Photo credit: Darrell Tunningley
When I was in primary school, I was still playing shops with my plastic till. Slightly older than me, my brother Stephen was pretending he was He-Man. But if Darrell Tunningley had been there, I imagine he’d have been stealing my chewy hamburgers and coercing He-Man into a vicious battle disguised as his arch nemesis, Skeletor.
Because by the time he reached double-digits, Darrell was
fast descending into a dangerous downward spiral. By the age of 11 he was
boozing it up and dabbling with drugs. Before long he had graduated to stealing
cars, selling narcotics and generally getting up to no good.
The arrests started during his teens and it was clearly only
a matter of time before he’d be doing hard time. After committing an armed
robbery and thinking he’d got away with it, the young criminal found himself in
serious trouble. He was sentenced to a five-and-a-half year stint.
Prison life wasn’t too different form life on Knottingley’s Warwick
Estate, where he’d grown up. Having built up a reputation for himself on the
outside, no-one was going to mess with him on the inside. He was known for
extreme violence, and anyone that crossed him was treated to a generous portion
of it.
This is not the kind of guy you’d imagine going to an Alpha Course to learn about Christianity. But after dispatching one aggressive
knockback to the guy that invited him, Darrell realised attending the course
could actually be a handy skive. He dragged a few friends along and plonked
himself in front of the two decrepit nuns in charge of the series.
Initially hostile, Darrell eventually realised there was
something special about these women. Not only was he overwhelmed by their love
and patience, he actually started to listen to what they were saying. He began
to realise God wasn’t as irrelevant as he’d always thought and he suddenly felt
he needed answers to the many questions he’d harboured over the years.
After pouring his heart out to this God he’d heard so much
about one night in his cell, he expected some kind of lightning bolt revelation
but nothing happened. He went to bed feeling rather disappointed.
But the next morning things were very different. Not only
did he feel a strong aversion to the cigarettes he’d smoked and the drugs he’d
taken for many years, he started to experience a feeling of intense euphoria.
The prison chaplain explained to Darrell that Jesus had given him a completely
clean slate; that his past had been dealt with and he had been forgiven. He
instantly and openly renounced drugs and violence.
This opened him up to certain risks, but overcoming the dangers
and difficulties with God’s help only strengthened the sense of peace and joy he
was feeling. He rang his former accomplices and told them he was ‘out’. He and
several inmates who had also become Christians knew they’d been handed a fresh
start and weren’t about to waste it.
Darrell feels God instantly started intervening on his
behalf. He was moved to another prison and downgraded from category A (maximum
security) offender status to a category C, despite having two years left to
serve. He was also asked to lead the prison’s Alpha Course.
The response was incredible and the chapel – which held 500
– was constantly packed. New drug units were opened to cater for the growing
numbers of men that had given their lives to Jesus and decided to kick the
habit.
Before he was released, Darrell was contacted by Mark Finch,
a pastor at church and community centre Hope Corner in Runcorn. Against the
better judgement of his Scouse friends, he felt Runcorn was where God wanted
him to be. He now spends a good deal of time with the local youth; the next
generation of potential drug dealers and armed robbers.
Convinced he would already be dead if his life hadn’t
changed so dramatically, Darrell feels hugely privileged to have been given a
second chance in life. Not only is he a husband and father, he is now able to
show youngsters like himself what it really means to be a man.
Read more about Darrell’s incredible turnaround and work at
Hope Corner in the next edition of Sorted magazine, and in Darrell’s
book, Unreachable.
No comments:
Post a Comment