NPR · 20 hours ago

Sitting in a Jail cell, Alone and hopeless, a Man's Life Is Suddenly Changed

At 22, sitting alone in a jail cell after a drunken break-in, Jay had decided "the world would be better off without me in it" and made a plan to end his life. Through a vent came an unexpected voice -- a fellow inmate asking, "Can I pray for you?" Jay, who had long abandoned his religious upbringing, said yes, and though he cannot recall the exact words, he remembers how they landed: "Instead of wanting my life to be over, suddenly I saw hope." Nearly a decade later, with a job and love and a life he almost didn't live, Jay thinks constantly about the stranger who had "the courage to talk to a fellow inmate and be kind" in a moment when both were locked away from the world.