(This post was first published as a column in the Staunton, VA News Leader)

I would have liked school if it weren’t for all the learned I was expected to do. Friends, sports, and girls were the reason I got out of bed and trudged off to the classroom every morning. Math, history, and reading were most definitely not.

By high school I had fully mastered the art of sneaking by and even managed to convince myself that there was something inherently pleasing about a good, solid C average. Knowing a lot isn’t important when all you really want is to get by.

That sort of thinking further cemented itself when I accepted Christ. Since faith was all I needed in order to get to heaven, I didn’t really have to bother with knowing much. Besides, knowledge was faith’s enemy, right? Sometimes you could know just enough to get you confused with what you should believe and shouldn’t.

But sometime between then and now, I discovered that learning wasn’t all that bad. I also discovered that I had quite an appetite for it. One could actually say I have quite an appetite for accumulating useless facts.

Aside from maybe being able to win a few dollars on Jeopardy, most of my family and friends think this hobby gets in the way. I think not. So to hear my argument in favor of filling your brain with things you’ll never use, head over to Katdish’s blog. It’s worth the trip just to learn in what key a housefly’s wings hum…

Sometimes I have days like yesterday, days when fear and despair grip and won’t let go. Dark days, I call them. Days when the black surrounds you to such degree that you begin to choke.

On many of those days, I ponder this question: When you suddenly discover the darkness is all around you, how do you find the light?

The answers to that question have varied over the years, but the one I usually settle upon has always been a restful night’s sleep. The formula was simple—hang on, muddle through, and go to bed. Tomorrow would be better.

It was my intent to follow that often tried but seldom true maxim last night. But then the subconscious part of me that keeps a nightly vigil for bogeymen and the helpless cries of small children with smaller bladders woke me. I opened my eyes and saw nothing.

The power was out.

It was never dark in my house. Not truly dark, anyway. We had lamps and night-lights and shudders and creaks. Even in those hours when late night and early morning become synonymous, there is light and sound and sense.

But not then. Then, there was only the Void.

The husband and father part of me demanded at least a cursory investigation of the cause. My mind ran the gamut of possibilities, from the extreme (fire) to the improbably (lurking serial killer) to the likely (snafu at the power company). But to investigate, I needed to see. And in order to see, I needed a flashlight. Thankfully, I had one. In the closet. On the other side of the couch.

That was when the familiar question again popped into my mind:

When you suddenly discover the darkness is all around you, how do you find the light?

I lay there thinking. I’d never handled the darkness well. Not because of what may lurk there, but because I was incapable of knowing where I was in relation to where I wanted to be. My way was hidden.

The same could be said about the darkness that occasionally crept into my life. And maybe, just maybe, figuring out how to find the light in my closet could help me figure out how to find the light in my life. The same principles must apply. I simply had to decide what to do.

First, this was no time to panic. My daughter, a diabetic, needed her sugar checked in an hour. And my son, a light sleeper and terrified of the dark, would likely be roused by the same silence that woke me. I had responsibilities. People counted on me. Not just there in my darkened home in the middle of the night. Always.

Then I had to get up. This was no time for lying down. I had to reach the decision that I was going to make something happen rather than let something happen. Lying around and fretting about the darkness wouldn’t accomplish anything.

And after getting up, I had to move. Reckless abandon, however, wouldn’t do. That would only result in much noise and a possible broken bone. I had to move, yes. But I had to go slowly. I had to feel my way.

So I did.

As I made my way through the house, I discovered that memory was also I necessary ally when faced with the darkness. I found that I had walked down the hallway to the closet enough times to know how to get there. I knew where the floor creaked and where the door should be. Even in the dark, I knew the way.

Flashlight in hand, I roamed the house to make sure all was indeed well. My children were curled into the arms of slumber, oblivious to the darkness around them. I was happy they were spared from that knowledge, happy that they at least didn’t inherit the opposite trait from their father.

Because sometimes the power went out in my life. Sometimes what was once bright and clear was rendered dim and incomprehensible. “Where’s God?” I wonder.

Faith, like my flashlight, shines brighter in the darkness. And shadows, whether figuratively in my heart or literally in my home, grow with my sense of fear.

How do I find the light? I don’t panic. I get up. I move. And I remember that no matter how dark it is, I don’t have to stay lost.

That no matter how dark it is, I know the way.

It is a known fact that one of the main reasons why I’m friends with Tommy Fuller is because of what’s in his backyard. I realize this paints me in somewhat of a bad light on the surface. In my defense, though, Tommy is not only aware of this, he’s fine with it. He figures it’s a trade off. One of the main reasons he’s friends with me is because he borrows my golf clubs.

It’s a good deal as far as I’m concerned. Tommy’s a great guy. Even better than that is the fact that he has an open door policy when it comes to his backyard. I can visit any time I like, even if he isn’t there. The kids are welcomed, too. Sometimes we even make an afternoon of it. They can jump on his trampoline, and I can climb his oak tree.

Tommy has one of the biggest back yards in town with THE nicest tree smack in the middle of it. Tall and full, and the limbs are spaced just far enough apart to let through the perfect amount of sunlight. Home to squirrels and robins and friendly bugs. It’s the sort of tree that belongs more in a Disneyland attraction than a redneck’s backyard.

The farm has been in the Fuller family for generations, and it’s one of the oldest in the area. Tommy’s grandfather and father were both raised there, as was he. When his mother passed away ten years ago, he moved in and got control of the property. And when the time comes, Tommy will pass the torch onto one of his sons. In the Fuller family, the circle never ends.

There aren’t many properties around here that carry charm like that anymore. Most of the farmers in town have sold their acres of fields and forest to developers, giving in to the promise of a life of comfort rather than sweat. Tommy won’t bow to that false promise. There will be no subdivisions on his land. Not because his principles are too strong or his faith too unwavering, but because of that tree.

Because it is quite literally a family one.

Look on the back side and you can see the faint outlines of his father’s pledge to his mother back when they were mere boyfriend and girlfriend. BF Loves KT, it says. Tommy says his mother and father would sit beneath that tree often during their courtship, resting in the shade of their love.

And on the other side are the marks Tommy carved to his own bride to be, pledged in wood on the night they became engaged.

In the upper reaches of the oak is a tree house that Tommy built for his boys. Though worn, it’s still in good shape. He sees his future grandchildren playing pirate there.

But the best part? The best part isn’t the tree, It’s the stone plaque beside it.

03 MAY 1901, it says.

According to Tommy, his great grandfather planted that tree himself on a calm spring afternoon. Dug the hole, gently placed the seedling inside, then covered and watered it. And after that he stuck his shovel in the ground and just smiled. Tommy remembers his grandfather saying that it was a strange smile, part sadness and part joy. The sort of smile a dying man wears. Tommy doesn’t know what was wrong with his great grandfather, just that he didn’t have much longer. And he didn’t. If you drove over to the church nearby you would see that the date of his death and the date the tree was planted are less than a month apart.

It’s amazing that something so small and fragile could grow into something so large and strong. But love is like that. Hope, too. That’s what I think about when I sit in that tree.

And I also think about this—on a calm spring afternoon more than a century ago, a dying man’s last act was to plant something he would never be able to see grow. He would never get to rest in its shade or climb its branches. He would never get to enjoy it, but he planted it anyway. Not for himself, but for those who would come afterward.

I like that idea.

According to some, there is no such thing as an unselfish act. But this comes close. And I think that for all the lofty goals the human spirit can strive to accomplish, this is the most noble—that we spend our days in pursuit of something that will outlive us. That we plant seeds destined to bless not only ourselves, but generations.

My kids are asking when it will be time to pull the Halloween decorations out of the attic and onto the house. It’s a strange request given the fact that aside from a few cobwebs and maybe a mouse or two, there are no Halloween decorations up there to bring down.

But maybe there should be.

With all the excitement I bring to holidays like Christmas and July 4, I’ve been a little lax in the Halloween department. It’s a day that sometimes seems to clash with my faith. There’s a growing push by Christian leaders to boycott October 31 and treat it as just another day. Witches and ghosts and goblins aren’t good for the soul, they say.

Maybe that’s true. But I for one have never minded Halloween, if for no other reason than it makes us a little more comfortable talking about something we rarely do–what scares us.

If you’d like to know what scares me, what truly shakes me to the core, then hop on over to Katdish’s blog. I’ve bared my soul. You’ll find interesting things, scary things, and things that may even alter your opinion of me. And that’s okay with me. After all, we’re all afraid of something. It’s what we do with that fear that makes the difference.

Know what I love? Laughing.

I do it every day, and most days repeatedly. I laugh at myself and my own stupidity. And I laugh at others and their stupidity, too. Because let’s face it, people are funny.

There’s an old saying that postulates that we must either laugh or cry, and so we might as well laugh. That’s true, I think. Our world is such that it begs a reaction–either hope or doubt, love or hate, laughter or tears. And though I’m never one to diminish the power of tears, for me laughter’s always won out in the end.

I’ve often wonder what made Jesus laugh. The Bible never says, though I’m sure He did. Jesus has gotten the bad rap of being a sad, weary God. Though that was certainly the case from time to time, I’m pretty sure He laughed a lot, too. I’m also pretty sure some of the things I find funny He wouldn’t.

Which brings us to this weekend’s question, courtesy of Dr. Gregory Stock’s The Book of Questions. If you’d like, you can leave your answer in the comments.

Ready? Here goes:

The thing about shopping isn’t the money you have to spend. I don’t mind spending money. And it isn’t the crowded streets and the even more crowded stores, both of which I tolerate when I must.

No, the thing about shopping is the crazy people you parade in front of you all day long.

And yet there I stood on a recent Saturday morning in a busy local store, surrounded by crazy people.

Like the woman who wanted to return the underwear she had purchased the week before. The underwear that she had not only worn, but was wearing at that moment. “I have the receipt right here,” she told the woman at the service desk. “I just need to borrow your dressing room.”

Or the twenty-something man who stood for twenty minutes in the checkout line begging the cashier to run his credit card through just once more, as if God would suddenly smile upon him with fifty magical dollars to pay for his beer and smokes.

Or the elderly man who launched into a tirade against the store manager over the hidden consortium of powerful businessmen conspiring to prevent him from finding his favorite brand of peanut butter.

I paced through the store as warily as I could, careful not to touch anyone for fear that I would catch the Loony virus. If I would have had one of those H1N1 masks, I would have put it on. I felt as if Rod Serling would at any moment step in front of me and start speaking of another dimension of sound and sight and mind.

But it was as I left the store when I saw maybe the craziest person of all. Stepping like a tightrope walker on the thin line where the concrete of the storefront met the pavement of the parking lot. Bushy-haired and dirty, hands waving both outward and upward. Shouting.

What he was shouting was difficult to decipher, though “Why did I do that?!” could be made out quite plainly. I could pick out questions that were both asked and answered and as he seemed to analyze the results of something that had happened concerning someone named Harry.

Many of the customers entering the store altered their gait so as to time their arrival just before or just after he had passed. The ones stuck in no man’s land could not escape his approached and offered a variety of reactions. A few looked away to something, anything, that they could deem very interesting. Others studied their feet. More than a few tensed for a possible confrontation.

One young boy with his father in tow voiced the question we were all wondering.

“Daddy,” he said, “what’s wrong with that man?”

“Don’t look at him,” his father answered, “he’s just crazy.”

Crazy Man walked passed me (“Why did I do that?!”) toward the far end of the parking lot. The rest of us looked after him. Some, like me, were certain he had missed a pill or two that morning. Others, also like me, were wary that he’d decide to return.

I tossed the experience into my mental It Takes All Kinds file and forgot about it, but only for a minute. I couldn’t stop thinking about what that father had said to his son.

“He’s just crazy.”

Maybe.

But then I began to wonder.

How many times had I talked to myself lately? How many times had I paused in my busy day to consider what I was doing and thinking and believing? How many times had I stopped to ask this question:

Why did I do that?!

In a word, none. And it wasn’t because I didn’t have reason enough to do so. I had plenty. My days were filled with irrational acts and suspicious thoughts. Maybe taking the time to ponder the reasons behind the actions would help to fix that. Maybe a little self-examination would go a long way in turning the person I am into the person I should be.

We talk to our spouses and our co-workers, our children and our friends. We talk to strangers and pets and God.

But most of us haven’t heard from ourselves in a very long time.

And maybe, just maybe, that makes us the crazy ones.

My kids have recently become enamored with their height, believing that their upward rather than inward growth gives the best indication of their march toward adulthood. Every person they meet is gauged in terms of how tall they are. Instead of a hug or a handshake, both of my children will stand in front of them and with hand to head make a straight line across to see how much further they have to grow to get even.

I’d call this a phase, but I know it’s not. I’m thirty-seven and still do the same thing.

By my count there are 122 listings for “Coffey” in the phone book beside me, and 123 if you count Coffey’s Garage (and you should, because they do great work). That’s quite a number considering the fact that we’re all crammed into a relatively small part of a relatively small Virginia county. And though I don’t know each of them personally, I’d bump into all of them if I climbed high enough into my family tree.

Two of those Coffeys are prefaced by the first name of “Billy.” One of them is me. The other has over the years become me, too. Just improved.

Because in a lot of ways, the other me has always gone first. First to have a girlfriend, first to graduate. First to get married and have kids.

The other Billy Coffey was always cool and still is. He walks the fine line between being redneck enough to go bear hunting with the guys and refined enough to know that “loading the dishwasher” doesn’t mean getting his wife drunk. There are Coffeys around here who have yet to get that one straight.

I ran into him yesterday at the gas station (which is always somewhat awkward—“Hey, Billy,” “Hey, Billy”) and took the time to catch up while our vehicles were filling up. It was the normal sort of conversation between acquaintances, the kind where much is said but not necessarily told.

Weather? Cool. Wives? Good. Kids? Rowdy. Work? Horrible.

We topped off our tanks and said our goodbyes before driving off in opposite directions. But I couldn’t help but think we were actually going the same way now. He was no longer first in most things. No longer improved, either. We were just two guys living their lives who just happened to have the same name.

It was all a bit anti-climactic. Here I had for years considered this man to be a sort of mirror for my life, a crude barometer by which I measured the quality of my own highs and lows. But I didn’t have that anymore, and that was a problem.

So I did what any sane person would do. I went home and Googled myself.

Turned out there were a lot of me’s out there. The most famous was a Billy Coffey who raced sprint cars. He even had a nickname—The Kid. Billy “The Kid” Coffey. Awesome. I always wanted a nickname, especially one what was cowboy-ish.

There was another Billy Coffey on Facebook. Relaxing in a chair wearing a pair of sunglasses and a ball cap. It was a nice picture and one I could never have taken. I was seldom relaxed.

A Billy Coffey in Florida was appealing a conviction for cocaine distribution. Finally, someone who held a position in life a little lower than mine. But then I found another Billy Coffey who was a preacher in the next county, a fact that rendered the scales a bit uneven again.

And then I found a Billy Coffey who’s sacrifice was enshrined forever on West Panel 2 of the Vietnam Memorial.

That’s when I quit looking. I realized then exactly what I was doing.

It was human nature for us to judge ourselves against others, to stand toe to toe with their talents or looks or status and move a mental hand from the tops of our heads across to them. Regardless of who we are, we all need to see how we measure up. Often, we come up short. Occasionally we can admit we’re not shorter. But it’s rare when we can honestly say we’re taller.

We are all unique. “Wonderfully made,” according to the Bible. Made alike by our capacity to love and dream and hope, yet set apart by our abilities to express them. Which is why comparing ourselves to others will never work.

And also why comparing ourselves to the people we were yesterday always will.