My Testimony

By:  Brian Fitch

            Hello, my name is Brian Fitch.  I’m 50 years old and I’m serving a 50-year sentence for killing my best friend.

            I would like to take you back when I was younger.  At the age of 7, my parents divorced, and my father picked me up on the weekends for about a year.  After that he stopped communicating with me.  He didn’t call or pick me up.  I felt lonely and I missed him a lot.  I thought I did something wrong for him to just abandon me.  I felt ashamed around my friends because they all had their parents in their lives.  I started to feel resentment which later turned into anger. 

            As a child I suffered from dyslexia which is having difficulty spelling words and reading.  I was placed in special education classes which made me feel like a loser because I couldn’t be in classes with other kids including my friends.  I felt stupid and when kids made fun of me, I felt even more ashamed and my anger grew to the point that I lashed out.  I became violent and started smashing on the kids that were making fun of me.  This worked because they stopped picking on me, and it was my first lesson in solving my problems in school with violence.

            My stepfather became my father.  He was good to me and he loved me with all his heart.  At the age of 14, I discovered cocaine and pot in my house.  It ended up being my dad’s.  My stepbrother and I took some and did it.  I got high for the first time.  This led to twenty-four years of off and on drug use. 

            I started stealing and robbing houses at age 15-16 to get more drugs.  With the violence and drugs, I put myself in a crowd I shouldn’t have been involved in.  I’m going to let you in on a secret:  The three fastest ways to get in prison and ruin your life is violence, drugs, stealing and robbing.  If you’re doing any of these things, you are guaranteed to come to prison or possibly be killed. 

            Before I go any further, I just want to let you know that both my grandmothers use to take me to church.  Although I grew up in a Christian home, I chose to take the wrong path and do the wrong things even though God was trying to keep me from the misery I found myself in.

            Fast forward, I had a beautiful wife and two beautiful kids.  I always had a good job to support myself and my family.  Just to tell you how good I had it, I had a beautiful house that I shared with my family, another house I rented out that was paid off, a brand new truck, two brand new cars, a Mastercraft showboat, and a Harley Davidson motorcycle.  If that’s not a picture of a beautiful family and life, I don’t know what is. 

            Even with all this, I decided to ruin everything I loved and everything I had.  The worst thing of all was destroying my family.  I don’t care about materialistic things, but ruining my daughter, my son, and my wife’s lives was the hardest thing to deal with because I hurt them deeply. 

            There’s much more to the story of my life, but I’ll keep it brief and to the point.  I cheated on my wife and she then cheated on me with my best friend.  After I found out, I confronted him and wanted him to be honest with me.  If he gave me the respect, I wanted I would have let it go, but he didn’t.  I let my anger, pride, and jealousy take over.  Now remember how I handled the situation when I was in school and the kids were making fun of me, I would beat them up and that’s how I learned to solve my problems with violence except this time I chose to use a gun.  I ended up killing my best friend.

            So now I’m in Martinez County Jail facing 25-years-to-life and that’s when I started getting a serious desire to know God.  I did something I can never take back, but what really changed me was a jail cell, a bible, and a mirror.  The cell gave me the time to seek God.  The bible gave me the map to Him, and the mirror gave me a dose of reality about my denial in my part of causing this situation.  Let’s keep it at 100%.    If I wasn’t on drugs, I wouldn’t be in this predicament.  I wouldn’t have cheated on my wife or ended up killing my best friend.  When I first got put in my jail cell, I got on my knees crying and asking God, “How did you let this happen?” And then He reminded me that He spoke through my parents and warned me.  My mother told me to let go and let God take care of this situation.  My dad came to me and told me I was on the dark side and needed to be on the light side with Jesus.  So, God did warn me through my parents before this happened. 

            I just got sentenced to 50-years-to-life.  I’m in my jail cell and there’s a little bit of light coming through the door.  I know what God wants me to do.  He wants me in prison to learn His Word and spread the message.  So, I told God, “I’m not strong enough to do this.”  With tears rolling down my cheeks and hitting the bible, I heard in my heart, “Read my Word my son.”  So, I grabbed the bible and opened it up randomly.  When I looked, the scripture was Isiah 42:6-7, “I the Lord have called you in righteousness and will hold your hand.  I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people as a light to the gentiles. To open blind eyes to bring out prisoners from the prison.  Those who sit in darkness in the prison house.”  This is when I finally realized God spoke to me through His Word because there’s no way, I could have opened the book one time and read that scripture pertaining personally to me, only God can do that.

            Due to God’s grace, I am not the same person I was before I came to prison. I have traded my anger, fear, shame, resentment, and my placed blame with kindness, courage, peace, hope, and love.  Now, I can take full responsibility for my actions.  My view of life has changed to positive over negative.  If God can do this for me and more, He most certainly will for you as well.  So, if you’re sitting in “juvie,” or are in a situation that appears hopeless, it’s not! God loves you and He wants you to accept His son Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior as it is written in Romans 10:9-10. This testimony was written to you because God put on my heart to share it specifically for you.  This is a wake-up call. Don’t ignore it!  Think about it or you may end up like me or worse, dead!  He is calling you so say “yes” to Him.  Tomorrow is not guaranteed, so make your choice today.