In his testimony in CT magazine, Allen Langham describes hitting rock bottom in prison and finding Jesus reaching out to him:

As a child, there was violence everywhere I turned. My mother had been widowed by her first husband, abused for 20 years by her second, and deserted by my father when I was eight months old. Throbbing with anger and resentment toward my absent father, I was constantly getting into scraps with neighborhood bullies, hoping to earn their respect. I was also abused several times: by a family friend, by a boy across the road, and by a man I can’t say much about because I’ve blocked the worst details from my memory.

One morning, alerted by the shrieks of my eldest sister, I came downstairs to find my mother dead on the sofa, the victim of a cerebral hemorrhage. Something snapped in me that day—I was only 14—that put me on the road to destruction for the next 20 years.

By the time I left home at 16, I was a ticking time bomb—angry, bitter, and lost. My sister ran pubs, and I started down the path of drinking, gambling, and fighting, emulating the “gangster” lifestyle. This was my idea of what it meant to be a man.

But I excelled at rugby, and at 17 I signed a professional contract with Sheffield Eagles. Craving acceptance from members of the criminal underworld I perversely thought of as “family,” I began fighting for money, selling drugs, collecting debts for dealers, and generally bullying and intimidating my way through life. I walked into my first prison term as a lost little boy trapped inside a professional rugby player’s body. It didn’t take long for prison to turn me into a hardened criminal.

Eventually, after stabbing a number of fellow inmates, I landed in a top-security prison in London. I hated who I had become. With my violent outbursts and paranoid behavior, I had pushed away anyone I ever cared for—and put my family through hell.

I finally hit rock bottom and decided to commit suicide. With tears streaming down my face, I dropped to my knees and made one final plea to God: “If you’re real and you hear me, put a white dove outside my prison window. Show me you are with me!” The next morning, I saw a dove sitting there. Something inside me jumped, and tears of joy replaced tears of despair.

I began praying and studying the Bible in earnest. Before going to sleep, I closed my eyes, imagined Jesus on the Cross, balled up my rage, and surrendered it to him. When I awoke, I felt peace like never before.

God, in his patience, kept using this broken vessel for his purposes. He has given me the privilege of going into prisons and testifying to the hope and forgiveness he offers. I have spoken to rooms full of men convicted of the most heinous crimes and seen them reduced to tears. God helped me launch a ministry (Steps to Freedom) that reaches out to young people abandoned by society. He let me return to my first love, sports, as a chaplain serving several teams.

Miraculously, God has even given me my family back. It has taken years, but one by one he has repaired broken relationships with my sisters and their families, with my three children, and with the father who deserted us so long ago. The refining process has been long and hard. But bit by bit, it’s polishing me into a trophy of God’s grace.