Pick Your Cause
February 26, 2009 by Billy Coffey · Leave a Comment
The college where I work is a great place filled with great people. The campus is beautiful, the professors excellent, and the staff both accommodating and friendly.
But it is still a college. And as it is such, my work environment harbors the sort of modern, liberal predilections that a more traditional person like me can’t seem to understand sometimes. Some days, many days, I am both generally exasperated and specifically confused by what I see.
A few weeks ago the college held what is annually billed as Pick Your Cause Week. Each day brought exhibits, lectures, and a wealth of information concerning a particular organization or subject. This year children of alcoholics, muscular dystrophy, women’s cancers, domestic violence, and the poor were chosen.
Though there are some things here at work that I find questionable and a few I find just plain strange, I like this. I like it a lot. We should all have a Pick Your Cause Week.
I find it sadly ironic that in this age of computers and satellite television, when the smallest event that happens in the smallest corner of the smallest country on the other side of the world can be instantly beamed right into our living rooms, we’ve really never been so separated from one another.
The media blitzes us with a constant barrage of suffering and need. We see footage of disaster and crime and hear stories of loss and despair. And though we try every day to nourish whatever hope we have and coax it to grow, there is the daily reminder that our world seems to be teetering on the edge of a very dark abyss and there is nothing that can pull it back onto solid ground.
It all can be just a little too much to bear. For me, anyway.
So I do what a good Christian should. I pray. But I’ve found that I often use prayer as an excuse, a poor example of doing something. As much as I pray for this world and all the people in it, I find that I do little else about it. And while those prayers are vital, they shouldn’t be the final solution. Asking God to help the world and asking Him to equip me to help the world are two different things. I don’t often get that.
I have a tendency to shrink the world. Shrink it so its dimensions extend no further than the small part I happen to occupy. Shrink it to only that which affects me. My world is my family and my town and my work. Whatever else that happens outside of my world that is sad and regrettable and unfortunate affects me emotionally. But it is also none of my business. I try to ignore it. I don’t hope it will go away because I don’t think it ever will, I just try to stay out of its way and hope it doesn’t find me or the ones I care about.
All of that is of course the silliest thing any Christian should ever believe, and yet I do. And so do a lot of us. We all at some point fall for the great lie that there is nothing we can do about the state of things, and in doing so we risk developing a mindset that is perhaps as unchristian as we can get:
We don’t care what happens so long as it doesn’t happen to us.
That is why a Cause is so important. We are all called to spend our time and energy toward something that will continue on long after we leave this world. It is our purpose, our mission. No matter who we are or what we do or where our talents lie, we are all here for the same reason: to make things better.
To heal the wounded. Clothe the naked. Feed the poor. To offer help to the helpless and hope to the hopeless.
And the light of God to the darkness.
The Great Follower Conspiracy
February 24, 2009 by Billy Coffey · Leave a Comment
A quick look at the clock on the wall tells me that it’s 6:31 p.m. I’m about twelve hours into what has to be one of the most bizarre but meaningful days of my life.
It is the day of the Great Follower Conspiracy.
It started with a simple glance at my blogger account before work this morning, just to see which of the blogs I follow had new posts. Then my eyes just so happened to wander up and to the right, where my own followers are posted. Or rather, were posted. My heart stopped, my mouth dropped opened, and I had a rather funny sensation in my stomach.
I had lost almost half of my followers.
My mind raced:
How can this be? What have I done to make all these people mad at me? Is it the comment thing? It has to be the comment thing. I KNEW I shouldn’t have done that. And now all these people are gone. GONE. All because of me.
The tiny thought that maybe this was something totally different, that maybe this had much less to do with me and much more to do with Blogger, was ignored. That just couldn’t be.
And then I checked my email, which happened to be pretty full of people who were wondering just the same sort of thing I was:
“Have I done something to offend you?”
“I’m sorry for whatever I’ve done.”
“Please continue to stop by…”
Oh. So that’s it.
I spent the better part of my day talking to members of my blogosphere family, trying to sort things out and figure out how and if it could ever be fixed. As of right now, many of my followers are still missing, although I did manage to get a new one, (nice to meet you, Peg!). Where they have gone is anyone’s guess. I’m sure I’m still MIA to a lot of the blogs I follow as well.
Still, as aggravating as all of this is, I think there’s a pretty big lesson being offered for everyone affected.
We all want to be accepted and loved, for who we are, the words we write, and the lives we offer our readers a peek into. There’s nothing in the world wrong with that, either. It’s part of our testimony to a loving God, and a chronicle of what He’s doing both in and around us.
Maybe it’s just for that reason that everyone I’ve spoken with today confessed to having the same first reaction: They don’t like me anymore! It was definitely my reaction. In fact, worrying about the whole thing ruined the first few hours of my morning. Because I thought I had Finding out that it was all an innocent screw up made me feel better for a little while. Then something else started creeping into my mind.
Should I have really been so upset over all of this? What if I really did lose a lot of my readers? I should have taken it as God’s will. Instead, I took it as a catastrophe of epic proportions.
Jennifer Lee said it much better in an email: “How would I react if I lost every last follower? I say that God is ‘enough,’ but is He? In my life, is He REALLY enough?”
That’s a good question. One that I found myself asking a lot lately and today especially. And one that maybe we should all spend some time pondering.
Gotta love computers!
February 24, 2009 by Billy Coffey · Leave a Comment
So I fire up the old computer this morning, log in to my blogger account, and find that I’ve lost almost half of my followers. First reaction: “Oh no, what have I done to make all these people so mad at me?!” Second reaction: maybe there’s something else going on…
That something else was confirmed when I checked my email and found a few messages from people wondering the same thing.
Now, thanks to Sarah and Jesse, I know what happened.
Turns out Blogger had a few problems with the Follower widget and is in the process of trying to fix them. Nothing more than that. Mystery solved.
This whole thing has gotten me thinking, though. About that first reaction. I’m the sort of person who automatically thinks that when something goes wrong, it’s my fault.
Gonna have to work on that one.
Like Drinking From A Fire Hydrant
February 22, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 2 Comments
My family and I are gathered on an outcropping of rocks high in the mountains, wondering at the stars. An unusually warm winter’s night has given us the luxury of this little excursion, and we’ve been rewarded with the sort of natural scene that sucks in your breath and makes you exhale in a long, slow whistle.
Planets dance above our heads, stars glimmer, and each of us take turns wishing upon the occasional meteorite. Orion stands guard at his post near the horizon, his belt cinched and shining. The Big Dipper looks as if it’s pouring the Milky Way upon our heads. The heavens are arrayed in a perfect sort of chaos, as if God has sneezed a miracle.
My son gazes up and wonders of rocket ships and aliens. My daughter? Angels and celestial playgrounds. My wife is wondering why we don’t come up here more often, because we should.
And me? I’m thinking about a dog I met last summer.
Late July. No rain for weeks. The air was so hot and humid that it made you walk with your back hunched.
Standing at the bottom of a hill in town, minding my own business, there came a sudden and steady stream of water toward me. Then more. And more. Surrounding my feet, inching up my shoes to almost the ankle.
A walk up the hill confirmed the source of this minor miracle—four firemen had cracked a hydrant. “Testing things out,” one told me.
As I stood there and kept them company, a neighborhood dog ambles up so I could scratch its head. Tail wagging and tongue drooping, he sniffed and snorted and paced, as if confused by the dichotomy of an abundance of water and the lack of means to acquire it. The firemen, lost in the duties, paid little attention to the dog. I, however, did.
I knew what the dog was going to do.
More sniffing and wagging and pacing. Then, in a desperate attempt to satisfy his thirst, the dog stuck his tongue into the gushing water.
Why he didn’t simply head to the bottom of the hill and drink there, I don’t know. Some dogs just aren’t that smart. Much like people. I do know, however, that he got more than a mere sip. Water gushed into his mouth and over his face with such force and weight that it nearly drowned him. Good thing there were firemen close by.
That’s what I’m thinking as I look up at these stars.
“The heavens declare the glory of God,” said David. Funny word, that “glory.” Translated from the Hebrew, it comes closer to “weight.” The heavens declare the weight of God.
Now, in this remote place with the heavens above me, I am much like that dog. Longing and thirsty and maybe not so smart. And drowning. Not in the weight of water, but in the weight of God.
Never let it be said that God hides from us. He is as near as a glance out the window, a walk in the park, or a rock to sit on. He pours Himself out in sunsets and rainstorms, in the blossoming of a flower or the falling snow.
As I sit on that rock with my family, staring until my neck aches and my back knots, I am reintroduced to the God I knew before I knew God. My childhood God. The One I spent time with before I knew what the words colored red in my Bible said and meant.
I am fortunate enough to sit in church every Sunday and listen to someone expound upon those words. Fortunate, too, that I can sit with my Bible and have those words speak to me.
But I’ve never lost sight of that other sermon, the one given to believer and doubter alike. We drink from God’s fire hydrant every day, drowned in the inescapable weight of His power and creativity and love.
Balancing the scales
February 19, 2009 by Billy Coffey · Leave a Comment
There are a lot of reasons why people take up blogging. Some see it as a means of preserving life’s events for family and friends. Others use it as a tool for self-examination or a way of connecting with others. Still others regard it as a potential starting point for bigger and better things. And then there are people like me, who blog for all of the above.
The self-examination part is new to me in a way. Simmering deep down for a while, but only recently bubbling up to the surface. I’ve found the act of posting small essays in the hope that others will read them reveals far more about myself than I expected. The good, yes. But also the potentially bad.
I’ve been writing this blog for about six months now, and I’m continually both amazed and humbled at how far things have come. I remember the first comment online comment I ever received for one of my posts (thank you, Sharilyn!) In December, my post about the Santa Story was the first to get comments in the double digits. A few weeks later, over twenty people commented about our mysterious backyard hole.
Which was, in a word, incredible. I never thought such a thing was possible, much less likely. There is a unique sort of joy that comes by checking one’s email and seeing a dozen or so messages of praise in the inbox. On many days, doing so was what propped me up and kept me from lying motionless in the muck of self-doubt. I love the comments I get.
Maybe too much.
I’ve always made a conscious effort to ask myself this question after finishing anything I’ve written, whether it be a post or a manuscript or a note in one of my children’s lunch boxes:
Does this honor God?
Sometimes, that answer is yes. Other times it’s no. But regardless, the end result is usually something I feel both He and I believe is worth saying. Any benefits that come after the fact, whether it’s a small check from the newspaper or a nice comment from a reader, is extra. Gladly accepted, but not counted upon.
Then a while back, as I was putting the finishing touches on a post, I asked myself this question:
I wonder if this will get thirty comments?
The question tried to be insignificant, small and soft, but it was made large and loud by the simple fact that I had never wondered such a thing before. And that bothered me. It meant that something had changed. The focus of what I write and why had shifted. Somehow my writing had become less about God and more about me.
Sometimes the self-realization side of blogging stinks.
It strips away those pretty masks we wear and leaves us staring at our own nakedness, forcing us to look at who we truly are. Not so we can despair at our own faults, but so we can fix them before they get worse.
And this, I think, needs fixing.
So I’m going to eliminate the comment option from my posts. For a while, anyway. If only so I can make sure I’m writing to further God rather than myself, and to inspire others rather than my own ego.
Of course, if something you see here particularly strikes your fancy or you just want to chat, my inbox is always open. Just click on the little Contact Me button on the sidebar, and I’ll be sure to get back to you.
“Be on your guard,” the Bible says. Because we sometimes take the things God means for good and mangle them. For much of my life, I’ve ignored that little bit of advice. I’ve paid for it every time, too. So this time I’ll heed that advice.
Maybe I can balance the scales a bit.
Dear Alex, Part II
February 17, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 8 Comments
(This is the second part of my last post. If you need a little refresher, here it is.)
I walked back to the hotel room and out onto the balcony, where my wife was waiting for me. I explained to her what had happened. For the next two hours, we scoured the crowd below for a glimpse of either Alex or Lauren.
We spent the rest of that day on the beach reading and cooling off in the surf. But Alex was never far removed from my thoughts. Around lunchtime I offered to go get a couple of slices of pizza, which was mostly just a ruse to get back up on the boardwalk and keep looking. I asked the lifeguard there if she knew either of them. Their names did not sound familiar to her. I tried describing them, but that didn’t help. Apparently Virginia Beach was full of muscular men with tattoos and beautiful women who wore sun dresses.
Guilt set in. I could not help but think I had failed him. I couldn’t accept that it was merely by chance that I happened to be standing at that particular spot at that precise time. I had believed for years that God had sent angels into my life from time to time, but that day was the first time I ever thought that maybe God had wanted to use me as an angel for someone else. And I had failed. Miserably.
As the day wore on, I began to piece together what I could have said to Alex. Should have said, really. I wrote it down in fragments at first, bits and pieces of random thoughts and observations. I wrote, then rewrote, then rewrote again, until I had what amounted to a letter. A letter, of course, with no recipient.
But I wrote it anyway with the faith that sometimes you just never know. Maybe, just maybe, Alex is out there somewhere. And if he is, this is for him…
Dear Alex,
I hope that somehow, sometime, this letter reaches you. I know it probably won’t. In fact, I’m writing this more for my comfort than yours. But life can be funny, and sometimes even the most improbable things have a way of surprising us.
You walked away from me this morning before I had the chance to tell you what I was thinking. I can’t blame you. I imagine I was just standing there looking like an idiot. I promise you, I was trying to find the words. But something kept me from saying anything.
I suppose it was for the best. Maybe you didn’t need any words. Not then. When people are hurting, the last thing they want is advice. I don’t think you needed words as much as you needed time—time to fall apart, gather yourself up, and move on. I’m sure you’re not there yet, but I’m also sure you will be.
Don’t feel embarrassed because of the way you handled yourself this morning. Such situations tend to bring out the worst in people. You did, however, ask some serious questions, and you deserve some answers. I’ve seen my share of love, both the good kind and the bad, and though I am neither philosopher nor poet, I’ve been around the block enough to know where everything is.
For thousands of years the wisest and brightest of us have pondered the very questions you now face. What is love? Why does it sometimes hurt so badly? And why, if it hurts so badly, do we always go back for more? Despite their vast knowledge and unparalleled wisdom, they haven’t come up with much in the way of answers. In the end, those people were just as lost as you and I.
No one can say what love is all about. It’s beyond words and description. You can hint, you can analogize, but you won’t get it quite right. I never understood why it had to be that way. Now I think I do. It has something to do with the fact that we’re all describing love, but we can’t seem to agree on exactly what love is.
Are you sure it was love you felt for Lauren? I don’t mean to call you a liar, nor do I want to seem as if I am belittling your feelings for her. But from the few things you said, I had to wonder.
You asked me if I knew how beautiful she was. I did. You were right, she was beautiful. But that was really all you seemed to dwell on, wasn’t it? You never mentioned her kindness, her charm, her intelligence or humor. I cannot believe that the only lovely features she possessed were those on the outside. Maybe I’m over analyzing. But you made it seem as if you weren’t going to miss her nearly as much as you were going to miss her body. And that is exactly the point I’m trying to make. It didn’t sound to me like you were in love, Alex. It sounded like you were in lust. You don’t fall in love through the eyes; you fall in love through the heart.
You no doubt felt something, and that, I suppose, is good enough at first. I remember you telling Lauren that you professed your love to her every day. With words, I believe you said. And that is, of course, a good habit to adopt. But words are not nearly enough.
Love is the most overused word in the English language. We can say we love anything: chocolate or a shirt or a pet or a picture. We love cars, houses, movies, even certain days of the week. Is it any wonder, then, that when we say we love someone, the true meaning of those words becomes lost? If I say I love steak and then say I love my children, what have I really said? Sure, it might simply be a matter of semantics, but that’s why love cannot be fully communicated in words alone.
It took me all of five minutes to tell my first girlfriend that I loved her. It took almost a year after I started dating my wife. Why? Because between those two were many others who showed me that words aren’t enough, and that what I thought was love really wasn’t.
I’ve known a lot of Laurens, Alex. I’ve given my heart away, just like you. And just like you I’ve had it handed right back. I swore each time that I would never allow myself to fall in love again. That vow usually lasted about a month, at which time my heart would meet another’s and the dance would begin anew.
Why would I continually subject myself to this torture? Easy. I wanted someone to love, and I wanted someone to love me back. There’s nothing wrong with that. Most of us couldn’t imagine not having someone to share our lives and our hearts and our dreams with. The hurt that comes from losing someone we love can be unbearable. But the hurt that comes from closing ourselves off from the world is much worse. Pain isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Numbness is.
We are meant to love and to share, and if we do not allow ourselves the opportunity to do so, we become less than we should. Any time not spent on love is time that is wasted. Why? Because the more we are able to love, the more we are able to do. We can lose anything else in life—hope, desire, even faith—but when we lose our love, that is when we truly die.
I don’t think the love you had for Lauren was the love you are looking for. Your feelings for her were like the waves we watched crashing onto the shore. It was a love of action, of ups and downs, of surging forth and falling back, here one moment and gone the next. Such love is wonderful and exhilarating, but it is also frail and passing. The love that matters is like the waters we saw farther out—calm and deep and abiding. Eternal. That is the love of wonder.
Even though you might feel like you’re all alone in the world right now, you aren’t. A broken heart is like the common cold. We all know there isn’t a cure, we all know someone who’s suffered through one, and we all know that despite whatever precautions we take, sooner or later we’ll have to suffer through one too.
We are the only creatures who sometimes hurt our own loved ones for no other reason than just because we feel like it. Falling in love comes with a price. It means fully giving all of yourself, warts and scars and all. That’s the only way it can be. If it isn’t head over heels, it isn’t enough. And we give all of this to someone who is bound to one day at least disappoint us and at worst make us wonder if we can ever love the same again.
Is it, then, worth all the risk?
Every time.
Dear Alex, Part I
February 15, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 5 Comments
As much as we are able, we should be there for others when their world comes crashing down around them. Be there with a kind word or a steady hand. It’s a task we are given as Christians. We are God’s representatives.
That’s why after all these years Alex still bothers me. Because I wasn’t there for him. Not with a kind word or a steady hand. Not even as God’s representative. And though I’m sure he’s fine now, that doesn’t make my failure easier to bear.
Since Valentine’s Day is still fresh in our memories, I thought I’d share Alex’s story. And since that story requires a little more telling than usual, I’ll give half now and half Wednesday.
Deal? Great. So here goes…
June, 1997
I was standing on the boardwalk at Virginia Beach, watching the sun rise over a mini rush hour of pedestrians. Joggers and walkers and rollerbladers paraded past me in varying degrees of speed and strain, all in search of the elusive prize of thinner thighs and flatter stomachs.
My gaze settled upon a couple near the pier. Handsome man and striking woman, early twenties, strolling hand in hand. Their eyes remained low and just a few feet forward, as if that point marked the boundary of their own private world. I smiled. They were a J Crew ad lost in a Nike commercial.
I politely turned away as they neared and stared out at the ocean. The two love birds maneuvered through the crowd to right beside me.
The three of us exchanged hellos. As I didn’t like the feeling of being a passerby into their magical kingdom of love, I was ready to leave. But just when I began to back away, something unexpected happened. The lady sighed, then looked to her lover and uttered the four words that invariably spelled the death of romance and the end of all that is good and true.
“Alex, we have to talk.”
How many times had I heard that? Said that? Enough to know that it rarely involves we at all. And very little talk.
We have to talk. Translation: I have to talk. You have to listen. And this won’t be good.
From the look on his face, Alex was familiar with the standard interpretation. He looked like he had just taken a punch to the kidneys.
I eased back to my position beside them. The public breakup is a classic. Breaking someone’s heart is easier when done amidst people. There’s less chance of things getting messy. And since I was pretty sure things would get messy, I figured maybe I should stick around.
“So let’s talk,” he snorted, then cut me a glance. “But let’s talk back at my place.”
“Alex, I care about you,” she began, taking a small step away from him.
This poor guy’s definitely getting the boot, I thought.
“And you know I would never do anything to hurt you.”
Except rip your heart out and spike it like a football in front of this total stranger.
“But I really think it would be best–”
If we spent some time alone
“–if we spent some time alone.”
She looked up at him, waiting for his response. So did I.
“Lauren,” he said. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No, baby,” Lauren answered, rubbing his arm. “It’s me. All me.”
It’s me. Translation: It’s you.
Alex looked to me again. The three feet or so of space between us might as well have been three inches. I feigned interest in a ship far on the horizon, pretending I couldn’t hear.
“But we’re great together,” he said.
“We just need a break,” she said. “I need some space, that’s all.”
I need some space. Translation: I can’t stand being within a mile of you.
“But I love you,” Alex said. “I love you with all my heart. I tell you every day.”
“I know you do, Sweetheart,” Lauren said. “I love you, too.”
I was as confused as Alex at that one, and I almost said something. But he said it for me.
“Well if I love you and you love me, why are we having this conversation?”
“I can’t get bogged down in a relationship right now. If you really love me, you’ll understand. If you really love me, you’ll let me go.”
She snatched her hand from his arm and turned to leave in one fluid motion. Alex remained still, paralyzed by the suddenness of her rejection. Five minutes before, they were inseparable. Now they would likely never be together again.
Our eyes remained on Lauren as she faded into the crowd. Shoulders slouched, he turned to face the world without her.
We both stared out to sea. No words passed between us. Twenty minutes later, I was again ready to leave. The moment of shock was over, and though I knew that for Alex the worst was yet to come, I also knew I couldn’t do much about it.
As I turned to leave, I heard “Dude?”
I turned back around to make sure I was the one he was speaking to. I was.
“This is love?” he asked. “This?! If love’s supposed to be this great big wonderful thing, why does it make absolutely no sense at all?”
I slowly exhaled. My mouth opened to answer him, but Alex wasn’t finished.
“Does love have to feel this bad? If it does, is it really worth it? I don’t even know what just happened to me.” He turned back to the guardrail, punched it with a fist, and winced.
I didn’t know what my responsibilities were in such a situation, so I just reclaimed my position beside him.
“I love her, man. I swear I love her more than anything. Did you see how beautiful she was? So perfect? Did you see that? She was a ten, dude. Oh man, she was so hot. And she was mine.”
I tried to speak again, but he cut me off. His words were coming faster, and I could barely understand some of them.
“Ohman, I can’t believe this is happening to me. What we had was loveatfirstsight. That’s like a miracle, right? I mean we’re meant to be. I know that. HowcanI find another woman like her? Huh? How?”
He paused and stared at me. This was my chance to say something wise and profound. I considered everything he had said, everything I had seen, and tumbled it around in my mind. He waited. Finally, I opened my mouth. Then I closed it. And shrugged.
“Dude, you got nothin’ for me?”
I didn’t. But I couldn’t say that. So we stood there staring at each other for a long moment. Then Alex started mocking me and most of my immediate family in colorful terms and stormed out of sight.
ILUVME
February 12, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 14 Comments
I was sitting at an intersection yesterday, passing the time between stop and go by studying the car in front of me. Vehicle: a rusty, broken, and tired Toyota. Driver: young lady, no more than seventeen and blissfully unaware of her surroundings. A sound system that was worth much more than the car itself vibrated everything from the windows to the doors to the license plates.
Vanity plates, of course. If you’re seventeen and cool, vanity plates are a requirement.
They also say a lot about a person. Vanity plates are tiny windows into a personality, a creative assemblage of letters and numbers that offer a glimpse into what matters most to the owner.
And it was pretty obvious what mattered most to that young lady. Her license plate used the term “vanity” in a more literal way.
ILUVME, it said.
I shook my head and grinned in an I-can’t-believe-this sort of way. ILUVME? Really?
A little arrogant, I thought. Then again, maybe there was much to love in being her. Maybe she really did love herself, and justifiably so. Maybe who she was, what she knew, and the direction her life was going was so perfect, so wondrous, that loving herself was natural and right and good.
Ha.
If true, then she should give herself a little time. Five years or so. Maybe ten. Let her grow up a little and get out into this big, beautiful world. Let her dreams crumble, her heart break, and her faith bend. Then we’ll see how much she loves herself.
I wrinkled my brow, struck by the coldness of those thoughts. Was I really that pessimistic of a person? Was I really hoping for her life to unfold such that she would one day regret putting such a thing on her license plates?
Why was I so upset because she loved herself? Was it because she possessed something I did not?
Did I love me?
An interesting question, that. Are we supposed to love ourselves? I flipped through the pages of my mental Bible for any scripture that confirmed or denied that question, but nothing stood out (though, admittedly, the pages of the Bible I hold in my head are not nearly as complete as the pages of the one I hold in my hand).
But I did know this: whether I was supposed to or not, I certainly did not love me. I knew my weaknesses and faults. The hidden things I thought and said and did. I knew what I paid attention to and what I did not. The struggles I faced, the times I feared and worried and doubted too much. What and who I hated. I knew, more than anyone else, the kind of person I was.
And that was not the sort of person anyone could love. Should love.
Besides, the point of life isn’t to be content with the person you are, right? No, it’s to try to do and be a little better every day. To keep becoming. That’s tough to do when you’re happy with who you are. When ULUVU.
Still, something bothered me. Wouldn’t hating yourself for who you are, for what you feel and think and do, be just as bad?
My thoughts were interrupted by the stoplight turning green. ILUVME turned left, and as I watched her I realized she was pulling into the parking lot of a church. Black letters that spelled out GOD IS OUR FRIEND glittered in the sun on the marquee at the entrance.
Yes. God is our friend. My friend. So powerful that He could do anything, He chose to die for me. So omnipresent that He could be anywhere, He chose to live in my heart. My heart. Not because He had to. Because He wanted to.
Because God loved me.
Loved me despite knowing my fears and worries and doubts. Despite knowing my failures and faults. Despite knowing me better than I knew myself.
If an all-powerful, all-knowing God could love me, why couldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I?
The foundation of the Christian faith states that we are flawed beings. Sinful souls in need of a Savior. I knew that to be true. Perhaps just as true, though, was that our worth didn’t depend upon what we did or did not, but upon the spark of the Divine that gave us life. There is a beauty within us beyond our flaws and failures. A beauty worthy of our compassion, of our acceptance.
And of our love.
Always a Story
February 10, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 21 Comments
My post last week about an incident at the mall garnered some interesting reactions, at least to me. I figured a lot of you would wonder what in the world was going on with this poor woman who refused to let me hold the door for her. And a lot of you did. But just as many wondered how I could have possibly kept hold of myself. How could I have not either burst out laughing when she fell or given her the good cussing she maybe deserved?
Truth is, I might have been calm and cool on the outside she she tripped and went splat!, but I was jumping up and down and cheering on the inside. I’m not proud of that, mind you, but I can’t deny it either.
But what kept that told-ya-so mentality from bubbling up to the surface was a story a friend of mine named John shared one day. One I’d like to share with you.
A brilliant man, John. He has two PhDs, is about to get his first book published, and is currently the head of the Christian Counseling program at Liberty University. He was also the best Sunday school teacher I ever had.
John told me that one night while he was in college, he had dinner at a local restaurant with one of his psychology professors. Their waitress was a young, twenty-something lady named Anna, who seemed to have a bit of a personality problem and could have used a refresher course in customer relations.
She was rude and offensive and vulgar. She forgot up their order twice and, when she finally got it right, rewarded John and his professor by unceremoniously dropping their plates on the table with a loud thud and walking away. They nearly died of thirst because she never returned to offer more drinks. And when she finally resurfaced forty minutes later, she greeted them with a curt “Ya’ll done?”
With a “Yes, ma’am” from the professor, she scribbled their bill onto a receipt, pushed it to the middle of the table, and walked away. Two specials, two drinks, two cups of coffee—fifteen dollars and forty cents.
“I have the tip,” the professor said. He took a ten out of his wallet and placed it between the salt and pepper shakers.
John flinched. Ten dollars? This had to be a mistake. He was going to give Anna a ten dollar tip? For what? Yelling and cussing and throwing food at them? A dollar and a half would have been plenty, the accustomed 10 percent. And that was for good service. But this wise and learned man was going to give her almost ten times that?
“Excuse me, Professor,” John said. “You just sat a ten down.”
“Yes, I did,” the professor answered.
“Are you sure you want to do that?”
“Yes.”
“May I ask why?”
“Maybe,” the professor said. “Later.”
The two walked up to the cash register, paid for their meal, and left. Just as they were getting into the professor’s car, though, the door to the restaurant opened and out ran Anna. Crying.
“I’m so sorry,” she said through her tears. “I know I was awful to the two of you. I’ve just had such a bad day. My kid’s got the flu, I just found out my mother has cancer, and my husband left me two days ago. I just can’t take it anymore. And then I saw your tip just sitting there, and I…I just had to thank you. You don’t know what this means.”
The professor smiled. “It’s quite all right, Miss,” he said. “Things may look bad now, but I promise you they’ll get better. You just need a little faith.”
She nodded and smiled back, then turned around to go back inside. John stared at his professor, who watched as the doors closed around her.
“Remember this, John,” he said. “We are all working our way through our own story. We pass people by every day of our lives. We talk to them, nod and say hello, and we have no idea the sorts of struggles they are enduring or what pains they bear. We are all hurting in our own unique way. We have all been wounded by something. Never forget that.”
John hasn’t. And since the day I heard that story, I haven’t either. Because we all may share one world, but we each live in our own. One made bright or dim by our own faith or doubt, joy or despair.
Playing Tag
February 8, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 12 Comments
1. Though I no longer believe in monsters (and tell my kids such nearly every night), I still cannot sleep with any body part protruding from the covers and hanging over the edge of the bed. Just in case.
2. All those parties I went to in high school when I would end up stumbling outside and passing out in someone’s yard? I wasn’t drunk, and I’ve always hated alcohol. I just wanted to be by myself and watch the stars.
3. Up until the third grade, I thought there was only one letter in the alphabet between k and p, and that it was pronounced “ellemenna.” Seriously.
5. I’ve seen an angel. Honestly.
6. I’m not one of those End Times people who pour over magazines and newspapers for evidence of Armageddon. Still, when I look at this world and all this mess, I can’t help but think that something is about to happen. Good or bad, I suppose, is largely up to us.
7. I can honestly say that God will allow us to suffer just so we can better understand the pains other people feel.
8. My fifth grade teacher once told me I would never amount to anything. On the last day of school, I wrote my name down on a piece of paper, handed it to her, and told her to hang on to it. It might be worth something one day, I said. So far, it’s not. But I figure I have a lot of living left, and you just never know…
9. I can honestly say that faith will always overcome doubt, love will always conquer hate, and that there is as much power in a smile as there is in a bomb.
10. And finally, I honestly believe that out of all the thousands of years of human existence, God chose to place us here, now. Not by chance, but by reason. By holy purpose. And the sooner we realize that, the better off our world will be.
I’m a writer whose first novel, Snow Day, will be published by FaithWords in 2010.
But don’t let that fool you. I’m just as confused as anyone.
And that is fine with me, because the great thing about wandering around in the fog is that you never know what you might run into.
Don't miss anything: Subscribe now-
You can catch up with me here:
-
