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You Are Equipped
by DeBora M. Ricks
[essay]
It was August 1993, 10 months before the King of Peace,
Nelson Mandela, was elected president of South Africa. This was the
same year that Jacqui Mofokeng, a 21 year old from Soweto, became the
first black woman to be crowned Miss South Africa. I’d just graduated
law school, was working as a law clerk for one of the kindest, gentlest
people I know, Judge Roger W. Brown, when I had the unexpected opportunity
to go to South Africa with my partner of five years.
My partner showed up in my life in 1988, about a month before my father,
a minister, was killed in a car accident on his return home to Philadelphia
from Tennessee where he’d attended an annual church event, the
holy convocation. My dad was a handsome, charismatic, youthful looking,
gregarious man who, despite his best efforts, left me feeling wounded
due to the emotional and physical abuse that I suffered at his hands.
But thank God, right before his transition, we’d begun to heal
our relationship. However, six years into healing 25 years of pain,
my beloved father dies. Nothing happens by chance, it’s all by
Creation. People come into our lives to teach us something about ourselves
and to help us finish growing up. I’d been married. I’d
graduated from the university. I had my own place and car. So, one might
say, I was a grown, bona-fide i-n-d-e-p-e-n-d-e-n-t black woman. Or
was I?
We arrived in South Africa in the dark of the night, took a taxi to
the Sand Town, an upscale hotel in Johannesburg, and retired for the
evening. I awoke anxious to explore this much in the news country, dressed
in a cotton outfit only to discover that I was dressed inappropriately
for the weather. Surprise!!! America’s summer is South Africa’s
winter, so I learned the hard way. I was cold—and royally pissed.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was winter here?” I demanded.
“Now what will I wear!?” He bought me a couple of warmer
garments, but they hardly satisfied my entire clothing need. I was livid.
I directed my anger at him but I was secretly furious with and disappointed
in myself. I had failed me. Again. Like a child, I had relied upon someone
else to do for me what I should have done for myself—take care
of me. I had taken absolutely no responsibility whatsoever for my experience.
I invite every trip, excursion, experience to teach me something—about
me, who I am and who I could be. Interestingly, looking back at my journal
entries, I notice that I held two competing interests. On the one hand,
I lamented the treatment of women. It seemed the world was constantly
treating women like we are children in need of assistance—attempting
to relegate us to small spaces, dictating what’s acceptable here,
what’s unacceptable there. But all the while, I was behaving just
like a child, especially in my relationships with men. Although I may
have talked, walked and even looked like a full-fledged woman, emotionally
I was still a child—needy, dependent and afraid of assuming full
responsibility for myself. Truth is, I had some growing up to do before
I could righteously claim womanhood.
I was living unconsciously. We choose unconsciousness when we fear
we’re ill equipped to take care of ourselves in the world. We
CAN take care of ourselves. We REALLY can. We need only remember who
we are and who abides with us. You are equipped. Believe me, I know.