Billy Coffey

storyteller

Loving thy neighbor

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My friend Pete loves everybody. It’s a matter of pride to him, I think. He’ll tell you that he loves you the first time you meet him. Doesn’t matter who are or what you look like, either. “I’ve never met anybody I didn’t love,” he’ll say, “’Cause I love Jesus and Jesus loves me. So I gotta love you, too.” Then he’ll grab you in his gargantuan arms and lift you off the ground, shaking your bones like a pair of dice.

That’s Pete.

Pete is also as traditional as they come. Church every Sunday and Wednesday, and not a morning goes by without scripture and prayer. The combination of the two has infused in him and his family a bedrock of faith that for years refused to be shaken by anything life could throw at him.

Until the other day. Until my phone rang and he said in his breathless, forty-four-year-old voice, “You gotta get over here. Now.”

Pete was on his front porch when I got there, rocking back and forth in a lawn chair that was not made for rocking, looking thoroughly displeased. He offered me our usual snack—a Coke and a bag of peanuts. I proceeded to dump the latter into the former and take a sip of the salty sweetness.

“What’s up?” I asked him.

“Don’t believe it,” he said. “Don’t believe it, don’t believe it, dontbelieveit.”

“Don’t believe what?” I asked. Another sip.

“Johnson house sold there, across the street,” he said, pointing.

I turned around and followed his finger. Sure enough, the FOR SALE sign on the house across from his had been topped with another that said SOLD. The Johnsons had moved three weeks ago, and everyone figured that the house would be empty for a long while given the economy.

“Great,” I said, facing him again. “You have new neighbors. What’s the problem?”

“Dontbelieveit dontbelieveit dontbelieveit.”

“Pete, you swallow something you weren’t supposed to?” I asked. “You been in the moonshine?”

“Lookie!” he almost shouted, pointing again. “Lookie there and see what the cat done dragged in. Dontbelieveit!”

I turned again. Standing on the front porch of the Johnson house were Pete’s new neighbors. Older lady, slightly younger gal. They were attempting to arrange an assortment of rocking chairs and tables just so and not quite getting it. An aggravating situation for some, though they seemed in bright enough spirits.

“Pete, I don’t—”

“—LOOKIE!”

The older woman, now utterly confused by the configurations of her new porch, simply gave one of the rockers a hard shove into the younger lady. The act of frustration was met with laughter from both, who then proceeded to fall into one another’s arms and share a very long, very deep…kiss.

“Dontbelieveit,” I said.

Pete buried his head in his hands. “Lawd,” he said. I wasn’t sure if he was praying or merely dumbfounded. “Lawd Jesus God help me.”

Praying.

“Lawd, why’d You do this to me?” he moaned. “Thissa sort of thing that happens out in Hellywood, Lawd. Not ’cross the street.”

I shook my head in amazement, and the sheer irony of it all made me laugh. Pete, God-and-mama-and-apple-pie Pete, I-love-everybody Pete, had gotten a gay couple for neighbors.

“Huh,” I said. “Ain’t that something.”

“Somethin’?” he retorted, raising his head to look at me. “Don’t you know this ain’t good? Ain’t you read your Bible, boy?”

“Yep,” I said.

“Well, there then,” he answered, as if that explained things.

“You a little homophobic, Pete?” I asked, with a sip of my Coke and a smile.

“Homophobic?” he said. “Homophobic? Boy, I gotta eat a corndog with a knife and fork.”

I snorted out my drink and bent over, wiping it from my mouth and blue jeans.

Pete stared at me, unsure of what had just transpired that would cause me to make such a mess of myself. “What am I gonna do?” he asked. “What. Am. I. Gonna. Do?”

I thought about that. What was Pete going to do? Fume and pout, I supposed. For a little while, anyway. But then Jesus would come calling. The Jesus Pete loved and Who loved him more, Who said that hate was never really any good for anything other than eating up your own insides. He would come calling and tell Peter that it’s easy to love those who are like you, that everyone does that. But that love Jesus wanted from Peter was the hard love, the kind that’s not easy.

It’s okay to not like what they do, Jesus would say, because He didn’t like it either. But Jesus also loved those two women, and He wanted Pete to do the same. Because Pete had faith, and because that faith just might be the closest thing to Jesus those two women ever see.

“Just wait,” I told him. “It’ll come to you.”

We stared across the street. The two women resumed their rocking chair arranging, then stared at us.

They waved.

We waved back.

Facing the Truth

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The radio is on in the background right now. Not music, though. Talk.

Talk radio can be a very informative thing so long as you accept the fact that whatever is being said is much like what you’ll get on television. It’s not news per se, just someone else’s opinion of the news. The downside is that you tend to get the impression that the only person in the entire world who knows the truth is the person who happens to be in front of the microphone. The upside is that sometimes you get a little something to write about. Like this time, for instance.

The gentleman on the radio at the moment happens to be one of the most listened-to people in America. Though I don’t listen every day and don’t agree with everything he says, I will admit he has quite a way of saying it. His voice and his opinions have earned him a lot of money and a lot of power.

Though he enjoys much more success and influence than most of us ever will, there is always a little room for improvement. A poll was taken recently that showed his audience consisted of many m ore men than women. The reasons for this gap between male and female intrigued him. What faults did women find in him? What was it they didn’t like? Was it a personality thing? Worse?

So today, he is in the midst of what he has called a Female Summit. All calls coming in must fit two specific criteria—they must be women, and they must articulate exactly what it is about him they find so offensive.

This has been going on for about an hour now, and I think this poor man has gotten more than he bargained. There have been calls regarding his abundance of coarseness to those whose opinions differ from his own. And his abundance of pride. And his abundance of self-satisfaction. And just to even things out a bit, there have also been plenty of calls about what he is lacking. Consideration, for instance. And manners. Self-control, too.

Never let it be said that women will not offer hard and uncompromising truthfulness when asked to do so.

In theory, the Female Summit has been a rousing success. In application, though, maybe not so much. Because rather than take the honest criticism, the man on the radio has spent the vast majority of his time defending himself. It’s not his fault, you see. It’s the media or his enemies or the fact that he’s been battling a cold lately.

Which as gotten me thinking: would I want to do this? Would I really want to what other people think of me? On the surface, yes. Having the truth of how others really see me would be very informative. It would highlight whatever good points I might have that I may be unaware of, and it would allow me to work on those rough parts of me that I, for whatever reason, either gloss over or ignore.

Sounds good in theory. But in application? Not so much.

Because like this very intelligent and successful man on the radio, I’d probably spend a lot more time defending myself than humbly accepting criticism. Because deep down, no matter how much I might want to know the truth about me, I want to believe the lies I tell myself more. Like how I’m just fine, thank you. And how there is nothing I really need to change about me, but there sure is a lot everyone else needs to change about them. I’m okay. It’s the rest of humanity that’s messed up.

Do I really believe this? No. Just the opposite, in fact. But like the smart man on the radio, my pride gets in the way of me being a better me sometimes.

We could all improve ourselves, I think. We could all be better. But changing who you are, even if it’s for the better, is a painful process. Someone once told me that no one ever changes until the pain of changing becomes less than the pain of staying the same. Those are wise words.

I don’t know if this radio show will have a Female Summit next year. Right now, the odds seem pretty small. No one wants to spend three hours in front of a national audience rationalizing the things they do and say. I think this man wanted to change, I really do. And I think he believes he can change. But change won’t come just because we think we can. It comes only when we believe we must.

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.

Always a Story

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My post last week about an incident at the mall garnered some interesting reactions, at least to me. I figured a lot of you would wonder what in the world was going on with this poor woman who refused to let me hold the door for her. And a lot of you did. But just as many wondered how I could have possibly kept hold of myself. How could I have not either burst out laughing when she fell or given her the good cussing she maybe deserved?

Truth is, I might have been calm and cool on the outside she she tripped and went splat!, but I was jumping up and down and cheering on the inside. I’m not proud of that, mind you, but I can’t deny it either.

But what kept that told-ya-so mentality from bubbling up to the surface was a story a friend of mine named John shared one day. One I’d like to share with you.

A brilliant man, John. He has two PhDs, is about to get his first book published, and is currently the head of the Christian Counseling program at Liberty University. He was also the best Sunday school teacher I ever had.

John told me that one night while he was in college, he had dinner at a local restaurant with one of his psychology professors. Their waitress was a young, twenty-something lady named Anna, who seemed to have a bit of a personality problem and could have used a refresher course in customer relations.

She was rude and offensive and vulgar. She forgot up their order twice and, when she finally got it right, rewarded John and his professor by unceremoniously dropping their plates on the table with a loud thud and walking away. They nearly died of thirst because she never returned to offer more drinks. And when she finally resurfaced forty minutes later, she greeted them with a curt “Ya’ll done?”

With a “Yes, ma’am” from the professor, she scribbled their bill onto a receipt, pushed it to the middle of the table, and walked away. Two specials, two drinks, two cups of coffee—fifteen dollars and forty cents.

“I have the tip,” the professor said. He took a ten out of his wallet and placed it between the salt and pepper shakers.

John flinched. Ten dollars? This had to be a mistake. He was going to give Anna a ten dollar tip? For what? Yelling and cussing and throwing food at them? A dollar and a half would have been plenty, the accustomed 10 percent. And that was for good service. But this wise and learned man was going to give her almost ten times that?

“Excuse me, Professor,” John said. “You just sat a ten down.”

“Yes, I did,” the professor answered.

“Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why?”

“Maybe,” the professor said. “Later.”

The two walked up to the cash register, paid for their meal, and left. Just as they were getting into the professor’s car, though, the door to the restaurant opened and out ran Anna. Crying.

“I’m so sorry,” she said through her tears. “I know I was awful to the two of you. I’ve just had such a bad day. My kid’s got the flu, I just found out my mother has cancer, and my husband left me two days ago. I just can’t take it anymore. And then I saw your tip just sitting there, and I…I just had to thank you. You don’t know what this means.”

The professor smiled. “It’s quite all right, Miss,” he said. “Things may look bad now, but I promise you they’ll get better. You just need a little faith.”

She nodded and smiled back, then turned around to go back inside. John stared at his professor, who watched as the doors closed around her.

“Remember this, John,” he said. “We are all working our way through our own story. We pass people by every day of our lives. We talk to them, nod and say hello, and we have no idea the sorts of struggles they are enduring or what pains they bear. We are all hurting in our own unique way. We have all been wounded by something. Never forget that.”

John hasn’t. And since the day I heard that story, I haven’t either. Because we all may share one world, but we each live in our own. One made bright or dim by our own faith or doubt, joy or despair.

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.

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.