I sometimes feel like I keep having the same conversation over and over. Many times the things I am living through feel so familiar, pretty much like life is repeating its self over and over.

My sister-in-law called me from her work, she sounded frantic. She had left my brother at home in bed. Micky had been having a persistent back pain for two week which he had been trivializing, the pain had gotten to where over the counter medication was not helping. He was unable to stand for a long period of time. She had tried unsuccessfully to get him to go to the doctor. He had lost consciousness several times.

“Can you please talk to your brother; I do not know what else to do.” I could tell from her tone she was extremely worried. I suggested for her to take him to an emergency room. He conceded and went to the emergency room. After physical examination and x-rays were done, the doctors came up with nothing. He was released with a prescription for pain medication and a referral to have a MRI done.

The pain medication he received was doing very little for him. Yet he was insisting that his pain was the result of a strain muscle. He kept insisting that there was not any need for an MRI. He continued to lose consciousness and his pain increased.

The phone call came again, “Please talk to your brother.”

I did. During that conversation, I agreed with him that there was probably nothing wrong with him. He on the other hand needed to prove that to his wife. She obviously needed reassurance. He agreed to have the MRI. Two days later he got the results. The MRI showed cancer of the spine. He was scheduled for surgery one week later.

The tumor was partially removed. It had encircled the spinal cord and the surgeon was concerned that the removal of the entire tumor would cause paralysis. He was scheduled for radiation and therapy after the surgery. He made remarkable progress.

His doctor instructed him not to lift more than fifteen pounds. For a few weeks he did just as he was instructed. He reported to the family that his condition was nothing to worry about and that he would be back to himself in no time. During the Christmas season he felt strong enough that he had moved some furniture around. This all sounded too good to be true. Then the all too familiar phone call came again.

“I did not know what else to do, I tried to call the neuro-surgeon but it was a holiday weekend and he is not in. Your brother is not doing well. He is in bed he is vomiting, he is weak, and he has not eaten in two days. His arms and legs are weak. He is in pain and the medicine is not working..”

I not only heard the anxiety in my sister-in-law’s voice, but in my own, in my sister’s, in my mother, in every woman who has stood in her place. Hers was the voice of a woman who feared losing her man. His reaction was one of determination, denial and pride, something I had seen in other men and will probably see over and over again. This is what I call Déjà vu, the fight we women have over and over with our men.

A free gift, it is unheard of. No one gives away something for nothing these days. There always seems to be a catch. This is our current thought process today, even in this season of giving. Sometimes the deed of the deceiver overshadows those of noble intention. Even when we cannot see a clearly defined scheme, we believe in our hearts that it is there. Is this because as a society we have become people that look out for our sole interest? Have we become so depraved we cannot decipher honesty, truth and love?

We acquired this way of thinking based on society’s current trends. Only a fool or a very naïve person would allow someone to rob them twice. How many of us would take home a gangster and love him as equally as much as our own children after he put a knife at our throat? If by some miracle your life was spared, would you not do whatever you could to get such a menace taken off the street?

On a regular day we do not even for a moment think about people who make it their life long career to rob and steal. Yet I could say we have become a cautious people. Consider the ratio of such people in comparison to those that are honest? Which group out number which? Do we care? Or are we allowing the minority to influence the way we look at things as a whole? I would like to hold fast to the belief that we are not going to allow our thought process to be formed by the actions of a few. As the most advanced civilization we should ask questions and seek to find truth. This holds true even for the holidays we celebrate. Why should we take on the mob mentality? I’d say question the reason behind the things we celebrate as a world. Not because the masses choose to go along with it, you should too.

The majority of the world will be celebrating the birth of a child that was born to give us life, but what percentage of those celebrating his birth knows this? How many of us seek to know the real reason behind the celebration of Christmas? We are taught that the giving of gifts symbolizes the gifts given Jesus by the wise men, but are we aware that it goes beyond that? The baby whose birth we will be celebrating was a sacrificial gift given to man by God. Unlike a gangster, God will never hold us captive or force us to accept his gift of life. He wants us to freely choose to have life, the choice is ours. All we have to do is believe and accept this gift, or choose to die in our ignorance. Choose to open your gift this Christmas season. It is too good to be true, but it is truth. It is yours for the taking; seek to know the reason behind the season.

Conflict is unavoidable. How we respond to it makes a difference in its outcome. Personally I had never before given a whole lot of thought to turning the table on my conflicts. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if we could all transform our battles so that we could profit from them?

I did not have a whole lot of negative encounters in my young adult life. Things began to change rapidly however, after I became a mother of seven and a full time care-taker. Those who knew the ins and outs of my life continued to treat me with love and respect. Unfortunately, society today does not have a whole lot of respect for women with a large number of children. As a result I began to experience a decline in my self worth. Every negative encounter would make me feel a lot worse.

I had one of my worst encounters at the pinnacle of my sliding self worth. On that day I momentarily forgot the lessons taught me as a child: important lessons which included forgiveness, kindness and the greatest fruit of the spirit, which was love. The realization of this came to me after I started to reflect on a comment a woman at my daughter's dance school made. She called my daughter "a little black girl."

Dance class was just finished for my three-year-old. Some of the mothers were having idle chatter in the hallway. Two other moms and I were changing our children’s clothes in a waiting room/ playroom. I was on one side of the room; the other mothers were on the other. One mother had a little boy and the other had a girl. The mother with the boy had him give the girl next to him a candy. It was Valentine’s Day and this was the customary thing to do. I was not cognizant of the events that followed. I did however, hear the little girl’s mother telling her child in a voice loud enough for me to hear, that my daughter was a little black girl. My daughter was very light skinned, enough so that the other child would not have been able to tell the difference between them.

I looked over in the women’s direction after the remark was made. The boy’s mother looked shocked. She then instructed her child to give my daughter a candy. The child walked over immediately and handed my daughter the candy. She thanked him and he walked back to his mother.
Strangely enough I was not even offended. I just continued doing what I was doing without the slightest change in my demeanor.

Just as I was about to walk out the door with my three children, the girl’s mother’s said to me, “Do you home school your daughter?”

I had my seven-year-old daughter and my fourteen-month-old son with me. “Yes,” I replied quite politely.

“How is that for you?” she questioned.

“Tedious at times but I need to spend time with her. When she was younger I had someone helping me with my children and I did not get to spend as much time with her.”

“Oh, you were working?”

“No. I never worked”, I said sharply.

“When I lived in South Africa I had a maid.” She was now on the defense.

The little boy’s mother tried to come to my defense at this point. “How could you expect her to work? She has three children.”

“No,” I said pointedly. “I have seven children. Three birth children and four adopted children.” I could tell that my response shocked the woman who had tried to come to my defense.

“There are seven children in the house?” she questioned. I did not respond. She took her son and left the room. The girl’s mother did not. She inquired about my adopted children’s mother. She then continued to tell me about a number of black women she came in contact with in South Africa. The women she talked about had numerous children. They were very poor and oppressed by their husbands. One woman who worked on this woman’s parents’ farm was tied up by her husband. She was then forced to watch on helplessly as her children starved to death. Another woman had eighteen pregnancies and only one child survived. Men had countless wives with many, many children. The families all had only one income. Her family, she stated, helped numerous black African women obtain sterilization at no cost to the women. On many occasions their husbands were unaware and their consent was not obtained.

As if the picture she was painting was not vivid enough she paused and asked, “Have you ever been to Africa?”

“No,” I replied and went on to tell her about some of the countries I had visited and some of the cultural problems I had encountered. Her response to what I was saying was that those were very common problems.

“Because something is common does not make it right. These kinds of behaviors have profound effects on people’s lives,” I said to her. I was more passionate about issues that directly involved children.

She frowned at me and said, “You can say that because you understand.” She took her child by the hand and exited the room. Her demeanor appeared rather unhappy. I must admit that I was confused. What was her point? Why be resentful of me? Was it because of all the sufferings she had seen in other black women lives and here I was living as leisurely as she? Did she interpret my silence as approval of her statement?

The silence was in my children’s best interest. The whole thing went over their heads. As we talked, her daughter ran around the room and played with my children. This could have been the whole reason for her unhappy appearance and her choosing to change her child on the other side of the room. It certainly did not have anything to do with candy but more to do with changing her child along side a black one. Her child did not fully get the message that day. Had I made a fuss both her daughter and mine would have learned the apartheid lesson.

I learned about her family background in the short exchange we had. I was more saddened than impressed. The remark she made to her daughter had somehow clouded my mind. I see my daughter, as being more than just another little black girl. She is a precious gift to me from God. God in His infinite wisdom created all of us for His enjoyment. How colorless the world would be if he had made it all green. We need to take responsibility for our folly. There was no benefit in poisoning the mind of our children all in the name of protecting them from other innocent children.

As I ponder over the events of that day it reminded of a poem I had written several years ago based on a similar experience that I had. I called the poem There’s More to me. It says:

When I am out there on my own,
No one knows about my home.
Some only care about the color of my skin,
And my knowledge doesn’t mean a thing.
They judge me by what they see,
And there’s no mention of the real me.

There’s more to me than meets the eye.
For I have a heavenly Father in the sky.
He even cares about the birds,
And in spite of what you’ve heard,
He knows my heart and very thoughts,
And all about the fights I’ve fought.

There was a lot more to my daughter. She was a little girl who can say that she was the pride and joy of both her parents. She was a child whose parents were willing to take time out to invest it in her. Yet on that day as her mother I felt I had to defend my position. I had also learned the lessons by which society sometimes judge us. Outwardly I was very controlled, but inwardly I was beginning to doubt myself worth. I had years earlier made a conscious decision to put aside my career in order to raise my family. Having a profession was as equally important to me as having a family. I did not expect to have had sacrifice one for the other. That woman’s words would have had very little effect on me if I had been able to come to terms with my new role in society. My precious role as a fulltime wife and mother was becoming obscure. I could not help but feel that I was being compared to those helpless women.

A lot has changed for me since that encounter. I am now a published author. I gleaned from all my emotions that resulted from my challenges. I used them to create a poetry collection. The poem “There is more to me” is also a part of that collection. Appropriately named “Fantasy/Controversy or My Reality,” the anthology was dedicated to hurting children everywhere. It is not only about adversity, but also the good, the bad, the happy and the sad. To continue my dream to make a difference in the lives of hurting children, a part of my royalties from this book will be contributed to agencies that provided services for abused children. For more information about this visit my web-site at http://home.earthlink.net/~rgarnes

Poverty can sometimes only be a state of mind, based on our perception and what we value in life. It is also a disheartening reality for many. The Webster dictionary describes poverty as having a chronic need for money and material goods. How many of us in America one of the richest countries in the world, have this chronic need to have and desire more and more?

Earlier this year I visited my native country of Belize. A relative of mine invited me to her country home. I noticed that my cousin took a lot of food supplies with her. I did not question her actions but noted that she said we were going for one night. After we got to our destination, I went exploring by myself. When I returned she invited me to accompany her as she visited with some of the local villagers. She drove about a mile along a lagoon that was partially dried up. As we neared the end of the sand path she pulled up in front of a shack. She greeted a rather plump girl who appeared very young. As they exchanged greetings, the woman’s face lit up. My cousin handed her a large portion of the food supply she had brought with her. The woman thanked her and went on to say she had some wonderful news. Without hesitating she began to narrate the events of her day. She attended church that morning. After the service commenced the pastor placed fifty dollars in her hands! She said, she rejoiced as she walked back home.

“When I left for church this morning she continued, I did not have any money. There wasn’t any food in my house to feed my children.” She ended with; “Something tells me that this is only the beginning of many good things to come.”

Later that day, after our initial encounter I talked with her a little more. I asked her about her family and children. She was indeed very young. I was almost twice her age. I did not see that we had much in common, with having a number of children as the exception. I shared that with her. I did not see the point in sharing much else. She was bubbly and cheerful the whole time we chatted. I responded to her in our native tongue. Doing so enabled me to identify a little more with her. She was blessing me in an unusually way. I began to examine myself. If I was ever poor I was not cognizance of it. This woman had a richness of spirit. Did this is mean that I now possessed a poorness of soul? Or had my priorities change? How could that woman be so satisfied with her nothingness? I have so much and I aspire to have much more.

Hunger is a daunting reality that ravishes the body and eventually deprives it of its very being. Slavery and abuse brings about poverty for many. They bind up any one who becomes a victim to any of them. Of any of these do we know which the more potent offenders are? In our quest to eradicate poverty should we try to eliminate every circumstance that brings it into being?

Charity begins at home. If we are unable to see the need of those around us, chances are that we will not be able to comprehend the needs of others we are not familiar with. Aren’t our own children starving for our love and attention? Do we as parents even have enough time for ourselves? Is our busyness justified because it emanates from our trying to fill our children's and our own chronic need for money and material things? Are we in our country of abundance dying because we have this deep hunger within our souls? Are we enslaved by our possessions? Is this the reason we are less able to give? Are we trying to fill our own hunger with material wealth and entertainment? Is this the reason our deprived children are dying via their own hands? Can we truly as another sort of improvised nation make a significant contribution when we too are suffering as a result of our own wants?

I applaud Live 8 for the wonderful job they are doing in bringing about world wide awareness. After coming face to face with poverty, I had to examine my own thought process. I made no attempt to influence the young woman’s beliefs or to discourage or encourage her with my ideals. I believe that the first step is to accept that wealth and poverty come in many forms. People can be rich with material things but poor in morals and relationships. In contrast others can be poor in material things but content with the things that bring meaning to their lives. It is essential however, that all human beings have the basic necessities, like clean water, food and shelter.

For the most part, funds contributed to aid in providing these basic needs are not enough to reach all areas of our world. Individually one may not be able to contribute a large portion of money but together our help makes a difference. Who needs twelve pairs of shoes when they can only wear one pair at a time? Think about contributing the four dollars you spend a day for coffee, to help provide clean water for an entire village.

Since my teenage years I dreamed of being a published author. After having a career in nursing and becoming a mother of seven, I finally did it. My poetry book Fantasy/Controversy or My reality was released February 13th 2005. I now have a new dream, which is to encourage and give hope to hurting children, for whom I have always had a heart. Visit my web-site at http://home.earthlink.net/~rgarnes