The pages of his Bible were wrinkled and every other passage was highlighted. Short notations filled the margins. His shirt was sweaty from an afternoon workout, and his coffee cup was half full.
He flipped through the pages to a specific verse. Aaron Willing stopped and pointed to Mathew 6:33.
"One morning I woke up and I had made it to the book of Matthew, and this is my life verse. God really changed my life with this," Willing said. "It was the first time I understood the Word and I think I understood it wrong, but the way that I understood it, God moved through me pretty profoundly."
His days begin at 5 a.m. He trains clients all day long, biceps after triceps after quads. But that morning, when Willing pointed to the verse that forever changed his life, he didn't wake up at home and didn't make the 10-minute drive to the gym, he woke up in the Thumb Correctional Facility in Lapeer, Mich. The same cell he had been in for more than a year. A place he would become familiar with for the next seven years of his life.
In 1996, Willings sister, Emily, was just seven years old when her brother began walking the line between bad and worse.
"He was a good brother," Emily said. "He just got into the wrong crowd and they drew him down, but our family was pretty tight. He's the one who pushed himself to be rebellious for the most part. He didn't like the rules and what my mom had to say."
By 14, Willing was stealing cars, smoking weed and following the wrong crowd.
"We'd go steal a car and take it to (a connection) and he would give us $100 for stealing the car or whatever," Willing said.
His neighborhood of Pontiac, Mich., introduced him to drugs, guns and women. The absence of a father figure didn't encourage his behavior. His father left before he was born and remains unknown.
"Two doors down were some of the biggest weed dealers in Pontiac," Willing said. "They would go to Texas every other month and come back with a Ryder truck full of weed. At 14 years old they're handing me pounds of weed, like 'go sell this at school,' so I would," Willing said.
Emily said her brother kept his business to himself and knew how to keep his family out of his business.
"He pretty much kept that hidden from all of us," Emily said. "I didn't know the type of people he hung out with."
At 15, his mother kicked him out and he bought his first vehicle, a 1988 Chevy Corsica.
He stole a license plate from an identical car so the police wouldn't pull him over and for two winters lived out of his car, sleeping through painful winters and continuing to live a life of uncertainty.
"I was hustling hardcore," Willing said. "I was doing whatever it took to get a dollar. Whether that meant selling drugs, whether that meant robbing folks or robbing other drug dealers-that was a big thing. I had some folks with me that if we found out that someone was close by and they had a lot of drugs, we robbed them."
Dealing drugs wasn't always a two way transaction.
Still at 15, during a party in Lake Orion, an acquaintance grabbed a handful of marijuana from Willing after a drug deal went bad and jumped out of his car. During that moment, Willing said God intervened in his life for the first time.
"This is God all the way and I'm going to tell you why," Willing said. "I had a .25-caliber pistol on me that night and it was in a leather holster inside of my pants. When he got out of the car, I was trying to yank that pistol out and I couldn't do it. It was like it was stuck."
When he turned 18, selling marijuana led him to sell even more.
"I ended up running into a guy and I'm telling him, 'I'm about to go buy a couple pounds,' (of marijuana) and he said, 'Look, there ain't no money in weed. If you really want to make some money, bring $3,700 with you tomorrow.'"
Willing then started making more money than he ever had.
"He brings me 4-and-a-half ounces of (cocaine)," Willing said, "I took it, and in a week, it was gone. This is generally about $6,000 worth of dope that I just offed in less than a week. Next thing you know I was going through probably 9 ounces a week, making $3,500 a week profit just like that."
Eventually the cocaine caught up to him and he started using. The Oakland County Narcotics Enforcement Team police found out about Willing's dealing and raided one of his houses after obtaining a warrant.
Before the raid, a friend of Willing's had just left his house and called him before the police found him.
"He said 'Will, there's seven squad cars, a SWAT van and a tank outside your house,'" Willing said.
Willing sprinted out of the door with six ounces of cocaine and planted it the grass. When he rushed back to his house to grab his guns, he had multiple laser dots from the SWAT team's rifles shining on his forehead.
The police found a tenth of a gram of cocaine in Willing's house, charging him with a felony and sending him to jail for nine months. It was his third prison sentence in 18 years.
At 19 he was released. Soon after, a man Willing served time with contacted him about selling more cocaine.
"Eventually I'm seeing this guy (Danny) I used to do a lot of robberies with," Willing said. "I've been off the streets for nine months and out of jail for 25 days. Danny's got a baby in the oven and he's all about getting some money. This guy was looking for nine ounces, and Danny was like, 'Let's do it.'"
After arranging the meet, Willing and Danny planned on turning the drug deal into easy profit.
"So we get there and we got a whole bunch of flour that's packaged up, looking like it's dope," Willing said "As soon as this guy sees what he thinks is dope, all off a sudden cops come from everywhere. This guy was a cop; he set me up."
Although he didn't have cocaine in his possession, he was charged with conspiracy to deliver more than 225 but less than 650 grams of cocaine, a charge that, in Michigan, constitutes 10-20 years in prison.
"So over a bag of flour, they're trying to give me 20 years," Willing said. "I'm 19 years old."
~
Willing sat in his cell in Jackson Prison in Pontiac with his head in his hands-praying. "God-if there is a God-I need some help," Willing said. "At that point in time the help I wanted was not to get saved or have a relationship with Jesus or anything like like that. I didn't know anything about Jesus. If there was a God and he was real, I would sure like him to come and get this time off my back."
Spending 23 hours a day in his cell left him plenty of time to think.
"We had a chair in there that I used to curl," Willing said. "Anything just to lift some weights."
Inmates starting offering him Bibles and began trying to explain the Word of Christ, while Willing said he started to question his purpose.
"I'm not about to come to prison, become some Bible-thumping Jesus freak only to go home and start smoking crack and all that," Willing said. "That was my reaction every time. Even though I was calling upon Him to save me."
Willing was thrown into a cell with books, something to pass the time and keep his mind off of the streets. But an officer removed them from his cell one day.
"I thought I was going to have something to read," Willing said. "But I didn't, so I went into the cell, threw my stuff down feeling sorry for myself, and I did a double take. In the back corner behind the toilet, there was a book. I looked over at it and thought, 'that's one of them doggone Bibles.'"
Willing convinced himself to read the Bible front to back.
"I felt totally like I was reading something in Chinese, but I had committed myself," Willing said.
After several months of reading, Willing found the book of Matthew.
"All of a sudden I understood some of the word," Willing said. "I got angry. I said OK God, you're supposed to be this God that can't tell a lie. Here's your chance. I'm gonna hold up my part, you're either gonna show up, or I'm gonna know this is a fraud and there's no such thing as God, and I'm gonna let folks know."
He was determined to seek the kingdom of God.
"When I woke up the next morning to start chapter seven, it all made sense," Willing said. "I had this deep insatiable hunger for the Word, like I wanted to read this thing in one sitting. I wanted to get it all. All of it was making sense. All of it was coming together."
Reading the Bible was no longer a burden for Willing, but a joy. He would rush through food breaks just to be able to read more of the Bible.
"Words were jumping off the page, into my eyes, down into my heart and settling themselves, changing me from the inside out," Willing said. "Any doubts I had of Him existing were fading away."
Fellow inmate Jay Devries said he and Willing spent every day together for 18 months in prison.
"I believed everything Will had to say," Devries said. "Anything you could ask him he knew in the Bible. If I asked him about something, he'd quote scripture and show me exactly where to read. In a spot where no one's trustworthy, Will really stuck out because he was."
Willing's years were now fulfilled with Christ. He kept him smiling every day.
"I was baffled at the fact that I had peace and I had joy, yet I should be the most miserable person on the face of the earth," Willing said.
With four years behind him, Willing received a call from the state appellate office in 2006.
His conviction had been vacated and he was granted a new trial.
"Appeals almost always get turned down," Willing said.
Several deals were offered to Willing and he accepted a seven-and-a-half to 20-year sentence.
His last four years of prison were spent spreading the gospel and living for Christ.
"Every time we would go visit him, he would have the Bible out and talk to us about it," Emily said. "My mom didn't think he was going to stay the person that he is. A lot of people said he wouldn't stay like he is now for too long, but he has."
He was released on Jan. 5, 2010, with a 12-month parole.
He taught himself the basics of personal training, enough to become certified shortly after being released.
Willing also had aspirations to join a Division III college football program, but after realizing the financial commitment required, he went in another direction.
The Traverse City Wolves, a team in the North American Football League, were holding open tryouts in February. After two weeks of combine drills and training, he made the team as a tailback.
His team was two games away from the championship, but was defeated by the Nashville Storm in August of 2010.
Three months after the end of the season he moved to Auburn to work for an automotive company and jump from gym to gym looking for a job.
He found the local Fitness Together franchise, a gym specializing in personal training for clients, six months after moving.
2 years removed from prison, Willing is married to the woman of his dreams, takes care of his ten-month old son and beats the snot out of his clients all day long.
His days now begin at 5 a.m., and his bible rests on the break room table.
Fitness Together is also thinking of expanding with Willing as part owner.
He said his goal is to become an NFL or collegiate strength and conditioning coach, but part business owner would be OK for now.
"I still have some doubts about it," Willing said, "but I don't doubt God."
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