Worthwhile

Worthwhile

I thought of something today

I just had to give you a call

Then sadly I realized

There wouldn’t be an answer...no answer at all

It made me think of time wasted

And I was filled with regret

Regret of vacations not taken

And memories we hadn’t made yet

Did I ever tell about how your smile

Made you stand out in a crowd

And how every day I’m left hoping

That you are smiling down us now

To know you was to love you

And to love you was a gift

Now I’m left regretful

Of all the chances that I missed

The times I missed out on your calls

Missed out on your laugh

Missed the chance to look into your eyes

Missing now what we had

I don’t think I paid enough attention

And now I’m stuck trying to recall

The greatest sister since creation

The brightest light of us all

If you are watching...know that

I know you no longer feel pain

And for that I am thankful

But one truth still remains

My heart it is still breaking

But my lungs still fill with air

The world it keeps spinning

And it doesn’t seem fair

Please look down often

And remind us to go on

Until one day we are doing it

All on our own

One day in the future

You will look down from the sky

Smile down on us to say

See...I told you...you’re going to be alright

In closing my blue eyed angel

Give God thanks and a smile

For these precious moments with you

Made my life seem worthwhile

Today

Today

Blinking past tears

Getting harder to hide

Something is missing

I no longer can deny

I understand the selfishness

That breaks my heart so

But I’m left with a pain

My life has never known

Yes, I know you were a part

Of God’s much larger plan

But your absence in my days

Is almost more than I can stand

I’ll have moments of peace

Followed by sudden dismay

Praying to God

Please don’t let me hear her name

The silence can be deadly

Like a terminal disease

I keep moving forward

But it’s hard to find relief

You were a blessing in my life

And all others you did touch

I know you have eternal peace

But I still miss you so much

Your life was a constant reminder

To make the most of today

Because as surely as God giveth

He most readily can take away

Not take away, as if to punish

Or payment for our sins

But to replenish His kingdom

With the angel you were within

How wonderful is our Father

Who truly understands

The impact of those eyes

The strength found in your hands

The sweet beauty of your laugh

That ever so bears...on my heart

Yet and still it is these things

Which make it difficult being apart

And yes of course I know

That you are with me always still

It is only your voice I’m missing

Which I know is God’s will

So tonight like nights before

I will fall down to pray

Always letting God know

I submit to His way

And whatever His plan

For my path and for me

Will be all that I want

As I fall to my knees

So while I will always miss you

And your beautiful way

I give thanks for the chance

To say I love you...today

One Day

One day

Once blue skies filled with dark clouds

Birds struggling to fly

Blue waters of the oceans polluted

And we stop and wonder why

Cans laying along the roadsides

Factories running all night

Not even a Native American crying

Made everything alright

And when my daughter asks me

Why the glaciers are starting to melt

I tell her because man is careless

Thinking what a poor hand she was dealt

Starving children in Somalia

With little water there to drink

And we stand on the outside watching

Not knowing what to think

I mean is it really our problem

What is happening to them?

Or is it Gods will to kill

Innocent women and men?

Take away a few forests

What harm can that do?

It’s not like I live in a tree

Why does it bother you?

A hole in our ozone layer

Like a slow leak in a balloon

Exposure to gases and dangerous sun rays

Are problems but only a few

Large company vessels spilling oil

Into our oceans far and wide

Destroying aquatic creatures

We are killing everything... she cried

People all over the world are dying

War is in the air

Planets and animals are disappearing

Why doesn’t anyone care?

Every time I mention

Our world and this plight

All the adults say is...

Everything will be alright

But I see no plan

No way to make it better...they admit

But if you cant fix things

Can you at least stop breaking it?

They say it’s not the end of the world

Everything will be okay

But really...it’s what you plan to do

...not what you say

So she hailed in a voice so strong

It made my heart swell

I will not stop until things are better

Even if I have to yell

This is not what God had planned

When He created us one and all

We were supposed to love each other

Regardless of how big or small

Every tree that is cut down

Is another creatures home

And they can’t check into a hotel

They have no one they can phone

It is up to us to step up

And stand up for the cause

Too many things are going wrong

And after a brief pause

She stood up and looked at me

And said I will ask God too

I know He will have the answer

He will know what I can do

Because there is no doubt

Of the beauty in His sight

He will help to fix the problems

And make everything alright

He will help me tell others

To stop killing His earth

And remember we are all one

And we all have great worth

I can not remember being more proud

Of my angel than on that day

Because I knew she wouldn’t rest

Until she had found a way

So in keeping up my special promise

To take a step and do my part

I will ask each and everyone

To do what is right...look within your heart

Treat each other with kindness

Do not tear each other down

Love one another always

And enjoy the peace you have found

Be loving to your environment

Stop destroying what He has made

Maybe we can make up for our sins

And He will forgive us one day

The Day My World Shook

The Day My World Shook

  The ground shifted under my feet, did she say cancer? No, there must be a mistake. I just came in for a check up a few days ago...life was normal. Did she say cancer? No, she has me confused with someone else. Things like this don’t happen to me. I must have looked at her like she was speaking in a foreign language, because she just looked back and didn’t utter a word. I felt her touch the top of my hand...I snatched it back like she sent an electric charge through my skin. No, don’t console me. She was wrong. Do I look like a cancer patient? No. I do everything right. I am kind to people. I watch what I eat. I exercise. I pray. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen to people like me. I keep muttering to myself...what did I do wrong? I spoke a little too loudly. She responds as if I am asking her the question. She says there is often no explanation as to what causes a woman to start producing cancerous cells. Did she say cancer again? I shake my head in disbelief...will someone make her stop saying that?

  She asks if someone was with me, because we needed to discuss treatments. Of course no one was with me...this was just a check up. Treatment, did she say treatment? Ummm, how do we get rid of it?  She smiles. Why was she smiling? There is no cure for cervical cancer. No cure? Okay, yeah, I knew that. Breathe...don’t forget to breathe. Do not pass out. I ask her, “Why do I have cancer”? She gives me the generic, “there is no way to know why exactly”. She went on about genetics, diet, and other contributing factors, but wrapping it up telling me that it may be none of the above. Why am I asking dumb questions? I know all of this. Wait, am I going to die? I almost couldn’t see her expression, blinking through my own tears. We are going to try and get it under control before we have to think about that. Try? Breathe...don’t forget to breathe, Wait, don’t breathe too hard...you are going to start hyper ventilating. It’s going to be okay, but you have to get a grip on your emotions right now.

  She starts telling me that she wanted to try and freeze the cells...but the disease is too progressive. We have to do a biopsy to see exactly what we are dealing with. My mind starts spinning. How did I get to this place?

  Two weeks ago I was in my friend Lisa’s car with our kids. She had asked me to go to the pediatrician with her. We are on our way home from the doctor and a dump truck ran a red light and turned across our lane from the opposite direction. It was like a cartoon...in slow motion. I remember saying to her...”is he going to stop”? He didn’t. He hit us head on. I remember my face hitting the dashboard a few times, because her car was old and only had lap belts. I remember lifting my face off of the dashboard...my eyes were closed. Did I pass out; maybe for a minute or two? Everything was still. When I lifted my face, blood was pouring out of it. I couldn’t let them see me bleeding, they will panic. I crawled out of her car. I was walking, although I am not sure where I was walking toward. A woman stopped me, she was afraid to touch me. I could barely hear her voice. Was she whispering? No, my ears are ringing. She asks me to sit down on the side of the road. She says she is a nurse from New York. She asks to check out my wounds. But I asked her to please check everyone else first. I sit down and put my face on my knees. There was blood all over my shirt and the upper portion of my pants were soaked in blood. I am feeling my teeth...okay, they are all here. She comes back and says the blood on my daughter’s head was not hers, but mine. I hear an ambulance. A guy I know stopped to check on us. He didn’t realize I was hurt until I lifted my head off of my knees. He saw my face and it looked like he was going to pass out too.

  I couldn’t get my mind together; my girlfriend had to answer the E.M.T.’s questions. I couldn’t remember anything about my health. She kept looking at me asking if I was okay. I could see her mouth moving; but I was looking through her. Did that dump truck driver really hit us? Why didn’t he try to stop? Luckily some guys ran him down and forced him to pull over. We would learn later during a court appearance that he was half blind, and was supposed to wear thick eye glasses. He wasn’t wearing glasses on the day of the accident. He could have killed us. We were lucky. For the most, all injuries seemed superficial. My face was severely bruised, so much so, that on my first doctors visit the nurse asked me if I was a domestic violence victim. Both of my eyes were black and blue. My face was swollen; my lip was cut open too. There were bruises on my thighs, ribs and across both of my breasts.

  It was the bruises on my chest that prompted me to visit my ob/gyn. I wanted make sure there were no lumps or anything like that since I hit the dashboard so hard. Now I remember, my doctor asked if I wanted a pap smear while I was there. I can recall thinking, no. But for whatever reason, I said yes.

  A week later here I am...living with cancer. My doctor said there was no telling how long I had actually had it. She said it could have been dormant in my system for a while, and the accident could have jarred something in me...causing it to spread.

  How do I go home and explain everything that my doctor just told me? I have cancer. I kept saying it over and over again in the car. I thought if I said it enough that by the time I got home that I could say it without crying. I decided instead of going straight home; I would go to see my sister. I needed a safe place to go, where I could fall apart...just for a minute. I just needed a minute. I kept praying all the way to her apartment...please God...let me have this one minute.

  I barely remember her answering the door. I just remember falling into her. She was confused. She kept touching my face, looking for a new injury. She was talking so fast...I couldn’t answer her. My mouth wouldn’t move. Finally I told her that my doctor said that I have cervical cancer...and I just fell apart. She kept saying NO...over and over again. She was crying so hard; I could no longer determine who was consoling whom. I told her that unless the treatments worked before it started spreading further...I might die. And she mustered up all of this strength and told me that wasn’t going to happen. She said she wasn’t strong enough to live without me, so there was no way that God would ever take me first. It wouldn’t be until this past year that I understood the truth of her statement, when she died unexpectedly.

  She was an angel to me in that moment. She went with me to tell my mom and the rest of my family and friends. It was no longer me having cancer, but us having it. During the entire ordeal, her faith and strength never waivered; she continued to be the glue that kept me together. I would end up having several rounds of radiation treatments. It would spread into my uterus before it finally went into remission for good.

  I wanted to share that experience with you, not to be entertaining...but to show you how God has led me to this place. I have always known that God will use me to shine light on issues...and hopefully we can all grow from it. Our Creator has a divine plan for us all and He uses experiences and circumstances as tools to guide us...and if we are paying close attention we can use those experiences to help one another.

  I wish you all peace and pray that you will continue to love one another...as God loves you.

  

Apples

                                           APPLES

When I was 15 or so I remember coming home to my grandmother and I was crying. She, of course, was comforting and wanted me to tell her all about it. So I go on to tell her that no boys in my class liked me, and I remember that she softly laughed at me. She pulls me to her chair and said she has something she wanted to tell me, and that she hoped it would make sense to me. She said Women are like apples hanging on a tree...she said and all the best apples...shiny, red, full of flavor...sit at the very top of the tree. Now men, of course, want the apples...and this is the most important part. Most men will walk to the tree and see that they have to jump to get the apples at the bottom of the tree...but they don't want to put in any real effort so they are content to picking up the apples whose stems were so weak that they had fallen to the ground. Now other men will be willing to jump and pluck the apples on the lower branches...because they are easy to get...and very little effort has to be exerted. But then she said...there are those...very rare men who will be willing to climb up the tree, sometimes falling down, with scratches and scrapes...yet still climbing....to get to the very best apples. She said and those men are the ones who are willing to look past the obvious, go beyond the easiest....and settle for no less than the very best that you have to offer. These are the men that you want to wait for...because they will hold you high and love you deeply.

Our Battle

Our Battle

   One day I found my daughter extremely upset and crying. I asked her what was wrong and said “you lied to me”, and sobbed harder. I asked what it was that she thought I had lied to her about, as I try to be as honest, but gentle, as I can. She said “you told me the cancer was gone, but it isn’t”. I had been diagnosed with cervical cancer a few years prior, but it had since gone into remission. I asked her why she would think that I would lie about it, and she went on to explain that she had found pieces of my hair laying on top of the bathroom trash. I tried to explain that I simply had trimmed my hair that day…but she was crying so hard that she couldn’t hear me. Then she asks me, “Are you getting ready to die”? It took a while for me to get her calm enough for me to even have this discussion with her.

  But the truth was that I had never lost any hair due to cancer or the treatments…she had never seen me in that condition. But she had seen movies and TV shows where the cancer patients had lost their hair and eventually died. It was a lot for her beautiful heart to grasp. I went on to explain the different types of cancer, and told her that my cancer was caught early, and even though treatments made me sick…I was fine now. We had a very basic conversation about the disease, and it would be a few years before we had the detailed conversation, when her mind was more mature.

  The problem was that instead of talking to her about the disease when I was diagnosed, because I didn’t want her to worry about me, I just gave her very generic information. I thought it was the right thing to do at the time but, I was wrong. Because she felt that I didn’t tell her enough…she sought information elsewhere, which in this case was the television…where most individuals with cancer lose all their hair and then they die shortly after.

  Even at her young age, she knew that cancer was a frightening thing. So we had many conversations about it from that point there after. I gave her a new perspective on the illness. I told her I never had to live with cancer…it had to live with me. I didn’t have to fight cancer …it had to fight me. I explained to her that I had this body first and if it wanted to have it ….it would have to fight me for it. This approach gave her strength; she no longer looked at me as a victim. One day I heard her talking to a friend about my health, and she asked if I was a cancer survivor. And she opened her big brown eyes and said NO, my mom did not survive cancer…IT could not survive her!

The cancer didn’t survive us…and she became my own personal army. I would have to endure several rounds of treatments before it actually went into remission for good…but finally it did. But not everyone has a happy ending, sadly.

  We must be aware of our bodies, get regular physicals, and do routine breast exams. We must become proactive in this fight…it has claimed far too many lives already. Until we have a cure, we must look for signs and use precautions…such as using strong sun screen when going into the sun…don’t ignore unusual moles or skin lesions, if you feel something that you didn’t remember being there before…no matter how miniscule…get it checked.

  Contact the American Cancer Society for support or ways that you can help in this cause…it is worth your time. I pray that no one else has to explain to anyone they love about their fight against cancer…but it isn’t going away by itself. Did you know that there is a different cancer awareness month almost every single month out of the year? This is just showing us how very serious this disease is. Over 40,000 people die from breast cancer every year in the United States that is both men and women…so get the facts. For more information please contact:

http://www.cancer.org/

A Lesson Before Dying

A Lesson Before Dying

Perry Cobb, Darby Williams Tillis, Joseph Burrows, Rolando Cruz, Alejandro Hernandez, Verneal Jimerson, Dennis Williams, Gary Gauger, Carl Lawson, Anthony Porter, Steven Smith, Ronald Jones, Steve Manning, Aaron Patterson, Madison Hobley, Leroy Orange, Stanley Howard, Gordon Steidl, Walter McMillan, Randall Padgett, James Bo Cochran, Gary Drinkard, Wesley Quick, Larry Osborne, Johnny Ross, Curtis Kyles, Shareef Cousin, Michael Graham, Albert Burell, John Thompson, Dan L. Bright, Ryan Matthews, Kirk Bloodsworth, Lawyer Johnson, Peter Limone, Laurence Adams, Sabrina Butler, Clarence Dexter  Jr., Eric Clemmons, Joseph Amrine, Jeremy Sheets, Roberto Miranda, Thomas Gladish, Richard Greer, Ronald Keine, Clarence Smith, Samuel A. Poole, Christopher Spicer, Timothy Hennis, Alfred Rivera, Alan Gell, Gary Beeman, Dale Johnson, Charles Ray Gidden, Clifford Henry Bowen, Richard, Neal Jones, Gregory R. Wilhoit, Adolph Munson, Robert Lee Miller Jr., Ronald Williamson, Neil Faber, Jay C. Smith, William Nieves, Thomas Kimbell Jr., Nicholas Yarris, Harold Wilson, Michal Linder, Warren Douglas Manning, Vernon McManus, Randall Dale Adams, Clarence Bradley, John C. Skelton, Frederico M. Macias, Muneer Deeb, Ricardo Aldape Guerral, Ernest Ray Willis, Earl Washington, Benjamin Harris Jerry Bigelow, Patrick Croy, Troy Lee Jones, Jonathon Treadway, John Henry Knapp, Jimmy Lee Mathers, James Robison, Robert Charles, Ray Krone, David Keaton, Wlbert Lee, Freddie Pitts, Delbert Tibbs, Annibal Jaramillo, Anthony Brown, Joseph Green Brown, Anthony Ray Peek, Juan Ramos, Willie Brown, Larry Troy, Robert Cox, James Richardson, Bradley P. Scott, Andrew Golden, Robert Hayes, Joseph Nahume Green, Frank Lee Smith, Joaquin Jose Martinez, Juan Roberto Melendez, Rudolph Holton, John Ballard, Herman Lindsey, James Creamer, and Earl Charles.

  These are my reasons for being against the Death Penalty…all of these names are real people. And these real people have/had real families…that stood by the them while they were on death row. Collectively these individuals served 964 Years, before being proven to be innocent. And one of these individuals served 33 years before being released; while another died before he could be exonerated…so it was done post mortem. But to take even 1 day away from some one, who was not guilty, is tragic. Life is full of one time experiences…you only take your first step one time, lose your first tooth, say mama or dada, you can only buy your first car…one time. And many of these individuals missed so much more than that, and it can never be given back to them. Even if the state compensates some one monetarily for the lost time…you can not purchase a memory.

  Why am I against the death penalty? I am against anything that includes taking another life. I am against any system that has proven time and time again to be broken and unreliable. I am against anything that takes away years upon years of a person’s life for no reason. Killing is wrong…it says that in many different places, even in religious books. And to kill some one to show society that killing is wrong…just seems to be completely ridiculous to me.

  If the Death Penalty is such an effective means of punishment, why don’t all states use it? If the Death Penalty is such a deterrent for crime…why are we still executing?

  If we were able to catch this many people before their respective states were able to execute them…how many slipped through the cracks? How many innocent people have we killed…for the sake of punishing some one…anyone? How do we sleep at night?

  I can completely understand the grief that losing a loved one can cause. I can understand wanting to punish some one for the crime…but will just ANYONE do? The problem being quite simple…the statistics do not lie…race and money are contributing factors when the death penalty is imposed. I researched in several places…and basically all of them verify what the others says…minorities and the underprivileged make up the majority of inmates on death row.

  We are human, we make mistakes…I simply think that with that knowledge…we risk executing people who are innocent. And no matter what anyone says…one life wasted is too many. Not only for the people who are actually executed…but look at the people who have spent countless years away from their loved ones for a crime that they did not commit.

  It is my expressed opinion that anytime some one finds reason to applaud about a state that has killed 234 more inmates than any other state…there may be a deeper problem there. And any politician that finds applause about this humorous…is a dangerous individual; it is never a victory when some one dies…we all lose.

  Killing some one will not make the victim come back to us…they are in peace. So the execution is for us…and what peace is there when we are taking another life? Why would we desire that another family to go through the same pain and anguish that we have?

  There was an inmate in Texas that was executed this past Summer, Mark Anthony Stroman, who was convicted of killing individuals out of grief for the life of his sister who was killed on 9/11. One of the survivors, a muslim man who Stroman shot in the face Rais Bhuiyan, causing him to be blind in one eye, pleaded for Stroman’s life. Mr. Bhuiyan even started a website to try and spare Mr. Stroman’s life, http://www.worldwithouthate.org/.  This was a remarkable exhibit of forgiveness and compassion…only furthering my belief that we can seek revenge or seek a higher power. And even though Mr. Stroman’s life was not spared, the spirit of what Mr. Bhuiyan did spoke in volumes.

  I realize there will be many people that will disagree with my stand on the death penalty, but I stand firm on this issue…killing is wrong no matter who does it.