Billy Coffey

storyteller

Embracing The Mystery

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I’m leaning against a shovel in the backyard, waiting. My two children are crouched in front of me. Serious looks adorn their normally jovial faces. Which is appropriate, given that this is a serious situation. For in front of us is the object of a week’s worth of contemplation, suspense, and puzzlement.

A hole.

Some background: the hole appeared suddenly last Saturday, midway between the oak tree and the creek. The kids took turns trying to figure out exactly what sort of hole it was. Too small for gophers, said my son. And too big for ants, said my daughter. I was brought in for a consultation, but my vote for field mice was quickly shot down. Too boring, they said.

There was a chance, I offered, that the hole had been there all along. That it wasn’t new, but merely overlooked. And that whatever was in there was likely long gone. My son decided to fill the hole, and after much deliberation a consensus was reached. In went handfuls of small rocks and sand.

Upon inspection the next day, the rocks and sand were gone. The hole wasn’t.

This new development sent the children into a mild form of panic, complete with girlish squeals and boyish cries of “Awesome!” Something surely had to be in there. Had to.

In the space of mere moments, the hole in our backyard ceased to be a hole entirely. It was now and utter and complete Mystery.

The tiny but growing minds of my children sprang into action. They tried the scientific approach first. The hole was two inches square (they measured) and eight inches deep (an estimate, given the twig my son shoved into it), at which point it seemed to branch off and run parallel to the yard. Interesting.

Then science gave way to wonder. My son hypothesized that it certainly looked like a dragon hole to him, because he had seen this sort of thing on a cartoon. Then my daughter said that she had recently read a book about fairies, and how fairies lived in the ground sometimes, and how that was just the sort of hole in which a fairy would live. More interesting.

In the end, they put a tiny umbrella over the hole to protect its owner from the elements, along with a piece of cheese as an apology for wrecking its home with rocks and sand.

Mini vigils were instituted. The hole was checked every day before and after school, and a smooth layer of wet sand was placed around it so they could check for tracks. And there were tracks. Indecipherable tracks, but tracks nonetheless. Further proof that something was lurking somewhere. (The piece of cheese, by the way, was left untouched and instead froze into a tiny yellow brick. The apology, it seemed, was not accepted.)

Soon, questions gave rise to concerns. The weatherman said snow was coming. Which, I was informed, was bad for fairies and dragons. Maybe we should take the hole inside and keep it warm, the kids said. A possibility, so long as it really was a fairy hole. We didn’t need any dragons flying around.

What to do?

It was then that I offered my own advice, albeit half-heartedly:

“Let’s just dig up the hole and see what’s in it.”

Naturally, their answer was the exact opposite of what I thought it would be. They agreed.

So, here we stand. At the hole. Ready to put an end to the mystery once and for all. Yet as I raise the shovel for the first dig, I notice that my son is crying. And that the top lip of my normally stoic daughter is quivering.

I smile. What’s wrong? What I wanted to be wrong. What I hoped would be wrong.

They don’t want the mystery to end. Some answers are fine. But all of them? Not so much. Finding out what’s in the hole would end all of the wondering and dreaming. Who wants that?

Life is much more than the finding of facts. It is the wondering of our inherent wonder. This hole is my children’s first sip of the mysterious, and I want them to drink deeply. It will teach them the blessings found in not having to know it all. And that life is not made more frightening by the unknown, just more beautiful.

Snapshots

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Part of my job entails keeping up with the comings and goings of about one thousand college students. All have arrived at the doorstep of adult responsibility, and all must walk through as best they can. Some glide. Others stumble.

Students are constantly arriving, eager to fill their hungry minds and lavish themselves in newly found freedom. Others have found that those freedoms can lead to all sorts of trouble and so are on their way back home.

The status of these students must be cataloged and recorded and then shared with various departments by way of email. Very businesslike, these emails. Concise and emotionless. But they are to me snapshots of lives in transition.

One such message came across the computer yesterday. The usual fare—student’s name and identification number, and her status. But then there was this:

She will not be returning and is withdrawing.
She failed everything.

As I said, businesslike. Concise and emotionless.

I’ve always had a problem with brevity. I have a habit of explaining a small notion with a lot of words. Which I guess is why that email struck me so hard. Here was three months of a person’s life, ninety days of experiences and feelings, summed up in three words:

She failed everything.

Though I don’t know this person, I can sympathize. I’ve been there. Many times. I know what it’s like to begin something with the best of intentions and an abundance of hope, only to see everything fall apart. I know what it feels like to realize that no matter how hard you try, you just can’t. Can’t win. Can’t succeed. Can’t make it.

I know what it feels like to fail. Everything.

When my kids were born, I wanted to be the perfect father. Always attentive. Never frustrated. Nurturing. Understanding. And I was. At first, anyway. But things like colic and spitting up and poopy diapers can wear on a father. They can make a father a little inattentive, not so nurturing, and very frustrated. So I failed at being the perfect father.

Same goes for being the perfect husband, by the way. I failed even more at that.

And I had the perfect dream, too. What better life is there than that of a writer? But no, that one hasn’t gone as expected. Failure again.

At various times, struggling through each of those things, I’ve done exactly what young girl in the email did. I withdrew. Not from college. From life. I gave up. Surrendered. Why bother, I thought.

But I learned something. I learned there’s sometimes a big difference between what we try to do and what we actually accomplish. That many times we don’t succeed because there’s an equally big difference between what we want and what God wants.

That failure is never the end. It can be, of course. We can withdraw and not return. Or we can learn that it is only when we fail that we truly draw near to God. We can better understand the　　 that our prayers must sometimes be returned to us for revision. Not make me this or give me that, but Thy will be done.

I’ve failed everything. Many times.

Also remade.

I may not have made myself the perfect father, but God has made me a good dad.

I may not have become the perfect husband, but God has shown me how to be a soul mate.

I may not write for money, but I do write for people.

Failure has not been my enemy. Failure has been my salvation.

Our lives have broken places not so we can surrender to life, but so we can surrender to God. And failure will hollow us and leave us empty only so we may be able to hold more joy.

Getting Unplugged

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My sanity has become the latest casualty in my family’s war against the electric bill. My wife has taken to unplugging things. Lamps seem to be her favorite targets. Also the toaster, the coffee maker, and the chargers for our cell phones. If it has a cord, it’s getting yanked.

The idea behind this seemingly crazed notion came by way of Oprah, who recently had a guest who stated that even if an appliance is turned off, it continues to use a small amount of electricity if it is plugged into an outlet. Simply unplugging things when not in use can reduce your electricity bill by as much as 20 percent over a year’s time.

Which was all my wife needed to hear.

This has been going on for weeks now, and I still can’t get used to it. I’m turning on lamps and wondering why they’re not working. I’m making toast and coffee and standing there like an idiot when nothing happens. And my cell phone died the other day because I neglected to notice the cord was unplugged when I charged it the night before.

So I began to wonder: is this worth me running around the house like a bumbling idiot? Worth the hassle of fumbling around in the dark trying to plug in a lamp? Worth shaking and smacking the toaster only to have the kids say, “For cryin’ out Daddy, just plug it in?”

I wasn’t sure.

So I decided to do a little digging myself. After all, Oprah has been wrong before.

As it turns out, her guest was right. Things plugged into outlets do indeed continue to use power when they have been turned off. And you can indeed save up to 20 percent on your electric bill.

Leaking electricity, as it is known. There are also other, fancier sounding synonyms like Phantom Load. Or this one, the most insidious: Vampire Power.

But I suppose it makes sense, really.

Like most people, I was once upon a time obsessed with how other people saw me. Did they like me? If yes, how much? If not, why? Was there something I could do or fix to convince them I was a good person?

Sure, foolish questions. But ones most of us ask. I tired of trying to get everyone’s approval when I realized happiness lay in concerning myself only with what I could control. What other people thought of me? Not what I could control.

Then there was the brief obsession with having a career. To your average male, the quality of his life is intricately tied to his profession such that men often regard each other with a mental comma: Bob Simmons, banker. Tommy Sanders, supervisor. Me? I’ve been Billy Coffey, gas station attendant. Or Billy Coffey, factory worker. Not so special. And since there wasn’t anything special after my comma, I thought I wasn’t either.

Thankfully, faith fixed that for me. My job now is more what I do than who I am. I have something else after my comma now. Billy Coffey, child of God? I’ll take that any day.

And there was worry. I used to worry about everything. Big things like death and small things like if I would miss the bus home from school. Worry was the dark shadow in my life growing up, disappearing only when God’s love was shined upon it.

There are more. Many more. But my point is this: I thought I had gotten over all those things. That I had grown within, grown closer to God, so that those things I once obsessed about were no longer in my life. I was wrong, though. I’ve turned them off in my heart, thinking that was good enough. But it wasn’t. They’re still plugged in.

I still want to be liked. And to have a better job. And I continue to worry. And I still do all the other things I could have sworn I didn’t. Not anymore.

Vampire Power drains me, too.

It’s price is high. It costs my peace and my joy. It demands my attention. It places me in its debt. Not all at once, of course. Little by little. Weighing me down, sinking me in spiritual quicksand.

Why live like that? Why not just unplug it? Once and for all.

My wife’s on to something, I think.

Packing For The New Year

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(This post first appeared in the Staunton News-Leader on January 11, 2009)

I’ve read that in the years of westward expansion, settlers would often spend the first night of their journey only a few miles from the city of their departure. That way all of their gear could be unpacked, used, and more fully considered. Any nonessentials could easily be disposed of, and anything missing could be gone back and purchased. A trial run, in other words.

It is in this spirit that I would like to start this new year. I am about to end my first full week of 2009, which seems to be about the right time to take a moment and consider what is thus far going right and what is going wrong. What I could use more of and what I could really do without.

My New Year’s resolution lasted exactly twelve hours and thirty-seven minutes. Not bad, really, until you consider that for eight of those hours I was sleeping. Still, I’ll call it par for the course. I’ve never had much luck with resolutions.

I nonetheless like the idea of deciding what it is you want to change about yourself. New Years is one of the few times that I take a long, hard look at me. Warts and all. It isn’t that pretty of a picture, but I guess that’s the point. There’s always something to fix. Always something we can either improve or discard.

This year, I think I need more of that self-investigation. But I’ll do it in the mindset that I am a work in progress rather than something eternally broken. I’m going to try to do without the high expectations. “Be ye kind,” the Bible says. To yourself, too.

Like most everyone else, I was glad to see 2008 go. Not that the whole year was bad, but enough of it was. A new year brings new possibilities. It’s the closest we get to a do-over, a chance to start from scratch. If Christmas is the season of hope, then New Years is the season of hopefulness. Things will be better, we promise ourselves. We won’t screw things up again.

But it’s worth remembering that life is more like a permanent marker than a piece of chalk. You can’t erase one year just because a new one comes along. You have to carry it with you, if only so you can learn from your mistakes. So I can do with the hopefulness this time of year brings. But I’ll do without the thinking that simply putting a new calendar on the wall will fix things.

If I’m packing for the trip into a new year, I can’t forget to carry along my faith. There seems to be a lot of that going around. Which is amazing, really, considering the fact that things seem so bad in so many places. But I wonder sometimes in what direction does that faith leads. For many, it’s toward a particular person or situation. When this person is in charge, we think, things will get better. Or when that government comes to its senses, things will start to turn the other way.

But faith in such things is ultimately self-defeating. It asks us to depend upon other people to make us happier. People who are just as frail and flawed as we. So I will be sure to carry my faith for the next twelve months, but I will also make sure that faith is placed in the God who created man rather than man himself.

And the last of my supplies? Love. There must be love, if for no other reason than no journey is worth beginning without it. It is the sort of love that reaches beyond self or family and extends to life itself. It is a love of the moment, of each breath, whether exhaled in frustration or peace.

That is the love I need. The love that makes hope and faith possible. The love that says no matter what the year may bring, it is God Who will bring it, and all will be well.

What’s In A Name

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Monday’s post about Allison brought a pretty interesting question from my spiritual sis, Jennifer Lee. She equated what I went through with Jacob and his wrestling match with God. Jacob, of course, came through that with a busted hip and a new name—Israel.

So, she asked me, “What’s your name?”

Looking back over that period in my life is something I rarely do nowadays. It seems too distant and too painful. But I think it’s worth it. If life is a journey, then it helps every once in a while to look back and see how far you’ve come. And it helps, too, to see that the God you were ignoring all that time, the God you talked to only before you ate your meals and visited only on Christmas and Easter, was still paying attention to you.

Jennifer’s question lodged itself in my mind and wouldn’t budge, demanding my attention. It’s something I never really thought about but certainly should have. If that really was God I met on that high rock in the mountains (and I do think it was), then I came down someone very different from the person who went up.

You cannot meet God and come away unchanged. Because God is all about changing you. Making you something more than you are. And better than you are.

God didn’t change my name, though. I believe He didn’t think it was necessary. He had already given me the name I needed.

Billy is a simple nickname for William. Not a lot of Billys out there anymore, especially my age. It’s a little old fashioned and dated. Which seems to fit me quite well, thank you.

But William is a middle name. Used for years to hide my first name, which is even more old fashioned and dated.

Homer.

My father’s name. I’ve never gotten around to asking him why he was stuck with that, mostly because it never really mattered. My father was and is the greatest man I’ve ever known. Mention his name to me, and I gather the mental images of someone teaching me not only to fish and hit a baseball, but how to be a man. Homer isn’t his name. Not to me. To me, those pictures are his name.

I, on the other hand, never looked too kindly on my first name.

I always dreaded the first day of school, when the teacher would go over the roll, unsure of what to call anyone.

“Homer Coffey?” the teachers would ask. Always.

My hand would shyly raise, and I would suggest, strongly, that Billy would perhaps be more appropriate. My request would always have competition, though, against the snickers of my classmates. The only thing that quieted them was a whispered threat to beat up anyone who was laughing after school. I was serious, too.

I went through a phase in high school where the name didn’t bother me as much. Homer, after all, was the greatest Greek storyteller who ever lived. It was an honorable name, worthy of distinction. Then Homer Simpson came along and pretty much ended that.

You could imagine the jokes. I’ve been referred to by some as “Homer Billy Simpson” for years.

After Jennifer’s question, though, I decided to do a little digging. I wanted to know what my name meant. Not Billy. Not William. Homer.

From the Greek, I found. The word has a double meaning. “Hostage” is one. The other, “promise.”

Yes.

Because that is what I am. A hostage to a promise. A promise from God that no matter what I may do in this life, no matter what wrong turns I make or how badly I stumble, He will be there. A promise that says He will walk with me in the light and carry me in the darkness. And that there is nothing, nothing, that could convince Him to think otherwise.

I am a hostage. Oh, yes. Because there are times when I am too weary to believe, too scared to try, and too beaten to get up again. But just when I am about to stick my head in the mud and sink, I remember that night not so very long ago when a holy hand was extended to me.

“I won’t pick you up,” God told me. “I love you too much for that. But I’ll help you up. Every time. I’ll make sure that you’re life isn’t the one you think you want, but the one you know you want. I’ll make you love this world and not hate it. And I’ll make sure that when the end really does come, people will know you were here.”

The choice, as always, was mine. On that night long ago, I took that hand for the first time.

And I’ve yet to let go.

Allison

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I was tagged last week by Sarah and had to come up with six random or weird things about myself. Some were both random and weird (glad to know that I’m not alone in my fear of clowns). My mentioning of the girl whose life I saved drew much more response via comments and emails than I thought it would. A few of you suggested that I expound upon that a little. So I will, with a little background…

I had everything figured out at seventeen. My future was planned, crystal clear and meant to be. I was the starting second baseman on my high school team, had already gotten letters from several colleges and had been scouted by the Milwaukee Brewers.

I was going to play baseball forever. I had to. Because the person who roamed the halls of Stuarts Draft High School and drove his truck around town wasn’t me. Not the real me. No, the real me was the guy on the ball field. It was the only place where I ever really felt I belonged.

School was an irritant. Most high school seniors try to stretch that last year out as far as they can, enjoying every moment. Not me. I wanted out. I had a life to get living.

Not that high school was hard. I had the prototypical jock schedule of classes–Math, History, English Composition, and four study halls. Brutal. Then one day Mrs. Houser, my English Composition teacher, decided that I needed to do something, so she pulled some strings and got me a job: writing a weekly column for the local newspaper. Write about anything, she said. Just make it good.

Oh. Joy.

I obliged, partly because I had to but mostly because Mrs. Houser was my favorite teacher. Every Tuesday evening I would sit down with a pad of paper and watch reruns of Gilligan’s Island, writing during commercials. It was busy work. Something to pass the time. Nothing more.

Then my world fell apart.

We were playing at Fort Defiance High School when someone hit a ground ball to my right. I backhanded it and threw off balance to first base for the out.

And my shoulder exploded.

Four trips to doctors and specialists resulted in a shared consensus: I would never played again.

It’s tough being seventeen and knowing that every dream you ever had was gone. Tough knowing that your entire life lay in front of you, just not the life you wanted. Tough.

Too tough.

So one night I got in my truck, drove into the mountains, and found the highest rock I could so I could jump off.

Almost did it, too. I got to two and a half on my count to three when a voice popped into my head and said, “You’re really not afraid of dying, are you?”

No. Not at all.

Then you’re afraid of living.

Whether that voice was God’s or my own still escapes me. But I sat for a long while on that rock, thinking. Then I got back into my truck, drove home, and wrote my column. Really wrote. About how things sometimes don’t turn out the way they’re supposed to and how sometimes life can be more night than day. And how, in the end, we have to keep on. We just have to. That was the night I learned to strip myself bare on the page, to risk exposing fears and worries and doubts. To quit pretending I was someone I wasn’t. It was the biggest act of courage I think I ever displayed.

Three days later, a letter was sent to the high school with my name on the front. Thank you, it said. “I’m having a really tough time right now, and a few days ago I thought I just couldn’t take anymore. I was going to end it. Then I read your article and, well, I’m still here. So thank you. You rescued me.“

It wasn’t signed, and there was no return address on the envelope. I didn’t know who sent it, but I did know this: God didn’t want me to play baseball. He wanted me to write.

***

At the mall, a month later. I was picking my girlfriend up from work and decided to walk to the bookstore. Approaching me was a teenage girl in jeans and a leather jacket. I nodded as she passed, and then she called my name.

“Allison,” she said. “My name’s Allison. I’m the one who wrote you that letter.”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what she wanted me to say. So I asked her if she was all right, to which she replied that she was, to which I replied that it was nice to meet her. I was so shy, so backward, so unnerved, that I simply nodded again and walked away.

I have had many bad moments in my life. That one? Top three.

I never saw Allison again. I do, however, still spend many a day wishing that I would have. Just one more time. Just to tell her I was sorry for not saying more. To tell her to keep hanging in there and that she’s not alone.

And to tell her that she rescued me, too.