Billy Coffey

storyteller

From concentrate

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My family keeps a steady supply of orange juice on hand. Not the kind in a carton or a jug, though. The kind from concentrate. No other form is allowed. My rules.

I know there isn’t much difference between the sort of juice you get from concentrate and the sort of juice you get any other way. Not when it comes to taste, at least. I’ve sampled. No, concentrate is used in our home for another reason. It’s a reminder of sorts, something tangible that helps keep me focused on one of life’s greater truths.

My mother always had orange juice concentrate in the freezer. Easier on the budget, she said. And though my childhood interests tended to involve things far away from the kitchen, I was always around when she made orange juice. The process amazed me.

One frozen tube, small enough to fit into my tiny hand, suddenly transformed into an entire pitcher of juicy goodness? Simply by adding some water? To most, it was a powerful example of human ingenuity endeavoring to make the world a simpler and more orderly place. To me, it was a minor miracle.

Though water seemed to be the magic ingredient, I always thought it an unnecessary step that took a bit away from the finished product. Why bother? Water didn’t taste good. It didn’t taste at all. On the other hand, the stuff in the tube had to be loaded with taste. Sweet, with just a hint of sour. Delicious.

So why not forget the water all together? Why not just serve it right out of the tube?

According to mom, that wasn’t such a good idea. Concentrate on its own was awful, she said. It was too sweet and too powerful. That’s why water was the magic ingredient. It diluted the concentrate and made the juice drinkable.

I never bought that.

One day, alone in the house, I decided to see if she knew what she was talking about. I climbed up on a chair, took the concentrate out, and peeled off the cover. After a few minutes of letting the orange goop thaw in a bowl, I sniffed and smiled. Heaven awaited.

Thinking back, I probably should have taken a sip. Just in case. But I didn’t. I took the biggest gulp I could. Swallowed half of it, too. The other half was launched right back out through a retch that spewed the juice through my mouth and nose and left me teary eyed. I coughed and hacked and, for a moment, almost blacked out.

Mom was wrong. The concentrate wasn’t awful. It was worse.

How could something be so sweet and have too much taste to drink? And how could diluting something so bad make it so good? It didn’t make sense then.

It does now.

Because I’ve spent years wanting a concentrated life. Years on my knees, asking God to help me be and do more. My days were filled with too many mere moments. I wanted defining ones. Moments that lifted me up and rescued me from the hum-drum of life.

And there have been some, to be sure. Like the moment I met my wife. Or when I first held my children. Or the moment I knew beyond all doubt that there was a God Who loved me. But those moments have been surrounded by years of seeming nothingness, when the days seemed to drift by rather than stand out.

I hated those times. A waste of living, I thought. But I’ve learned to think differently. I’ve learned that we may be proven in our defining moments, but we are made in our quiet ones.

Drinking life right out of the tube would sooner wear us down than lift us up. Rather than enjoy its taste, we’d spew it out. It would be too sweet and too powerful to swallow.

Which I think is why God in His infinite wisdom gives our greatest blessings to us over time rather than all at once. Why our days seem to have much more of the same old than the different new. Time, I think, is the magic ingredient. It waters things down. Which is why the wait we mourn for the dreams we have may in fact be His greatest gift.

It makes the living more delicious.

Earl’s Beans

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The Frisbie family over at Frisbie Family Fun Forever wrote a post the other day about how their family has been thinking a lot about the Depression lately. Not the one now, mind you. Things aren’t that far gone. Not yet, anyway. No, they were talking about the one in the 1930s. Quite possibly the toughest times in our country’s history. They were marveling at the sense of determination and self-reliance that people had to display back then. Not just to get ahead, but to stay alive.

Which got me thinking about a guy down at the gas station named Earl. Not that the gas station is his place of employment, mind you. As Earl’s pushing ninety-six and can’t get around as well as once upon a time, the gas station is just his hangout. It’s the one place in town where he can sit in a booth all day and watch most everyone pass by sooner or later.

Part down historian and part town gossip, he is the self-imposed high mayor and town council, and his booth is his throne. Like Sinatra’s table at Jilly’s, you don’t sit at Earl’s table. Not if you want to stay alive. Earl might be pushing the century mark, but he’s still a pretty tough guy. I’m not sure what he’d do if he caught some unassuming stranger occupying his seat. It’s never happened.

Earl has seen a lot in his ninety-six years: two world wars, four American ones, cars and computers and televisions and telephones. He’s endured the losses of his wife and all five of their children, countless recessions, and one big, nasty Depression.

You might think that all of this would make Earl a little long for this world. That he’d be worn out from all of his years. You’d be wrong, though. There’s no one in this world happier than him. No one.

With all that living, Earl has the advantage of perspective when it comes to the events of these days. He’s seen it all. And since he’s seen it all, there really isn’t much that catches him off guard. Take this current financial mess, for instance.

Me: “How bad’s it going to get, Earl?”

Earl: “Not bad enough that you’ll have to worry.”

Me: “I’m worrying about it now.”

Earl: “Well, you shouldn’t.”

Me: “Why?”

His answer was not framed in financial statistics or a keep-your-chin-up inspirational speech. It was instead four one-syllable words:

“’Cause of the beans.”

The beans, you ask? Yes. Allow me to explain.

Earl was twenty years old in 1932 when he married his wife, Anna. Their first child followed shortly, and their second was born not long afterward. Trying to raise a family in the middle of the Depression was about as easy as it sounds. Work was sparse, pay was sporadic, and hope was nonexistent.

But God always provided what Earl’s family needed. They were poor, yes, but they were not destitute. They all had clothes to wear, a roof over their heads, and beans in the cupboard.

Lots of beans. Beans were cheap back then, Earl says. And since they were so affordable, that’s what was incorporated into every meal. Earl’s family lived off beans for years. According to him, everybody’s family did.

Which maybe wasn’t so bad. I like beans. And Earls says he liked them fine, too. But after eating beans for two meals a day for ten years or so, you start to get a little sick of them. You start to hate them. Earl swore that one day his family wouldn’t have to eat beans anymore, and that would be a fine day indeed.

That day did come. World War II brought work again for our country, and the prosperity afterwards ensured that the tough times were over.

People think the Depression was bad, Earl says. That’s true. But they also think there wasn’t any good in it. That’s not true. Families were strengthened. Faith was strengthened. People were strengthened.

According to Earl, tough times make tough people. And those times made maybe the toughest people we’ve ever had. People who saved the world from the Nazis and the Communists, who landed on the Moon and fought for civil rights.

Hurting might be bad for the body, but it’s good for the soul.

And losing what means much can reveal what means more.

Maybe he’s right.

I’ve read where people are predicting riots in this country. Bloody revolutions. Mass crime. The breakdown of society and the extinction of Christianity. Not me. Not Earl, either. We both think that the sort of people made seventy years ago are the same sort that can be made now. People who won’t be broken by life, but made tougher by it.

What We Can

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My house is a disaster. Complete and utter. And there is no escaping it. The mess is upstairs and down, inside and out. Courtesy of a perfect storm of cold weather, a Saturday afternoon, and four children who think they’re adults.

Two kids can clutter a house on their own. No assistance is required. But when those two kids are joined by two more kids, this is the result. Toys strewn across floors and furniture. Hand and even foot prints on the walls and doors. Not to mention spilled drinks, dropped food, and a mammoth pile of dirty dishes.

This is why I frown upon play dates. They have a tendency to turn my home into Lord of the Flies.

And now, with my wife gone to take my children’s friends back to where they belong, this mess is all mine.

Where to start is always the toughest question to answer when faced with this sort of situation. Everything seems so overwhelming. How am I supposed to prioritize what needs to be done first and what can wait? Am I supposed to begin with the small or the large? Should I start upstairs and work my way down, or downstairs and work my way up?

I don’t know. It all too confusing. And in my confusion I find myself asking one more question:

What can one person do to fix all of this?

“Nothing,” I mutter, trudging into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. And since I’m there, I figure I might as well start with the dishes. So I fill up the dishwasher then transfer what’s left to the sink, where I begin the process of wash/rinse/dry.

Meanwhile, the television in the living room is broadcasting the day’s news. Bailouts and unemployment. Taxes. Inflation, deflation, and stagflation. War. Even a reference to Revelation.

Such is life in this modern age. Struggling not to overcome, but to simply keep up. Trying to hang on to job and family. Trying to still believe in this world, that we can fix things and make a difference.

I hate the news.

Not because it’s so bad or usually slanted one way or the other. No, I hate the news because it never stops. There’s always something new to worry about and something more that needs fixing.

Not unlike my house, I suppose.

Both have been made a mess by children who thought they were adults, and both need a good straightening up and cleaning.

I know this. And I know that as God has seen fit to put me here, now, then He must expect me to do some of that straightening and cleaning. But again come those questions. Where do I start? Big? Small? What should I do now and what should I wait to do later?

I don’t know. It all seems so overwhelming, this mess. It’s not just the news stories of people losing their jobs and homes. It’s the feelings those stories breed. It’s the sense of despair and resignation that so many seem to be feeling now. If we are to pull ourselves out of this, we need more than governments and stimulus packages. We need hope. Hope that not only can things get better, we are the ones to make it that way.

It’s easy sometimes to think we’re powerless to alter the course of things. Easy to think we’re too small and too puny to make things better. But I don’t think we’re so powerless.

I can’t clean my whole house, but I can wash the dishes. I can’t go everywhere and do everything, but I can take care of what’s in front of me and do what I can.

The great secret? If we all do our part, however small it may be, we will find in the end that just because things are tough now doesn’t mean they have to stay that way. And just because we can’t clean up the whole mess doesn’t mean we can’t clean up a little of it.

To Stand and Sing

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We had a cowboy at church last Sunday. Four rows up and two rows over from me. Tall and slender, wearing faded blue jeans and a crisp, striped shirt. His mustache resembled the sort that one would grow while stranded on a desert island, and his weathered Stetson sat in the chair next to him.

I’d never seen him before, though that didn’t necessarily mean he was a visitor. Our church is a pretty big one, and our congregation is generally in the hundreds. Good in a way, not so good in others.

The service began with the obligatory hymn and prayer, after which the choir took its place and the minister of music took the microphone.

“I know there are a lot of people here who are struggling financially in these times,” she said. “It’s easy to feel as though God has somehow abandoned you, and it’s hard to reach out to someone for help. So as we sing these next few songs, I’d like to ask that anyone who is being burdened by life take a seat and pray. If you’re around someone who sits, take a moment to place a hand upon them. Pray with them and for them. Let them know they’re not alone.”

A few sat. Many more wanted to, I think, but didn’t. Pride can be a stubborn thing, even in church.

The cowboy, I noticed, sat halfway through the first verse. It was a sudden motion, one not done with much reservation, as if the hidden weight of his life refused to let him stand any longer. He was still for a moment, bent over as if something on the back of the chair in front of him demanded his attention.

Then he buried his face in his hands and wept.

Cowboys didn’t cry. I had known that since childhood. There was a poster thumbtacked to my bedroom wall that had the Cowboy Code on it. Cowboys never cry was number four, right after cowboys always eat their supper.

Yet there he was, using his calloused hands to wipe his fragile tears. His mouth moved slowly, almost imperceptibly, as he uttered his prayer. The concerned hands of his neighbors were gently placed on his back one by one as the choir continued to sing.

As the second verse began, the cowboy did something quite unexpected. He stood. Not slowly as if beaten, but purposefully with intent. He straightened his shirt, wiped his tears one more time, and took a deep breath.

And then he sang.

Not merely with lungs and voice, but with faith and hope. He sang words of God’s love and provision, of His undying devotion and saving grace. It was an act of protest against the decaying affect of his circumstances and the doubt they caused.

He sang. And there was prayer in his melody.

We think of courage as a virtue reserved for only a select few. Soldiers who defend us. Policemen who protect us. Firemen who rescue us. And while their actions are indeed courageous, I’d dare say they are no more so than the courage displayed by a cowboy in a church pew.

Because there are times when the simple act of facing the day takes courage. When trials and disappointments pin us down and dare us to resist and we are faced with this choice: submit or overcome.

What will we do when confronted by loss, whether of dreams or jobs or loved ones? When the winters of our lives blow and howl, will we surrender to its rages or seek shelter in warmth of God?

Will we cover our own wounds and let them fester, or will we let Christ bind them?

Will we sit and mourn, or will we stand and sing?

Life’s two sides

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Ever have one of those days? The ones when nothing seems to go right, when you start to question the very value of your existence and wonder if there is actually a point to anything?

I had one of those days yesterday.

Confusion is often our constant companion. Our eyesight and the extent of our understanding reach no further than the present moment. It’s hard to see how some things could ever possibly work out for the good. Rather than nice and neat, our lives are tangled and messy. Full of knots.

These were the things preying on my mind when I arrived home this afternoon and found my wife cross stitching.

Cross stitching is an art, I think. No less than painting or composing a poem, it demands much in the way of effort and time, of undoing and redoing. Yet my wife finds it relaxing in a meditative sort of way. The fruits of her labor adorn the walls of our hallway, where past creations have been framed and displayed for the world to see.

She sat patiently, running her needle and thread up and over and down, as I vented the constant frustration that is my life. Then she got up, kissed me on the cheek, and suggested that maybe a cup of coffee was in order.

My depression glued me to the couch. Then I noticed the cross stitch she had sat on the chair.

A teaching career and two children had limited the amount of time my wife could devote to her hobby. It looked to me as if she had lost her touch. Really, really lost it.

Thread lines were arranged in a hodgepodge of clusters and colors that zigged and zagged with no discernible pattern. Knots of various sizes dotted a maze of tangles that seemed to have neither a beginning nor an end. This was a mess. A catastrophe. And just about the ugliest thing I had ever seen in my life.

But just when I began to seriously question my wife’s mental stability, I noticed something. She had placed the cross stitch face down. I was looking at the wrong side.

I took the material in my hand and turned it over. Sure enough, the colors there were blended to form one seamless picture. No tangles. No knots. Just perfect.

That’s when I understood.

There were two sides to life. There was a side we faced, a side that on the surface appeared tangled and confused, where thick knots dotted the landscape and colors zigged and zagged with no apparent purpose.

But beneath that jumbled surface, beyond the reach of my eyes, there was another side. The side God sees. Where the tangles were transformed into intricate designs of perfection and colors seamlessly interacted and flowed. Where there was no confusion, no zig or zag, but a complete, flawless piece of art.

We all pray for God to undo our knots. What rational person wouldn’t? But as I turned the cross stitch over and back and over again, I realized that the knots in my life served a purpose I had never considered. They had to be there. Otherwise, a color might have been gone or a pattern may have been incomplete. The tapestry of my life would be missing something valuable. A knot wasn’t just a knot, whether it was in a cross stitch or a life. It was simply where one part of the picture ended so another could begin.

I couldn’t see how it all fit together because on my side and from my vantage point it didn’t. But from God’s vantage point, everything was coming along just fine. And who was I to argue, really? I was merely the material. God was the Weaver. Does the canvas tell the artist how to create? The fabric doesn’t say to the weaver, “Please, no more knots. No more tangles. It will hurt too much. I will look too ugly.”

Besides, when it was all finished, when God’s plan for me was fulfilled and my purpose in life completed, which side of the picture would He frame for the world to see?

Hugging Purpose

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(This piece was first published as a column in the Staunton, Virginia News Leader)

My daughter wants to be a writer. Also a Sunday School teacher, a regular teacher, an artist, and a geologist. The latter come and go depending upon the whims of her six-year-old mind. The former, though, has been a constant in her young life. One she has become more passionate about in the last couple of years.

I asked her one morning what exactly she wanted to be a writer of. Fiction? Nonfiction? Poetry? Would she write books or newspaper articles? Would they be secular or religious? The possibilities are many, I told her. Best to narrow things down a bit, even this early in the game.

She shrugged her answer and munched another bite of Cheerios. “Books, I guess,” she said.

“What kind of books?”

“Books for diabetic kids.”

I raised an eyebrow. My daughter continued munching. Then, feeling as though further clarification was needed, said, “God wants me to write books to help kids with diabetes. He told me.”

“He did?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Well,” she explained, “He didn’t tell me tell me. But why else would He have let me get diabetes if He didn’t want me to help kids who had diabetes?”

I managed a weak nod. Such is the faith of children, faith that sees clearly what adulthood often fogs.

My daughter was diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes two years ago. Up until that time, I had never truly doubted God. Doubted myself? Yes. Humanity as a whole? Absolutely. But never God. Because He had always been there, always kept things right in my life, and always protected my family.

But when you’re sitting at the end of a hospital bed watching your sick child struggle to find sleep against the beeps of machines and the IV tubes running into her tiny body, you doubt God. You doubt Him a lot.

You wonder how He could allow such a thing to happen to someone so undeserving. How any sort of purpose or meaning could possibly be found in this happening. And you wonder if maybe, just maybe, all those people who say God is figment of our primeval imagination are right. Because if there was a God and if that God really loved us, then he wouldn’t let children suffer like this.

That’s what you think. What I thought, anyway. And though I still went to church and read my Bible and prayed, those thoughts just wouldn’t go away.

The faith that I held in God, faith that had been built and stripped and built better over thirty-six years, was crumbling. But my daughter’s faith, all two years of it, was growing stronger. The anger I held toward God paled in comparison to the love she continued to show towards Him. At nights when I would lie motionless in bed, praying but not, I could still hear her in the next room speaking to God as if He were sitting attentively on the edge of her bed.

“Bless Mommy and Daddy and thanks for the macaroni and cheese,” she would say. Thanks and thanks and more thanks. Never asking, never wanting, because in her mind she had all she needed, diabetes or not.

I pushed God away. She hugged Him closer.

We all have a why in life. Why did this happen? Why does it have to be this way? We all have questions we want answered. It’s just that some want to know because they want an excuse, and others want to know so they can do something. I wanted reasons. She wanted purpose. I suppose that’s why I never got my answer, but she did.

God wants her to write. He wants her to give Him the bad things that have happened and watch as He turns them to good. He doesn’t want her to give up, doesn’t want her to doubt. He wants her to help. Because in the end, that’s why she’s here. Why we’re all here.

To help.

I have no doubt she will do just that. And I have no doubt about this, too: I give my every day to teach my daughter something about this life. But she teaches me more.