, right? He’s the one that he thinks, man, every time I come up with an idea, you just got to tell me why it’s not going to work. And so I stopped. I just started saying, Oh man, that’d be great. Let’s, let’s do it knowing that it was usually going to fall apart. And I just wasn’t going to invest my energy positive or negative into a plan that was a great idea, maybe but not going to go anywhere. And I think I took that line of reasoning into this, not great idea, but just like, you know what, it is what it is. Sure. Yeah, that’s, you know, whatever. And I, and I think what kind of happened is, is there was like an overlapping with the four of us where. There would often be one of us that maybe was asking a hard question, or maybe saying, Yeah, I don’t know. But it never happened where we all were at the same time. And maybe there was even three of us that said, Yeah, I don’t know. But there’s always one person that was kind of carrying the plan. And it was never the same person. It’s not like, Oh, there was one bad guy in this. We all bore culpability. But I do believe that if any one of us had just said, I’m not doing this, The rest of us probably would have kind of went, Eh, alright. And it probably wouldn’t have gone much further. And none of us did that, and specifically I did not have the courage to say, Guys. I’m not, no, you guys are, you guys are an idiot. I’m not doing it.
Kristi Lowe:
were the youngest of them all, weren’t you? Were you the youngest
Jon Antonucci:
I wasn’t, I was not the youngest, at least, I don’t, I think I was like middle. So three of us were all around the same age. We were all 18, 19. And then Josh was significantly older. I honestly, it’s an interesting question. I don’t think anyone’s asked me. I don’t know where I fit. But… I think that the that whole leadership thing played a role, whether I was the youngest, the middle or even the oldest, which I wasn’t. But I definitely held a leadership role and that that really hurt me in the sentencing and all that stuff, because most people assumed that it must have been my idea for anybody else to go through with it. And even though it wasn’t my idea, I do recognize the culpability that I have is simply being a natural leader and being present. That puts me too much is given much is required. So Kind of a lengthy period. We even had gone the night before. Nothing ever happened. It was, you know, no, no, it’s not not a good night kind of thing. And I think we all just kind of never thought it was actually going to happen. And then when it got real, it got real really fast. And none of us really knew what to do. I can tell you that the plan as it was developed was never executed. The fire was lit, but the way it was supposed to all happen, I mean, the whole thing fell apart. And I wasn’t even there when the match was struck. I was about a half a block away running away for sure. out of, just sheer terror. But yeah, so I,
Kristi Lowe:
that video, you know, okay, so let me stop and fill our listeners in for a second. ABC did a story where they showed the camera and the,
Jon Antonucci:
camera never lies.
Kristi Lowe:
they said the camera never lies, right? But that wasn’t you in, it shows three people there.
Jon Antonucci:
Yeah, yeah, my attorney told me that. He goes, who was that? And I said sir, his name was Jeffrey. I said, sure, Jeffrey. It could be an angel for all I know. All I can tell you, I was the first one out of that window, I literally dive rolled off the roof, and was about a block and a half away. The way the buildings were structured, I was all the way on the other side of that office complex building, around another building, when the fireball went into the sky. So I don’t know. I do know that was a huge part of their their case. They thought I was there. They also cited a quote redheaded short woman or a short woman with short red hair that they thought was me at the scene and I’m like, I would have loved to have been there to try to help my friend. I was not, I didn’t even have that much courage even when it all went south. I didn’t have the courage to actually stay. I Josh had told us all, Hey, if we get caught, you guys need to get out of here. You have your whole lives ahead of you. Okay. get caught here. And so that’s what we did. We got out of there as soon as we saw fire trucks. So no, it wasn’t me. I was at least a block and a half away when the actual I shouldn’t say when the match was lit. I don’t know how much time there was between match lit and fireball. But when that fireball went into the sky, I was on the other side of two buildings and saw it went. Oh, whoa.
Kristi Lowe:
Oh, crap.
Jon Antonucci:
yeah, exactly. And so Josh and Jeff were still there and Jeff who was there he told me, he’s like, yeah, we, Josh and I were the only two up there. I don’t know where they think that third person was. I don’t know if there’s a shadow from the camera. Those were double plate, double paned glass windows. So there was a thought that it could have been creating a weird double shadow, but whatever it was, it was Jeff and Josh were the only two people on that roof. And um, You know, Jeff did his best to put him out and thought he had him out when he left, but it was, it was unfortunately not enough.
Kristi Lowe:
Yeah. Well, and to, to fill the listeners in, what happened, they had poured the gasoline, and when they poured the gasoline, Josh, lit the match, but because of the amount of, vapor in the air when he lit the match, I’m sure he was probably planning to touch something to light it, thinking he was going to have time to get out of there, but instead, when, when it happened. It engulfed him in flames. I know that what, in the act of this, what, what you were doing was wrong, but At the same time, I’m really sorry you lost your friend in, in this. You know, we’ve all been 19 and, and put our trust and faith in things that, or people that have let us down and I’m really sorry though that, that you lost your friend and that he didn’t get to see the other side of life like where you are today. I’m really sorry for that.
Jon Antonucci:
Thanks.
Kristi Lowe:
that had to have been a burden as you moved through, not only did you, you know, you were dealing with this arson and, and the manslaughter charge that they charged you with, but I mean, I have a hard time. Can I be honest with you? I have a hard time with that because it is, you didn’t cause his death, although you were charged and convicted of manslaughter, if that makes
Jon Antonucci:
Yeah, I was actually charged with first degree murder. The way that the law works in Arizona is that anytime there’s a felony that’s been committed, and somebody dies in the commission of that felony, it’s considered capital murder. So, the very first conversation I had with my attorney will… forever be etched in my mind as he sat on the other side of that glass and I’m in maximum security jail and he said, hello, Mr. Antonucci. My name is Jeffrey Kirchler. I’m your court appointed attorney. I will be your court appointed attorney for the duration of your pretrial proceedings unless the state chooses to seek the death penalty, at which point I will no longer be able to be your court appointed attorney and they will assign you another. that’s a lot to take in for a 19 year old that at that point, I still had not understood even what my actions were at that point. My thought and my kind of thinking was I helped break a window. That was my action. I had helped break a window. And so the responsibility for criminal damage or trespassing was really all I had in. been even willing to take responsibility for. And actually, I say that actually might not even be true there. I might’ve, I think at that point, that first conversation, I think I was still lying. I think I was still saying I wasn’t even there at that point. I was still trying to claim complete innocence at that moment. And then within a, maybe a couple of months, I finally admitted, yes, I was there. Yes, I was part of it, et cetera, but I was still struggling with the actual, like, what did I do versus the ripple effects. And so, yeah, that’s, a lot to take in. So I was originally charged with first degree murder. I pled down to manslaughter and arson of an occupied structure. and there’s, there’s a lot there that, we can parse over, occupied structure. It was occupied by us.
Kristi Lowe:
Yeah.
Jon Antonucci:
nobody else in that building, but we were charged with arson of an occupied structure because it was occupied by us. And it’s like that. That’s a much like that’s a that’s an F two to an F three. That’s a difference of potentially up to 10 years in prison between that distinction. So there’s that. But yeah, I, I said for years, like I now. for 15 years down the road now, and now I can take full responsibility. I can recognize that my presence there had a dynamic impact and that my lack of courage resulted in tragedy. And I can recognize that the natural leadership tendency does, even if my actions were potentially minimal, my presence had a bigger impact and therefore I bear additional responsibility, even if not technical culpability. But even that I, I did not kill Josh and I miss Josh and Josh will forever hold a dear place in my heart, but, but I’m with you and people have had a big issue with that. They claim I’m not actually sorry for my actions because I’ve never admitted to killing Josh. And that’s. You know, I’m not trying to dismiss my responsibility. I certainly don’t want to to omit anything. But you’re right. I did not kill josh. And that’s something that some people are not okay with.
Kristi Lowe:
Hmm. I can, I mean, I can see where people might say that, of course. I can hear in your voice that you’re saying, I know what I did was wrong. But take me to, take me to, okay, you’ve been sentenced. You found yourself in prison. How did you handle that initially? Where were you emotionally when you initially got to prison?
Jon Antonucci:
so I got to prison after 10 ish months in jail. And so that jail, does provide if nothing else, a bridge. It gives you, I don’t know, I guess the ability to, you’ve learned to cope by being separated from your family and the jail I was in because there was the charges I was facing was maximum security jail. So it wasn’t even just like I was in jail. I was, yeah. in jail, jail um, locked down. Yeah. I mean, locked down at least 16 hours a day. Things like that. So, it also for me, because I went from, like you described at the beginning, you know, promising all the way to just nothing. It was a, it was a, it was a ripping of the bandaid, right? And so I had to deal with it and I had to learn. And then in jail there because it was so restrictive and so maximum prison was almost like a A light ish at the end of the tunnel, because that’s when I might actually get in contact visits, and that’s when the food is supposed to get better. And that’s when you’re not locked down. You’re in a little bit more of an open environment. And so it was, almost like a reprieve to get to actual state prison, after being in jail for 10 months. so I don’t know if you know, kind of mentally going into jail. It’s it’s bewildering. And I’ll tell you this. It’s amazing what the human mind and body and everything can adapt to, people with everybody in the entitlements and everything that just seems to run rampant in the world today. We’re capable as human beings of adapting to just Crazy things. Not always can we do so healthily, but it is possible. And I, God’s grace was really abundant, both in the jail as well as in prison proper. Um, But you know, how did I kind of navigate? What was my mindset? I think in jail, my mindset was kind of twofold. One, I’ve got to survive and two, I’ve got to get out of here. Those were kind of the two thoughts right away in jails. Quickly, it became apparent I wasn’t getting out of there. That wasn’t that wasn’t it. The cards were not on the table. And so at that point, it was like, okay, I need to survive. And over time, I don’t know that I have a specific like, this is when this happened. But over time, it went from, okay, I’ve got to survive. And I transitioned to more of a I’m going to choose to thrive. I’m not going to let this be a thing. This is the circumstances I am in. I put myself here. And so we’re going to make the best of this and we’re going to see the situation redeemed. And eventually the title of my booklet became, redeeming the time. He does.
Kristi Lowe:
He redeems everything, doesn’t he?
Jon Antonucci:
really does. Yeah,
Kristi Lowe:
You and I kind of communicated before this, and you talked about that you had to address some of your own character flaws and, and learn how to be productive while you were incarcerated. So you had to make the decision, okay, I’m going to make this, I’m going to deal with what is going on in my life that got me here. Because there had to have been a realization of there, there’s something in my life that has caused me to end up being here. And as I tell my kids, you know, you can use your power for good or evil. and this was the point where you had to decide, like. Okay, what am I going to do with these giftings that God’s given me? so tell me more and tell the listener more about some of the character flaws that you, you saw and you were like, okay, I’ve got to deal with this, and then what’d you do with it?
Jon Antonucci:
Yeah, I think it started by just recognizing that that prayer of my ways not working is powerful on both a relationship with God level as well as a confession or acknowledgement of status level. You know, the gospel always starts with us as broken people and anybody that tries to omit the fact that we are broken people, I don’t believe is actually presenting the gospel. They’re presenting a good news, but not the good news. So, I don’t believe Jesus came to save us from our circumstances, and so when I realized that it wasn’t about, getting out of hell, and it was about actually submitting to, submitting my life to God, at that point you begin to have to say, okay, what wasn’t submitted to God? And so, some of the character flaws that I saw in myself. One of which was probably the biggest one and it’s, it was overarching everything else. And that was just a a character of duplicitousness. I was never the same person depending on which group I was in. And I was all, God forbid any of my circles crossed because there was going to be a paradox. It was going to be difficult to explain. And so that was part of it. And here’s the cool thing. Jail eliminates that from being a possibility because everyone can see you all the time. And so you are who you are. And I’ll tell you this, there’s a lot of danger in the incarcerated community or whatever, but the people that are actually in the least danger are just the people that are consistent. You can be a complete whack job as long as you’re the same every single day. And people pretty much know what they’ve got coming when you’re comes to dealing with you. You’re for the most part, not on every scenario, but for the most part, they’ll leave you alone. And so this whole, you know, I’m going to live a double life thing. As much as that might’ve thought made me think I was cool outside of there. It was like, well, wait a minute, like this is a big deal. And am I going to actually live for God or not? Because it’s not, I can’t just go to Bible study and pretend to live for God and then not. It was interesting. There was a lockup episode. In addition to the 2020 episode that you cited earlier, there’s a lockup episode, and there’s a scene in that episode that actually bothered me quite a bit when it happened. Because it was at a juncture in my life where two things had radically changed. Number one I had at least in theory, I’m sure there’s still work to be done, but in theory I was no longer being a duplicitous person. I, who I was on Monday was the same as who I was on Sunday and was the same I was in the morning and the evening. And then number two is the things I was Doing which may or may not have been different, right? I remember I was serving in church. I was doing all those things because that’s what I was supposed to do. The things I was doing were coming from a very different place. They weren’t coming from a desire to known. They weren’t coming from a desire to be patted on the back. And in fact, a lot of it was the opposite. You kind of get mocked and ridiculed a little bit when you’re doing some of those things And so, those two things had changed. Well, there was a time where lock up, the lock up camera team had come in several times and they kept trying to, supposedly anyways, they kept saying they were going to try to make it while there was a scheduled Bible study. Because they knew that was something that I was doing in the jails. Well, that never happened and so one time they came in and they were like, Hey, we’re not going to make it for one of your scheduled, can you just put one together real quick, we’d like to try to capture that. And so, I was like, I guess I can try. And so I went, you know, kind of just went door to door like, Hey, do you want to go to anyone that would normally go? Or at least I had seen go in the recent past. So when I got to one door, there’s a a point on the camera where the guy goes, Hey man, why don’t you do that for regular Bible studies? You know, why, why are you showing off for the cameras? And it was such a piercing heart statement because that was who I was. At one point in that moment, I was doing something very different because I had always made it a practice to not go try to solicit people to come. I wanted it to be the Holy Spirit moving them to come and if God brought them if my light was shining and if the hope that was within me was prompting people to ask people about that hope, then they were invited. And so I make sure people knew they were invited, but I would never go get people for Bible study. I felt like that was. I’d seen it be used as manipulation, like, hey, you’re going to be a Bible study, right? And then they feel like they can’t say no, because half the people in jail and prison are going to Bible study only because they think that’s what Jesus wants in order for them to get out of jail or prison. And so, I had made that a practice not to. So anyways, that was a very hurtful thing. And that guy didn’t know he was hurting me. I don’t think he meant to hurt me. I think he was just seeing what he felt like he observed, but it hit a nerve for me because that was. Absolutely who I was and that was a great example of when I had to be okay with who my character actually was Now under god’s grace as opposed to who it is what it had been Previously, so that was a big thing. Of course that meant no more lying That meant you know a variety of things that needed to be dealt with largely integrity. Character just Who I was as a person and saying all right, am I going to be Jon or am I going to be? The new creation in Christ Jesus. And once that had kind of happened, that positioned me to also help others. And so it wasn’t, again, it wasn’t a night and day or overnight transition, but there was just kind of a slow progression where people noticed who I was. And most of the time I didn’t solicit opportunities for leadership or opportunities to invest into others. It was. Handed to me and in one case I can think of I was literally trying to stay under the radar Just do some schooling and somebody that I didn’t even know what came up and said. Hey, we’ve been watching you We see how you’re doing your time We’d like you to take over this position when I go home and it was a very high responsibility position there on the unit And so just kind of a those were some of the experiences that I had And it just turned into all right. You know what? This is where God has placed me I don’t know for how long there was a, a lengthy period where, you know, obviously I’m hoping that this, that sentence is going to be reduced. We pursued uh, appeals. We pursued what’s known as clemency didn’t happen, didn’t happen. And so I had to uh, to kind of ask that question like, all right, well, what if I have to stay? What if I’m doing the full time that I thought that I’ve been told I have to do?
Kristi Lowe:
It was twelve, twelve years? Fourteen years.
Jon Antonucci:
So 14 year sentence and 12 years is what you do on a 14 year sentence with good behavior.
Kristi Lowe:
Okay, there you
Jon Antonucci:
Yeah, and so, you know, you talk about the even if, right? So the even if, so even if I have to stay. does that mean? And just recognizing a couple of things, recognizing, first of all, that there was a mission there that God had. And that, goes deep. I could spend 20 minutes talking about that alone, but I think a lot of people view prison in two different ways when they’re ministering there, whether you’re from the inside or from the outside. Either they think of it in terms of this is practice for the real world. Or they think of it as we’re going to go in and serve them, and that’s kind of our act of charity, and then we’ll come out and do something meaningful in the real world. And in both cases, the idea is the people in prison aren’t as important as the people out of prison. And so I had to come to the realization that the souls that were in front of me were just as important as the souls that I would one day have in front of me. And that provided some perspective, and then of course there’s, okay, even if I have to do all this time, is it worth it? If one person. Gains an eternal relationship with Jesus Christ due to the ministry and due to these things. And so, it turned into a very service oriented endeavor. And I did both ministry as well as what were known as I P P stood for inmate peer programs, which was a series of rehabilitation programs that I helped to create. And we had a little badges that I made and every badge on the back said, How can I serve you? And that phrase might seem like, Oh, that’s that’s neat. But in there, it was like, What do you mean? Like, why would you put that
Kristi Lowe:
What is that? Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Antonucci:
And and I, I had the opportunity to share the idea of what now I get to do every day and that’s promote servant minded leadership and what it means to genuinely want to serve and love another person.
Kristi Lowe:
How long did you end up serving? All total?
Jon Antonucci:
Let’s see here. So I was incarcerated as of June 14, 2009. I walked out May 10, 2021. So a month shy of 12 years.
Kristi Lowe:
Okay. Okay. I, that, you know, prison, there are times people find themselves In a position they never thought that they would find themselves. And, and I think that that’s probably something people would have said about you. They never would have thought that Jon Antonucci would have been the guy who ended up in jail for 12 years. But sometimes we find ourselves in these places where, you know, we never thought it. And yet God used it. Even, even though you never thought you would end up there, but he used it in a way you never could. Nobody writes their script and goes, oh yeah, this is how I’m going to write the script here. So when you got out and, so you’ve been out for two years. That’s
Jon Antonucci:
just over. Yeah, just over. So my two year mark was in May and then I officially be, they call it off paper. That means I’m no longer under community supervision or anything like that as of the 21st of last month, so just a couple of weeks ago now we celebrated and, and my, my wife put together a very meaningful get together of, of friends and family who shared just kind of, the, the conclusion of that part of the journey and we kind of move on and, and learn from that and, and continue to see what God has for me.
Kristi Lowe:
How have things been with your family and, and your relationship with your friends? What was that like when you came, you know, when you were in prison? Were you supported? And then, what was it like whenever you got out?
Jon Antonucci:
So I’m going to say those are kind of two separate questions. So let me address the friend part first, and then I’ll come back to the family part. That’s a little easier question. The family the friends, one of the things that I’ve said about Josh without diminishing the loss of Josh, I honestly don’t know if I have fully processed. Josh is passing and that might seem really strange. There’s definitely trauma that’s there. I, I, I literally saw him on fire at one point and so like that’s in forever ingrained in my, in my memory banks. But at the same time, The day I lost Josh, I lost thousands of people. I was a martial arts instructor to 500 different students, along with their older brothers and sisters and families that I knew. And so Josh, from a, from a, just a purely psychological perspective, and even an emotional perspective, Josh was taken from my life at the exact same time as thousands of other people. And what was very surprising at the time was there were people that I would have thought, you know, we were tight and they would care, and many of them were so hurt by my actions, because the people that love you the most are the ones that are hurt the most by your poor choices. And so, some of them were just like, nope. We’re out of here. And I never heard from them again. Some people, they were there at the beginning, maybe even showed up to a few court dates and then disappeared. And then there were other people that honestly, I didn’t even know that we were that close. And they were the ones that actually stuck through and, and, and, you know, would write letters and things like that. And then there’s been people that after I got out, you know, I found out after I got out, like they’d been waiting. They, they, they were, they were waiting. You know, they didn’t know how to communicate. They didn’t feel like that was okay, but they were waiting and, and there was, there’s one lady he was one of my former students and his mother you know, she broke down in tears when she saw me again for the first time. And so I’ve even some former students that have, that have you know, connected with me. One of them actually got together a group of friends and we’re like, Hey, we want to get back into. Into self defense. Can you come teach us? And so I spent probably six months kind of hopefully helping them as an as adults, you know, prepare and be ready as they got married to defend themselves and their families and things. So that’s kind of the friend side of things. The co defendants. I’m still loosely in contact with one of them. The other one I’ve heard nothing from for many, many years. But obviously we, you know, built new relationships with other people and, and so there’s been some meaningful ones that have lasted a long time. The family, on the other hand you know, I’ve said for, for years and years that the families of those who are incarcerated have it significantly harder than the ones who are incarcerated. And that might seem strange, but just trust me when I say those of us that are incarcerated, it sucks, you know, I’m not going to pretend like it’s, it’s, it’s a great time, but the reality is, is we’re going through it. And because we’re going through it, we know what’s happening. We know what to expect. We know how to navigate it. You learn over time, you know, things to say not to say things like that. Meanwhile, your family is at home just stressing and every time they see something on the news about a prison, they don’t know if it’s the one you’re in or if it’s going to affect it. the one you’re in. And you know, you’ve got maybe a time. Hey, I’ll call you on thursday. And then the unit is locked down and you can’t call and they’re sitting there wondering what’s going on. Is he okay? It’s very stressful for the families. And so I have counted. It’s such a blessing to be able to have Amazing relationships with my family for pretty much the entire time. My parents were extraordinarily supportive kind of from the start. And because I stopped being me it was a lot easier. There was less tension. Imagine that. And so that was really great. But then my siblings, it’s really interesting. And I, this is, this is a concept that’s difficult to explain. But many people, when they, Inter incarceration. They have a, you know, usually a chunk of people that are supporting them. And for many, many people, they, I’m gonna just gonna say whether intentionally or unintentionally, they abuse that support, whether that’s just entitlement, whether that is conveyed frustration, whatever it is. And so what happens is over time that support wanes and dwindles and kind of just gets less and less. And often that’s in the form of financial support, letters, any number of things. You can usually tell how long a person has been incarcerated by the amount of mail they get. First year, they’re getting letters every day. Second year, every other day. By the time you’ve been there 10 years, you’re getting a letter once a month if you’re lucky. And that’s just, that’s just the way it goes. Well, God put in my path a, a news article very early in my incarceration, and it basically was this article on the, the, the impact of incarceration on the family, and it radically transformed the way that I thought about things. And basically the author said, you know, you’re telling your family about your difficulties because they’re asking. They’re saying, hey, what are you going through? You know, what’s going on? And you think you’re answering their question, but what you’re actually doing is putting them in the impossible situation of caring. And being able to do nothing about it. And so they don’t know what to say. They don’t know how to respond. And you do that enough, and… They run out of things to talk about because, you know, they tell you about their, their life and you can’t be a part of that life and they know that hurts you, so they don’t want to tell you about that, but they don’t know what’s going on with you. And if they did, it’s just the same old stuff. And so I made a very deliberate decision that every letter, every phone call and every visit, I was going to put every effort into making sure that the other person enjoyed it at least as much as I did. I wanted them to look forward to my letters as much as I looked forward to theirs. I wanted them to look forward to the phone calls and so forth. And so that paid rich dividends as our relationships really became truly love focused because love cares about the other person. And they were caring about me and I was actually caring about them. them. And that really made for some dynamic relationships. My siblings and I have wonderful relationships. The brother just younger than me, we got extraordinarily close. He helped me in more ways than I can enumerate in this in this time we have. But one thing that was also kind of need is not only did I retain family and actually my network built, it was crazy. By the time I was leaving, I think I sent like 80 christmas cards to the to everybody in my, in my, on my contact list the date of the year before I got out. But not only that, what again, a lot of times people’s their network shrinks and also as their network shrinks, their finances shrink because people are unable to provide any sort of meaningful contribution support. Well, with me, I never expected my family to send anything. I didn’t feel like it was their responsibility. I put myself there. I was They shouldn’t have to pay for it. So, I never, never asked for money. And uh, one brother, specifically, really just took it upon himself to try to help in any way he could. And what was neat is instead of uh, things dwindling, because as my siblings grew up, they became more generous I actually ended up with more money throughout the time of my incarceration, because, especially one brother, every time he got a raise, so did I. And it was really, really a neat experience to, to For that and just tried to be a good steward with that. By the time I had left, I had so much money coming in and they knew this. I sent him. Actually, I would send every month. I’d send a little detailed list of what I had done with the money. You just, I felt like if you’re going to send, send money, you deserve to know how it’s being used. But I was giving away probably 25 to 50 percent of the stuff that was coming in just because I was able to, and I really felt compelled to be a blessing to those around me.
Kristi Lowe:
God did a work on you in jail, didn’t he, buddy?
Jon Antonucci:
Indeed, indeed.
Kristi Lowe:
Do you ever wonder, like, do you become this person without what you’ve walked through? You know?
Jon Antonucci:
Yeah, so when I, when I’ve given my, my testimony outside of the redeeming the time context, I have referred to it as no excuses. Because I, I really don’t have any, right? Like there’s, there’s no, other than my own ego, there’s no reason I should have had to go through all of this to become the person that I’ve been made into. And so would I have, well, I’m going to suggest no, cause I’m going to suggest God did what was necessary. He didn’t do it cause it was convenient. He did it because it was necessary to bring me into conformity with his will. But it’s really ridiculous that that’s the truth because there’s no reason that it should have been that way other than just the, the, the ego and the sin in my life that, that just was so, so deeply ingrained.
Kristi Lowe:
Yeah. Well, I’m, I’m glad that you’re out. I’m glad we’re here today. I’m glad that I can hear whenever I’m hearing you talking and I imagine that our listeners are going to hear is that there has been a refinement and there’s a For lack of a better word, just you’ve grown up buddy. Like you grew up a lot. You had, you had to, it was a necessity. And I think that it’s amazing that you’ve had a fresh, You’ve had the ability to have a fresh start, but then you’ve also taken advantage of the, the opportunity. You’re not letting what you went through go to waste. You’re not letting it define your future. In fact, this morning. I, I, typically whenever I’m getting ready for an episode, you know, it’s just kind of mulling through my our mistakes might have consequences, but they do not have to define the rest of our life. And we, we get to choose what we do with our mistakes. We can either let them define us, or we, we can let God redefine and, and redeem them. And I think that that’s what you’ve done, I really do.
Jon Antonucci:
I’ve said it for years. God has the uncanny ability to take our stupidity and turn it into something great. and you talked about being refined. I, I, I would say that’s continued. I mean, even as I’ve begun SML consultative and, and that’s, that’s a whole nother conversation, but there’s been success and there’s been amazing fruit that, that I’m so thankful for. But at the same time, it’s. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life because for many, many times in the leadership capacities that I’ve served in in the past like I kind of mentioned, they’ve been handed to me. It was just like, Hey, we see you’re capable here. So God is still refining me. He’s still developing my character. He’s still saying, Hey, I want you to rely on me. Hey you know, we’re not just going to take the easy road. We’re not going to take the disingenuous road. One of the things I’ve made a practice of is when people are ready to hire me or we’re looking into making that consulting relationship formal. I always make sure they understand who I am and what’s happened in my past so they don’t get any surprises. And that’s had it. That has had consequences where I said, Hey, just so you’re aware, here’s kind of my five, you know, 30 second storyline and their whole face changes. And they say, okay, we’ll be in touch. And, you know, the question is, is my integrity worth more than that sale now? But that’s still, you know, that’s a day by day process that I think God is still taking through and it’s not easy, but I’m, I’m thankful for it.
Kristi Lowe:
Well, and the fact that you’re trusting him with it. I mean, he’s able to, he is able to provide over and above anything we could imagine, What he is able to do with our faithfulness is far better than what we can do whenever we try to hold on to it too tightly. And so I’m grateful to hear that of you too. as we’re wrapping up today, is there an even if statement you have or you’ve realized that has become a truth in your life? Do you have anything like that you would want to share with everybody?
Jon Antonucci:
Just to just to emphasize kind of what I did mention, you know, I think a lot of lot of us, even even those of us that know better intellectually, we have the tendency to believe that God is kind of this vending machine. And as long as we put in all the right tokens, we’re going to get the blessings that we want. And so I think that every believer is going to At some point in their life, they’re going to have to come to that moment of saying even if circumstances don’t change, even if I don’t get what I want, even if you know, fill in the blank in that. For me, it was even if I don’t get out of prison before the 14 years God is still good. There is still a purpose in this and he’s still calling me to be faithful. And I, I took personal comfort in what I’m gonna call the the embellished story of Joseph. We read the story of Joseph. It’s I think it’s fourteen chapters in the Bible. And it’s really, it take, you know, maybe thirty, forty five minutes to read the whole story of Joseph. And we forget that it took place over many years. And so when Joseph gets sent into the prison and then we, you know, a couple verses later it’s like he was faithful and so he made him the keeper of the prison, that didn’t happen overnight. He, he scrubbed a lot of toilets per se. He, he was faithful in the little things and that gave him an opportunity to be positioned in the big things. And so I think sometimes we want to go right to big things. We want God to, you know, open those doors and open the windows and pour out his blessings. And he is, but it’s not in the way that we think. So even if we don’t get it the way we want it God’s still calling us to be faithful and he is still good. And when we are unfaithful, he remains faithful.
Kristi Lowe:
Well said. Well said, sir. Well said. What a joy. What a joy to meet you, Jon Antonucci. I’m so glad that you agree. Thank you for coming on the show.
Jon Antonucci:
Thank you for inviting me.
Kristi Lowe:
Yeah, absolutely. in the show notes and connect you with a couple of different places that you can find Jon and learn more about him and what he is doing, with his leadership, consulting work now. So thanks for being here and good Lord willing guys, I’ll see y’all next week. If you haven’t been to evenifpodcast. com, head over there and pick up your free Spotify playlist. It’s full of praise and worship music that I listen to just about every day in my house. So go over there and check that out.