doubt – Page 2

Giving up on God

October 24, 2013 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

Tony would tell you he still believed in God. “Hey, I still believe in the Lord, bro,” was how it usually came out, and as he said it he would raise his palms up and lower his head, like he was surrendering. I think maybe that’s what Tony really was doing—giving up. I think maybe he started doing that a long time ago, back when his wife first tripped.

That happened about twelve years back. Tony can tell you exactly how long it’s been (he always had it down to not just years and months, but weeks and hours). It was at Myrtle Beach on their honeymoon. They’d spent the first day down in the sand and were heading back to their room when his wife stumbled. Just like that, no reason. There wasn’t even anything there for her to trip over. They laughed (Tony would tell you that, too) and shrugged it off to being punch drunk on love.

She tripped four more times that week. By the time they packed up the truck to head back to Virginia, Tony’s wife was still laughing but Tony was not. It was like a voice started whispering in his ear, telling him something was wrong. It was a heavy whisper, thick and deep with what sounded like a chuckle buried deep down in the words. Tony would say that voice was God’s.

He asked his wife to go to the doctor. She laughed, he begged, she relented. They found the tumor in her brain a week later. Six months after holding his wife’s hand on the beach, Tony stood in front of her casket.

Tony would tell you about those six months if you asked him. I think that was part of giving up, too. You come to a point where you’re tired of keeping all your wounds covered and you think they’ll heal better if they get some air. You think if you do that, all those hurts will dry up and peel away.

He’d talk about how his wife knelt by their bed and prayed through tears for healing, and how he knelt there with her, crying more. He’d tell you how the church pitched in with everything from housework to meals and how both of them truly thought everything would be okay. And if you had the time and the inclination, Tony would describe how the cancer made his wife forget who he was in the end, and that one of the last things she said was, “I don’t understand.”

She’d gone crazy by then, but Tony swore his wife was in her right mind when she said that. I think he was right. Sometimes a bulb burns its brightest just before it flickers out.

He gave up on God. Believed in Him, but didn’t love Him. Couldn’t. Tony said it was impossible to love someone you couldn’t trust, and he couldn’t trust God. God took away the woman Tony loved and left him with only empty places.

He tried coming up with a label for himself. Tony couldn’t call himself a believer, but he couldn’t call himself an atheist, either. Nor was he agnostic. He said being an atheist or agnostic would be a lot better than what he was. It was easier to just think there’s nobody up there watching, that we were all stuck in some sort of cosmic accident and just had to make do the best we could. But Tony saw too much in his life before to think that. He’d rather have no God than a mean one, but he was stuck with the mean one.

I don’t understand. That’s what Tony’s wife said. And those three words pretty much define how he lived his life after. Tony thought his wife was in heaven. Thought, too, that he’d get there one day. He’d been baptized (“Washed in the blood” is how it came out), and he was counting on that to make up for the gulf that had grown between him and the Almighty. He wanted to see his wife again, but he’d prefer God to keep away from them once he got up there.

Tony moved away a year ago. The town had too many memories, and he had too little patience. I heard at the post office yesterday that he’d killed himself shortly after. I guess he didn’t have patience for living anymore, either.

I wonder where he is now. I don’t know. But I like to think Tony’s with his wife now. I like to think they’re walking upon a greater beach in a greater place. His wife never trips, and the light upon them is one that never fades. I like to think he found God again in that very last instant, and he found that God had never left. That God had been loving Tony just as much his joys as in his empty places.

Hit the redneck

October 4, 2012 by Billy Coffey 4 Comments

photo of Radivoje Lajic from telegraph.co.uk

You could say Radivoje Lajic and I have a few things in common, at least on the surface.

We’re both country boys for one, though what I call country happens to be the mountains of Virginia and what Radivoje calls country happens to be Gornji Lajici, a small village in northern Bosnia. We’re both content to live our own lives and mind our own business. And then there’s the fact that deep down, we both just want to be left alone. We want our lives free of drama and spectacle. We want to quietly go on our way and just keep doing what we’re doing.

Problem is, that doesn’t seem to happen very often with Radivoje. And sometimes it doesn’t happen very often with me, either. Things get in the way. Specific things.

In Radivoje’s case, it’s the aliens who won’t leave him alone.

Since 2007, Radivoje’s small house has been hit six times by meteorites. He has the space rocks to prove it, too. Experts at Belgrade University have confirmed them all as genuine. He even sold one of them to a university in the Netherlands so he could put a new steel girder reinforced roof on his house. He was tired of patching all the holes.

For their part, scientists are still trying to figure out how and why poor Radivoje has been forced to endure this. The odds of anyone getting hit by a single meteorite are about 0.000000136%. The odds of getting hit by six of them? Incalculable.

There is some speculation that either his house or his town sits on some supercharged magnetic field, but nothing has been proven. And even if it was, that wouldn’t explain the fact that all of this seems to happen only during a heavy rain. Never in the sunshine.

A mystery, the scientists say. But not to Radivoje. He knows what’s going on. To him, it’s pretty obvious:

“I have no doubt I am being targeted by aliens. They are playing games with me. I don’t know why they are doing this. When it rains I can’t sleep for worrying about another strike.”

Funny, yes. Funny to me, anyway. I don’t know why this is happening, but to think aliens are floating up in space playing a game of Hit the Serbian seems a bit of a stretch.

But then I thought it over and decided that maybe if Radivoje has his facts wrong, then so do I. Because if you substitute “aliens” for “God” in his quote above, you might just have me.

There are times in my life when I feel like God is targeting me. Lots of times. Many more than six. I suppose in that regard, Radivoje’s gotten off pretty easy.

I’ve been known to believe that God plays games with me. He’ll dangle some blessing right in front of my eyes and then snatch it away the second I reach out for it. He’ll answer little prayers like getting me a good parking spot at the mall but not big ones like not letting my kids get sick. And there are always those infernal lessons He’s intent on teaching me, things like patience and humility and trust, things I’m sure will build me up later but always seem to make me feel torn apart now.

To make matters worse, those lessons always seem to come at the worst possible time. Not when my life is sunny, but when it’s raining on my insides. And the rain always seems to pour harder then, because I’m left worrying what He’s going to do next.

“I have no doubt I am being targeted by aliens. They are playing games with me. I don’t know why they are doing this. When it rains I can’t sleep for worrying about another strike.”

I get that. I get it because there are times when I have no doubt I am being targeted by God. He is playing games with me. I didn’t know why He is doing that. When it rains I can’t sleep for worrying about another strike.

I can’t say there isn’t a little bit of Radivoje Lajic’s thinking in me. I have my moments when I think God’s in heaven playing Hit the Redneck. And chances are good that you’ve felt the same more than once about your own life. As for me, I’m going to work on that.

Helen’s last will and testament

July 30, 2012 by Billy Coffey 3 Comments

The division of Helen Long’s estate was fairly straightforward. Her two story Cape Cod was to be sold and the proceeds divided between her daughter, Tina, and Mark and Matthew, her two sons. Personal items that held sentimental value were evenly distributed, stocks were liquidated and moved to provide for the grandchildren’s college education, and the vacation home in the Outer Banks was to be shared by everyone as a way to keep the family from drifting apart.

That last bit wouldn’t happen. Not to Helen Long’s family. She had spent too much time and given too much effort in keeping her family together to have them fall apart once she was gone. It was her mission in life, her purpose, and she could think of no better goal to devote her life to fulfilling.

She had done a good job, too. Having your last remaining parent pass away can bring out the worst in families, but this wasn’t the case for the Long family. In the months between the news that Helen’s cancer had spread and her death, she took great pains to ensure everything would go as smoothly as possible.

Funeral arrangements were made. Last minute bills were paid. And though Helen didn’t frequent church nearly as often as her children, her pastor visited often in the last weeks.

In a way, Helen’s passing was to be her crowning achievement. She, not her husband, had kept the family close over the years. There had never been rifts or disputes between the kids, never so much as an argument. Her dying wish was to keep it that way, to give her family something that would allow them to remember their mother’s love. Even in death, Helen would teach them.

And oh, did she teach them.

The funeral services were handled with both precision and ease. There was sadness, much sadness, but there had been ample time for goodbyes. Mark, Matthew, and Tina held their own. Even the grandchildren didn’t cry. The pastor himself said it was one of the most peaceful funerals he’d ever presided over.

When the lawyer called a week later for the reading of Helen’s will, it was only the children who attended. Their spouses and children didn’t feel a need to play referee or look after the best interests of their mates. After all, everything had already been settled. Everything would be fine.
They were right about the former assumption. The latter, not so much. Because while Helen had included her children in all of the planning, she neglected to mention the letter.

The lawyer presented the envelope to them and asked that they verify it had not been tampered with. Tina gave a sideways look to Matthew, who echoed it to Mark.

The lawyer lifted his reading glasses to his eyes and leaned back in his worn leather chair as he carefully slit the envelope open, revealing a single sheet of paper upon which a single paragraph had been written:

Dear Children,

Do not mourn for me because I will not know it. I’m gone. That’s it, just gone. Don’t go fooling yourselves into thinking that I’m sitting on a cloud somewhere with a smile on my face and wings on my back, because I’m not. I’m dead. There’s nothing after this life, so remember what I always told you—all you have is each other.

For the first time since her mother’s death, Tina began to cry.

Helen’s three children sat silent as the lawyer then proceeded to review the contents of the will, all of which didn’t matter before the letter and only mattered less after. Because the money and the trinkets and the vacation house wouldn’t make up for the fact that they would never see their mother again.

All this time, and they never knew. Tina and her brothers all attended church regularly, and they all were certain of their eternal home. They simply took it for granted that Helen was certain, too. After all, she had sat beside them many times in church.

But neither of them had ever bothered to make sure. They never asked that question. And now, suddenly, it was too late.

Two years after her mother’s death, Tina still carries that letter tucked inside a pocket of her purse. She showed it to me last week. The ink was worn and the paper crumpled, as if it had been thrown away and reclaimed time upon time.

“I can’t let it go,” Tina said. “I never will.”

I don’t expect she will. I wouldn’t, either. Tina still carries the burden of never asking her mother if her soul was secure. She holds out hope Helen’s mind was changed in her last minutes of life. That the letter was written in a bout with hopelessness and despair that was lifted in that last breath, and she will see her mother again.

I hope so, too.

Where the magic be

February 16, 2012 by Billy Coffey 9 Comments

The people next to us were an extended family—nine of them, arranged in descending order from grandpa to grandchild, all occupying three tables that had been placed end to end in the middle of the restaurant. Most of their attention was focused on the grandchild. It was his birthday.

He looked eleven, maybe twelve. Bright eyed and brown haired. The first volleys of acne were landing upon his chin. The boy did not seem to mind. He nodded and smiled and offered a few words here and there. It was the typical pre-teen response to nearby family, one that said I love you people but I’m now too cool to show it.

I took all this in (writers will invariably call this sort of thing Research, which sounds much better than plain nosiness) and nearly moved on to the next table when the waiter arrived. He inquired as to the quality of everyone’s meal and if anyone would like dessert. The birthday boy’s face turned the color of his encroaching acne when everyone announced the occasion.

The waiter smiled and asked, “You like magic?”

The boy shrugged and snorted in the same motion. “There’s no such thing as magic.”

“I’ll be right back,” the waiter said.

He returned with a man I assumed was a dishwasher. His jeans and apron were soiled and soggy. He smiled down at the boy and said, “Hey there, m’man. Lemme show ya somethin.”

He produced a deck of cards from his apron and fanned them out face up in one fluid motion. Flicked them back with one hand. He smiled and winked at the family, who had by then already begun inching their chairs forward for a better view.

“You believe in magic, m’man?”

Another shrug and another snort.

“Cool,” the dishwasher said. He fanned the cards out again, this time face down. “Pick a card, birthday boy. Don’t let me see now.”

It took prodding from both mom and dad, but the boy did. He took one from the middle of the deck and held it close. He peeked and then let everyone else do the same.

“Toss it back in here,” the dishwasher said. He tilted the deck up and down and wiggled it. “Anywhere you want, Bossman.”

Back in the middle it went. The dishwasher slid the cards back one-handed again and held the deck beneath the birthday boy’s chin.

“Blow,” he said.

“No way.”

“Come on now. That’s where the magic be.”

Neither mom nor dad could get him to budge this time. Grandma stepped in. The boy blew on the deck and the dishwasher tapped it with his forefinger. He flipped over the top card.

I didn’t have to see the card to know the trick had worked. The birthday boy’s bewilderment did that. The slaps on the table by dad and grandpa helped.

“It’s a trick,” the boy said.

The dishwasher raised his eyebrows. “Okay, let’s try again.”

Another fan of the cards. The boy picked one from towards the back this time. He placed it in the middle. He handed the deck to dad to shuffle, who handed it to grandpa, then back to the birthday boy, who shuffled once more for good measure. Then he handed the deck back to the dishwasher and smirked.

The dishwasher held the deck beneath the boy’s chin, who proceeded to not so much blow as snort.

There was a tap on the deck. The top card turned over.

“Ha! That’s not my card.”

“No?” the dishwasher asked. “You sure?”

“Sure.”

“Dang. I dunno what happened. Guess you’re too good for me.”

I will say I was disappointed. I wanted to see the trick. And I’ll say the boy who thought himself a man was pretty disappointed too, even if he was too old to show it.

“You done with your plate there, Bossman?” the dishwasher asked. “Might as well take that on back.”

The boy nodded and picked up his plate. His mouth fell open.

His card was taped to the bottom.

The family applauded. The dishwasher bowed.

I have no idea who that boy was, but I guarantee I will always remember his birthday. I guarantee this too—whatever presents he was given, the best one came from the dishwasher. It was a reminder that no matter how old you think you are, there’s still a little kid hiding inside.

And no matter what we think, there is magic in this world.

There is magic everywhere.

A question of prayer

April 25, 2011 by Billy Coffey 20 Comments

Working at a college has its advantages. Having access to such a big group of smart people comes in handy for me in my daily life, especially when it comes to some of the larger problems I run across. In the five years I’ve been there, I have spoken with English professors about writing, political science professors about the goings-on in the world, and religion and philosophy professors about, well, religion and philosophy.

I would call none of our conversations a sharing of ideas. Their words and the diplomas that hang on their office walls are proof enough they are much more intelligent than little ol’ me. I’m good with that. There are advantages to being the dumb person in the room.

So the other day when my mind asked a question my heart had trouble answering, I went knocking on some office doors.

The first chair I sat in was in front of four bookcases that stretched floor to ceiling and were stuffed with titles I could barely pronounce. The professor—smart fella, with a Ph.D. in philosophy courtesy of an Ivy League school—looked at me with kind eyes and asked what was on my mind.

“What’s the point of praying for anything?” I asked him. “I mean, if God knows everything and has a perfect plan, then won’t His plan work out regardless of what I tell Him?”

The professor took off his glasses, rubbed the lenses with a handkerchief. Then he put the glasses back on and looked at the bookshelves behind me, looking for an answer.

“Let’s see,” he told me. He rose from the chair by the desk and brought down one book—this one old, with a worn leather cover and yellowed pages—and then another, this one so new the spine cracked as he opened it.

He talked for ten minutes about free will and time being an unfinished sentence. Or something. My nods at first were of the understanding kind. The ones toward the end were because I was fighting sleep.

I still don’t know what he said.

The door down the hall belonged to a religion professor (Ph.D. again, Ivy League again). I sat in a different chair in front of different books and asked the same question with the same results. More free will, plus something about alternate histories and God “delighting in Himself.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d walked into a professor’s office with one question and walked out with a dozen.

To make matters worse, my mind was still asking that question and my heart was still having trouble answering it.

What’s the point of praying for anything? Because it seems a little presumptuous to ask for anything from a God who already knows what I need (and what I don’t).

I was at a standstill over all of this until I talked to Ralph at the Dairy Queen last night. Ralph doesn’t have a Ph.D., and the only Ivy he knows is the kind that grows on the side of his house. And though far from an expert on matters of the spirit, he does preach part-time at one of the local churches when the regular preacher is sick or on vacation. And since he waved at me and was eating his cheeseburger all alone, I figured what the heck. I’d ask him:

“What’s the point of praying for anything?”

Ralph paused mid-chew. Cocked his head a little to the side. Said, “What kinda stupid question is that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Just popped into my head the other day. But seriously, why ask Him for anything. And really, why pray at all? If God already knows what’s in my heart, why do I have to speak it?”

Ralph finished his bite, swallowed, then said, “B’cause it ain’t about you, son.”

“It’s not?”

He drawled out a slow “No” that sounded more like Nooo. “Boy, prayin’ ain’t about askin’. Ain’t even about praisin’, really. Nope, prayin’s about you gettin’ in line with God. It’s not about Him gettin’ in your head and heart, it’s about you gettin’ in His.”

Ah.

I left Ralph to his cheeseburger, answers in hand. And honestly, that answer made sense. Because life—better life, anyway—is always about Him more than about us.

And I left with other wisdom, too. The next time I have a question, I think I’ll spend less time in a professor’s office and more time down at the Dairy Queen.

Doubting heaven

March 21, 2011 by Billy Coffey 15 Comments

There was a time when I wasn’t sure about heaven.

God seemed too distant—too big—to go to all the trouble of tending to my eternal needs. I thought His time was better spent keeping the planets in motion and tending to the angels. Angels were much more worthy of His attention than little me. Little, scrawny, dirty me.

That wasn’t always the case. As a child, I believed heaven was there much like I believed West Virginia was there. Our sister state resided just over the mountains, there but not seen. Heaven was much the same, just over the horizon of my life.

I don’t remember when I started my doubting. My teenage years seem the likely culprit, that time when the head swells with knowledge and the heart is found tender and broken by loves unfulfilled and dreams unmet. That’s generally the age when God goes from nearby to far off, and we wonder why He moved. That was me. Heaven was relegated to that corner of my mind occupied by stories of Atlantis and Santa Claus, both of which may have been real enough once upon a time but were now covered with thick layers of exaggeration. The world opened up just as wide for me at eighteen as it does anyone else. It took up all my vision. I could not see heaven anymore.

That lasted until my mid-twenties. Another milestone in life, one just as important but not as celebrated as the teenage years. I was married by then, working, trying to get something—anything—published and not quite getting it. I remember my wife and I were renting a small house on a farm, and I remember getting up early one morning and sitting on the porch, staring out at the alpenglow coming over the mountains and the cows grazing in the pasture. That’s when I realized that heaven was real. Seems strange, doesn’t it? That I would fully return to faith by staring at cattle. But that’s how it happened. It was as if some small part of me finally understood that I was made for better lands. That we all were.

With heaven now firmly entrenched in my mind, my thoughts then went to the prospect of hell. An old man named Luther Campbell died a few years later. A good man. Raised up here in town, was called to war in Korea. Came home, married, had kids and then grandkids. Spent thirty years at a job down at the factory that he absolutely hated, but did it anyway. For his family, he said. Everything about Luther revolved around his family.

Luther wasn’t a Christian. Sundays were overtime days at the factory, and that’s where Luther worshipped. For his family, you see. I remember sitting there at his graveside wondering where he was and figuring he now had all the overtime in the world. He was a good man, I kept telling myself. Wonder what God did with him?

Luther wasn’t someone like Hitler or Stalin. Those guys deserved hell. Not Mr. Luther Campbell, a good man who just wanted to provide for his family. If God was love—and I believed He was—couldn’t He see that? Couldn’t He see that we all struggled though this life, taking our turns with our feet held to the fire? That we all hurt, we all cried, we all felt the weight of sadness?

Don’t we all deserve heaven in the end?

Yes, I thought. We do. So I went from wondering if there was a heaven to being convinced there wasn’t a hell.

All that was years ago.

Things are different now.

I’ve learned much since then, life being the ultimate classroom. I still believe in heaven, now more than ever. Still believe we were made for better lands. I still believe that God is love, too. But I do believe in hell. I suppose that answers my question about where Luther Campbell’s soul now resides. It’s tough for me to deal with that sometimes. I miss him and want him safe and well. But I figure God whispers to us throughout our lives and in many different ways, and it’s up to us to listen. I think that in the end, He doesn’t send any of us to hell. We do that ourselves.

My doubts now tend to revolve around humanity rather than God, which I suppose is more justified but just as painful. I’m daily amazed at the good we can do, and I’m equally amazed at the harm we can inflict. I suppose that’s why I no longer wonder about heaven and hell. I know both are there. Because I can see the seeds of each in us all.