Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch: Ep. 7

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. His next story is about a friend of mine. We’re close in age, but have little else in common. Mitchell Rutledge, a.k.a. Big Mitch, was born black and poor in Georgia. I was born kind of brown and middle-class in New Jersey. He never met his father. I still talk to my ninety-four-year-old father every week. He dropped out of high school in his early teens and was illiterate into his early twenties. I was surrounded by books growing up and finished graduate school in my early thirties.

Big Mitch spent the last forty-four years of his life in Alabama prisons for killing a man. But this is not a story about an innocent man sentenced to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Big Mitch never denied the crime or made excuses for it. This is the story of my friend’s spiritual transformation while serving his life sentence. It’s also about a friendship. Only God could have engineered a friendship that began with a single Sunday morning call. Through these weekly conversations, I hope you come to know and love him as much as I do. Here’s Episode Seven, and this conversation took place on February twenty-fifth, 2024, and we start things off a bit differently. Included in this conversation is my dear friend Bo. There’d been an infidelity in the marriage. It was bea, and there’d been a separation in the marriage. And Bo was interested in talking about his crisis, his spiritual crisis and his marriage crisis with a man who’d never been married but had a lot to offer. Here’s Mitch talking to my friend Bo.

This is a free call from N.U., an incarcerated individual at the Alabama Department of Corrections. To accept this pre-call, press one; to refuse this pre-call, press two. Thank you for using Securius.

You may start the conversation.

Now, you know, if life is full of ups and downs, you know, that’s that’s that’s that’s what it is. At the same time, decisions come with a living, and, uh, I think, rather, yeah, you’ve got to get to the room. But making you making these bad decisions? And if you do, you have any clue or whatever your kryptonite is? And you you saying that the Chrystanite maybe other women’s, more females in your life, from what have you? But that’s the that’s the root. You got to deal with yourself first, and before you can deal with anybody else, you got to deal with yourself. But as always, I’m gonna take you back to God, Jesus Christ. Is that, uh, I first of all say, you know, you got to ask Him to help you. You got to ask Him to guide you. And once you ask God to guide you and you read His words, then the reverence and respect that you will have for Him will allow you to be able to focus on the things that He is speaking about in His words, which will help you a great deal, you know, because that’s what it helped me overcome most of my obstacles, the things that I’m dealing with. It is another thing that I feel like everybody should understand, and that is, is, is somebody loves you, then you gotta love him. I assume you and your wife love each other, but for whatever reason, y’all ain’t been able to work that out. And then, you know what that is? That’s the enemy that separating you all, at anything coming between you all in various and various ways, you see. So, you gotta repognize the enemy, and the enemy ain’t necessarid coming in the farm of a physical men. It can come in the farm of alcohol, and come to the farm of drug, can come in the farm of anything. But it’s it’s it’s a separation there. It’s a bridge that the enemy is created between you and your wife. You see it, she said. But for whatever reason, all can’t bridge that gap. And I’m here to tell you this morning that you ain’t gonna be a dood with that. Christ. I’m serious, now. I don’t. I don’t. I don’t say that based on something that someone told me or something I read in the book, even though ain’t nothing wrong with that. I was speaking from experience, my relationship with Christ, the things that He brought me through, the things that I tried to overcome, and needs faulty some years incocerated, and I tried to bridge the gap between myself and other issues in my life. I never could do it. But when I gave it Jesus Christ, I was able to do it. That they to save your relationship, you gotta, you gotta sacrifice all the little things that you want her right now. Can you do that? Yes? I can’t. Okay, you do that right there, and you will sure her her because you ain’t concerned about it right now. Well, I want you to do this. You need you ain’t concerned about nothing but what she needs, how she needed. That gonna heal her, that gonna heal the relationship, that gonna redeem everything. That’s the same way with your daughter and everything. And I would say, I would go so far to say, he’s right here. It is that you’re gonna have to do that in general right now with that, if you know the way you’re going right now, because that’s the way the enemy they try to continue to trick us and to see us wanted us to. Well, you got to give me something, you got to show me now. Now, we got to act like Christ right now.

And you’ve been listening to Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch, and my goodness, what words of wisdom! “You’ve got to deal with yourself first before you can deal with anybody else,” he told my friend Bo. “You’ve got to deal with yourself,” and always, he added, “I’m going to take you back to God.” When we come back, more of Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch, here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, and I’m inviting you to help Our American Stories celebrate this country’s two-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday, coming soon. If you want to help inspire countless others to love America like we do, and want to help us bring the inspiring and important stories told here about a good and beautiful country, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to Our American Stories. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the Donate button. Any amount helps. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. And we continue with Our American Stories and Episode Seven of Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch.

And in this episode, Mitch is counseling my friend Bo through a marriage crisis of his own doing. And by the way, Mitch knows what it’s like to feel like you aren’t worth redemption after doing a terrible thing. No man knows more about that. Mitch killed a man. But you are worth the work to become a better person, and forgiveness does come. Let’s pick up where we last left off with Big Mitch counseling my friend Bo.

You know what, one of the things that was defeating me when you’re going through something like what you’re going through, because I’d have been there. Uh, low self-esteem. You, you, you begin to dislike yourself. You begin to feel a shame of yourself. Like what you said, you feel like, uh, you ain’t worried and now, because the way people’s looking at you are so, that’s one of the Endemis made. The tricks to destroy you ain’t work there to have you feeling so down on yourself, feeling so sorry, feeling like you nothing because of what you did. That ain’t nothing but a trick. Don’t feel that way, even though people may look at you different because of what you did. And they got to look at you different because of what you did, because you did something that was, uh, they felt, that it was outside your character. But I used to feel that way because of what I did. I feel ashamed and and and pitiful and and I was in couldn’t hardly hold my head. It even, and even, had an effect on me having it feeling so bad, as that, I didn’t even want to take care of myself like I needed to take care of myself. I didn’t even want to, uh, to… I wasn’t even motivated to try to do the things that I needed to do. It just took my motivation away. It took my, uh, it took my will to change the way. It did that. But I had to, but I had to stop. I had to stop condemning myself. I had to stop hating myself. I’m not saying you hate yourself. I’m talking about mention. I had to stop feeling so ashame of myself. I had to stop alow how other people me affect me in that way. I had to rise above out, and it was hard. But once I did that, and the most thing I did, it was the struggle, the struggle to change. But I had to stop defeeding myself by condemning myself. And once I was able to do that, and, and, and, and, and the ball game had changed. Because, see, if you’re feeling down on yourself, sorry for yourself, a shame of you have one mona bless yourself because of what you have done, or what people say you have done, then you can’t move forward like that. You’re, you’re, you’re, you’re not gonna be able to do it. You got to deal with you first. Then I got to told you earlier. You know, you, you, you, you. You got to throw all, all the things that you won’t, and your relationship can get better. You got to put that out of the way right now, and just folks in on your wife, and give away everything you need right now. You, when you’ve got to sacrifice, and one other thing you gotta do. You gotta sold feeling bad about yourself. You got, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta wake up from that. You gotta get stronger from that. You gotta getet say in your mind, set back. Regardless of what the homelooker is saying and what you trying, you got a purpose.

At this point in the conversation between my friend Bo and Big Mitch, Mitch decides to share an original poem about self-reflection.

One day, uh, uh, I wrote a poem. The title is “Reflection,” and that’s because you reflect. You’re reflecting back home yourself and the struggle that you’re dealing with with yourself. The title is “Reflection.” It is the sins, it is the sins of my past that plague my day-to-day existence as I struggle to evade the enemy of my past. He is an ever-present force in my life, and he finds no pleasure in my positive growth. He feedes off all the negative aspects of life that approach me on a day-to-day basis. When I lay down to sleep, he lays down with me, and when I rise, he rides. His intention, at any ways, is to leave and direct my path. I as always, since my revolution is to defeat him. He is I, the want of my past. Each morning we phase each other in the mirror, and he looks back at me with feet and jealousy. I smile. I am won by the grace of God, and I hope that makes a little sense.

Mitch then counseled Bo on how he can work his way back into Donna’s good graces one day at a time.

It’s like I said before, the only way you can show her, the only way you can show her that it’s not you as the deil, is that you got to, you got to go all in and show her that, hey, you’re worth. You’re worth her making an effort. You’re worth her forgiving you. You’re worth it. And you, you just… and you, you got to just sacrifice. You gotta, you gotta prove, you gotta, you gotta go through him. You got to be redeemed. You know she ain’t Jesus Christ, and know she, you know, so you can’t, you can’t strike the same thing from her that you want to speak to Jesus from Jesus Christ, because she’s a human being. At the end of the day, she mean hurt. She hit the trained, and she hurt with you. You, you got a job to do.

Mitch expresses gratitude here for the blessing to be able to have a conversation with someone in such desperate need of spiritual guidance.

It’s good to know who you are. Hmm, it’s really… and I’m glad that we know who we are. I’m glad that I had an opportunity, and I really mean that. I think I thank you this morning, uh, Lee. I thank you both for you guys. Have any time that if I can say or do anything to help hit him, it’s it’s a blessing anytime that I can sit down and communicate with somebody, and we can, uh, help each other, we can enlighten each other. It’s just like, uh, King Solomon said: social steel Charott and steel man sharp and man or human sharp and human. And, but anyway, we do that by discussion and everything. I feel good. Yeah, I love you guys, and I thank God when you all y’all have a good sun.

They okay. Well, the same of us Smith’s lot, this is, this has been awesome. I appreciate your time.

And, and all your words.

Yeah, they mean a lot.

I’ll take them to heart all right, now, and, uh, it’s gonna be great. But like I said, you got to be the sac official land. Right now, our host talk to you again and give you an update. All right. God bless. Okay, probably. Take care.

Listening to Big Mitch Council, one of my best friends, through a really tough patch in his life. Again, one that he created for himself, and one that Big Mitch created for himself. Mitch never ever made excuses for why he ended up in prison. He owned it, he took responsibility for it. And that’s the beginning of any redemption journey. And his words here: “You just gotta sacrifice,” he tells Bo. “You’ve got to go through the redemption process. She’s been hurt and you hurt her. But you got a job to do.” What wisdom! What advice! And again, Big Mitch has never been married, but boy does he know about the journey. That redemption journey, particularly the story of Big Mitch, continues here on Our American Stories.

After these messages, and.

We returned to Our American Stories and Episode Seven of Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch. And having finished with Bo, we continued our conversation, Mitch and I, and he expressed to me that one of the greatest joys in his life is the opportunity to offer guidance to those in need. But he owes his talents to one lady in particular, who offered him the same whight he was offering Bo when he was stuck in the darkness.

Such Lillian. She was a reading specialist, and she found out that I could read and write it one day. What she said: “I want you to start to just think about things and do the best you can to write down the things that you think.” I didn’t understand what she was talking about, and, uh, so she told me, said, “Well, what you think about being in that cell, and this round about this about ’85, or something like that?” I begin to start to put the sentences together, you know, still struggling with miss spelling and what have you. And so she never will call me Mitchell. She always called me Mitchell, she said, because Mitch sounded too much like the other words. So she said, “Well, Mitchell, how you feel about being in that celle that you’re in all day?” And I said, “Well, you know, it’s not a good feeling.” And then she said, “Well, you know, write about how you feel about some of the guys up there.” And it went on. So I guess around about ’86, that’s when she told me. She said, “Well, you know,” she always encouraged me, she did that, you know. And she said, “Well, Mitchell, you is a poet.” At the time, I really didn’t know what a poet me. I never heard the word poet, if. I really didn’t know what a poet was. So I said, you know, so I wasn’t ashamed to ask her anything, because I knew I had found idea that she really cared about me, and she was trying to help me, and I needed help. And I said, “Well, what is a poet?” So she told me a person that is able to particulate words and put them in a format to make a person be able to feel things or see things that they are not able to see on their own, or what have you. And so that’s how it started. And I began to grow and grow, and I still really didn’t feel that I was a poet, but I began to do more and more, and I began to write and write more things how I felt about things, and so on, and like this. Around about ’95, about ten years later, I began to believe that, “Okay, well, Mitchell, maybe you are poored.” You know, I don’t know, you know. So I was still on the lamb right there, unbelief in myself about that particular talent. But I began to see how some of the guys was respond to some of the things that I wrote. And then I began to sit down and just write about everything I can think of: life, anything, you know. And, and didn’t even know how I did it. I didn’t know that I had that type of mind that could do that. I really didn’t know that I can accumulate thoughts like that. I began to believe, I guess, around about twenty years later, I began to visit about two thousand and five. Bout twenty years later, I began to believe, “Okay, well, okay, we Mitch, you a poet.”

As he developed as a writer, Big Mitch began to write with intention. Here’s Mitch on the why behind his work.

When I sat down to write, my intention was to write something that can awaken someone or that can help someone see clear once they read it, to understand the troubles that they’re going through once they read it, and it started to centering around the Creator. At the end of most of my poems, it ends with individuals understanding the relationship with God, understanding that all that you go through in life, if we are going through it without seeking Him, then we’re gonna be last and confused, regardless what you gain or what you’re seeking or what you’re trying to accomplish. At the end of the day, if God is not at the root of it, then she ain’t gonna really be content or complete in nothing you do.

And it turns out that Big Mitch needed encouragement to grow in his newfound talents, and Sister Lilian, well, she never missed an opportunity to remind Mitch of his value.

She would always kail me things: “Make sure you are a counselor, meant sure you are a very out provoking person.” She encouraged me always in what she did. God use her to bring out any talents that I had in me that I didn’t know exist, because that was her whole, but general, concern to me to help me understand who I were, that was talent wise.