Praying to the wall
January 30, 2012 by Billy Coffey · Leave a Comment
He looks up at me from under blankets that cover all but his head, round eyes like tiny moons in the night. He yawns, but those eyes ask me to stay. There’s something I need to tell you, Dad, those eyes say.
“What’s on your mind?” I ask, and for a moment the only sounds in the bedroom are the three Legos that topple from an overfull plastic tub by the door and the wind against the window. He wants to say, he doesn’t want to say, and so he looks at the ceiling and whistles. I ask him again.
“You know how we do devotion before bed? And then we pray?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t think I like the way you been prayin, Dad.”
Of all the things I think he can say—and there are plenty—I would have never thought that one.
“Why do you say that?”
The blankets around his head inch upward as his tiny shoulders shrug.
“Well,” I say, “if you think a thing, you have to have a reason for it…right?”
(Shrug.)
“You don’t pray like you used to,” he tells me. “You used to do it like you were talkin and you knew God was listenin. Now you do it like…I don’t know. Like you’re talkin to the wall, I guess, and you know the wall ain’t gonna answer.”
You don’t like those sudden revelations that your children aren’t really children at all, but growing men and women who see and hear and understand more than you think. And since this is something I really don’t want to discuss with a seven-year-old—or anyone, for that matter—I change the subject.
“How was your math test today?”
“Hard,” he whispers. “Lots of kids didn’t do so good, I think. They kept raising their hands, but the teacher wouldn’t answer them, she just watched. I think I did okay, though. What’s wrong with your prayin, Dad? Is it stuck?”
“I think so. Sometimes when you get older hard things happen. And even though you still talk to God, you get the sense that He’s not much interested in saying something back. That’s not true, of course, but you might feel like it is. It’s like you’re wrestling with something on your insides.”
The thought occurs that maybe I’ve said too much, but I haven’t. His little head bobs up and down on the pillow as if saying I hear ya, Dad, been there many a time myself. And I suppose maybe he has. You don’t have to be a grownup to wander from God and then ask Him why He moved.
“So maybe you’re takin a test, too,” he says.
“I think maybe you’re right.”
And he looks at me with those moon eyes that see and understand. His hands move from under the blankets to mine.
He says, “The Teacher’s always quiet durin a test, I guess. But He’s always watchin.”
Faith and fear
December 12, 2011 by Billy Coffey · Leave a Comment
image courtesy of photobucket.com
I knew sleep wouldn’t come for me when my wife said, “Your face is melting.”
It came easy enough for her—she rolled over right and was gone in seconds, before I could even reply. Which I suppose was a good thing. How could I have responded to that? The only thing I could have said was roll over and get some sleep, which she did.
It’s unsettling to hear something like that from an otherwise rational person—“Your face is melting.” And it’s downright fearful when it comes from someone who only hours before had been in surgery to have an organ removed.
Thanks to modern medicine, these days few patients actually stay overnight in the hospital. I learned that today. I also learned that the things doctors and nurses tell you when you’re taking that patient home can scare the living bejesus out of you. They said to watch for leakage from her bandages, cautioned me not to let her toss about in bed, said there would be pain and a bit of mental discombobulation. They did not say it would appear to her that my face is melting.
So I knew sleep wouldn’t come. And now, four hours later, it still hasn’t.
A lack of weariness has little to do with why I’m still awake. I’m tired. And I’m not still awake because I need to make sure she’s still breathing, even though that’s what I’m doing. I know that sounds ridiculous, but in those small hours of the night what is ridiculous has a funny way of becoming what is important.
No, I’m awake because I’m afraid. Pure and simple. And just as being afraid is a choice, so too is my decision not to sleep.
I will be awake all night. That isn’t a problem. I’m a writer and a father; sleepless nights go with the territory. I have a pot of coffee in the kitchen, some chapters to edit, and reruns of Frasier on the television. I’m set.
I’ve prayed. I think there’s a validity to the notion that God hears the prayers of the desperate a little clearer than anyone else’s, if only because those supplications spring forth from a sense of helplessness and humility. I prayed that there would be no leakage, that she would not toss, that her pain would go away and that she would not get sicker. But those words tasted like pennies in my mouth. I suppose that’s a symptom of fear as well—when you pray, it’s not to ask for good things to happen but to ask that bad things won’t.
She’s still breathing, still keeping still. Frasier has just lost yet another in a long line of loves. That he did so in a humorous way doesn’t make me laugh as it usually does. I just see his loneliness and know what a powerful thing that is, and I know that life isn’t the bulwark we make it to be. It is fragile and can be snatched away at any time, and that is why I am afraid. It is a choice that does not feel like a choice.
The problem is that I want to sleep. I want to close my eyes right now and wake in the morning to find I’ve stopped writing mid-sentence, because then I will know that I chose faith over fear. That I let God and his angels tend to my wife and not my worry.
But I can’t.
My son said this evening that he’s happy his mother his home. He said there are angels here. He’s seen them. He’s said once he even heard one. He said the angel didn’t talk so much as sing, and that it sounded like a wave pulling back into the ocean over a million tiny shells.
I wish I could hear that song now.
Maybe I can. Maybe I just have to sit here and listen hard enough. Maybe the point isn’t to never feel fear, but to see fear for what it is: the large shadow of a tiny thing.
Maybe it’s enough to know the angels are here and God is here and—
The Why and the What
November 30, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 1 Comment
image courtesy of photobucket.com
If you’ve been around here for very long, chances are you’ve caught me discussing my daughter’s diabetes. Talking about it, wrestling with it, trying to find the reasons behind it or trying to find out if there’s a reason at all. It’s one of those things that can be tough to figure out if you subscribe to the idea of a loving God.
To say my daughter’s disease is a part of His will leaves a bad taste in my mouth (it’s metallic, that taste, like having pennies in your cheeks).
To say that it’s meant as a blessing tastes even worse. Come stay with her for a couple days and see if you can say that. You might still be able to, but I bet you won’t be able to look me in the eye.
But to say that there isn’t a reason at all, that it’s just one of those things because life just kind of sucks sometimes, doesn’t really sit well either. That just makes me think that it all either caught God by surprise or He just didn’t care enough to do anything about it. And as jaded as her diabetes can make me sometimes, I’m not willing to abide by either of those theories.
So I usually just keep quiet about it. I focus on making sure her sugar is the best it can be. Make sure she eats the right things and exercises and gets the proper dose of insulin. I tell myself that the Why doesn’t matter because that’s something I can’t control, that it’s the What I’m supposed to worry myself with because I can somewhat control that.
Still, that Why has a way of sneaking up. It preys on my mind. I’m sure you understand. We all have our own Whys.
It was preying on my mind last night at three o’clock in the morning. The Witching Hour, some call it. That time of night when the darkness is the darkest and supposedly the veil between the worlds of the seen and unseen thin enough that they intermingle. Her sugar had bottomed out. I was trying to keep her awake enough to drink some juice and not doing a very good job. She kept nodding off, and I’d have to shake her. That’s when the Why came again.
“I’m sorry you have to do this,” I whispered to her.
She nodded—she always nods at three in the morning, that’s all she can do—and felt for the straw in her cup.
“I wish I could make it go away.”
Nod and slurp, and I figured that if she wasn’t asleep yet she would be soon, which meant I’d have to shake her awake again so she could finish. And then I’ll have to wake her again fifteen minutes later to make sure her sugar was going in the right direction.
“I know it’s not fair.”
But not a nod that time. That time, it was, “It’s okay. We love each other through it.”
She finished her juice and curled up under the blankets again. I sat there watching her, trying to figure out if what she said was just her sleep or herself. I figured that didn’t matter.
I also figured that if there really was a reason, maybe that was it. Maybe that’s why God allows so much suffering. Because through suffering we learn not just to love, but to love more.
And if this world needs anything, it is that.
(If you’d like to make a donation to JDRF, you can click on the link to your right and it will take you to their site.)
Showing us what we can’t see
September 26, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 15 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
I had no idea how far we’d walked—when you’re tromping through the woods with two kids, time drags on until it becomes irrelevant—but it was far enough that we were ready to turn around and go home. After all, it wasn’t as if we had a map to go by. All we had were stories.
“Maybe we should just pray,” my son said. My son, who announced last week that he wanted to be a preacher when he grew up. To him, praying is the answer to everything.
“I think God would rather we walk than pray,” I told him.
“Why, did you ask him?”
I didn’t answer. We pushed on through the brambles and found the river—at least that part of the story had been proven right—then decided to sit and watch the water. My daughter tried to spot fish, my wife tried to spot spiders, and I tried to figure out where we should look next.
My son, the future Preacher Man, looked into the blue sky peeking through green trees and said, “Our Father, whose art ain’t in heaven, Halloween be your name.”
“This way,” I told them. “I think it’s over here.”
Which wasn’t true at all. I had no idea where it was or even if it was, but you know about men and directions. Besides, it wasn’t like we could pull over at the next gas station.
My daughter said, “Maybe we should just go home before we get eaten,” which brought more prayers from the little boy in the back.
I reminded them of the value of a story, of how the whole world was made of them and sometimes they’re true and sometimes they’re not, and how sometimes the ones that are not have more truth. And when you come across a story about an old home forgotten somewhere in the mountains, you have to go look. You just have to.
So we trudged on—me, my wife, my daughter, and the Preacher, who was now calling down the Spirit to keep Bigfoot away.
Truth be known, I didn’t think we’d find a thing. Though the mountains here are littered with the remnants of pioneer homesteads, their locations are masked by either wilderness or the foggy memories of the old folk. But the directions I’d received turned out to be pretty darn close. It wasn’t long until the woods opened up a bit into an ancient bit of clearing, and wouldn’t you know it, there was something up ahead.
Of course that something was hidden by a couple hundred years of changing seasons. Trees and bushes and plants had reclaimed the area that was once taken from them. All that remained to be seen was a bit of foundation. The rest was enclosed by an impenetrable wall of overgrowth.
“Let’s try to break through,” my daughter said, to which she received a chorus of no ways.
“I don’t want to go in there,” my wife said.
“I’m too tired to try to go in there,” I said.
“We should really pray first before we go in there,” my son said.
Simply going back was no longer an option. We’d found it now, and to leave without at least a look around simply wouldn’t do. So we looked. All of us. We poked and prodded for weak spots, we tried to peek into what had likely gone unseen for centuries. We stood on tiptoes and jumped and, once, even tried to make a human pyramid. But it was no use. The mountains would not give up their secrets that day.
“Hey,” my son said, “I see something.”
He was knee-bent, face almost in the dirt, peering through the undersides of thorns and thickets.
“Hey, wow.”
The rest of us followed. Knees bent, faces in the dirt, peering through the thorns, we found holes just big enough to peer through. What lay on the other side was nothing more than the remnants of a stone foundation, but to us it was Machu Picchu and Stonehenge and Easter Island rolled into one.
It was then that I realized what my son had done. The little Preacher Man, too little to jump too high or tiptoe too up, had decided to use his smallness to his advantage.
He’d gone to his knees.
“You can see more if you get on your knees, Daddy,” he’d often said. “If you stand up, you just see what you can. But if you bow down, God will show you what you can’t.”
Those words, profound as they were, had always gotten him a rub on the head or a squeeze on the shoulder. Nothing more. But then I knew just how right he was, and I wondered just how much I’d missed in my life because I’d been standing instead of kneeling.
Snapshots
August 31, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 11 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
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.
Farther along
August 22, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 23 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
She and her husband were in the back row. That was the accustomed place for my family and in-laws, as we are numerous enough to require an entire pew unto ourselves. We scrunched in, the seven of us seated at her and her husband’s left, careful not to bump her wheelchair.
“I love you,” she said, first to my wife and then my daughter. Her words were muffled and childlike, as if spoken in surprise and through a mouth filled with marbles.
“I love you,” she said to the couple who approached her. They placed their hands on her shoulders and spoke in calm and deliberate words. They asked how she was feeling, how she was. “I love you,” she said again, and the smile on her face said more than her faded vocabulary could.
The preacher—“I love you”—said he loved her right back. He tucked his worn leather Bible under his left arm and took her hand in both of his. I watched as the muscles in his forearm flexed, giving her fingers a light squeeze, praising God.
“I love you.”
The congregation settled into the Sunday morning ritual of greeting/prayer/announcement. The pianist then began the opening of the first hymn—“To God be the Glory”—and all but she stood to praise the Lord in song.
To God be the glory, great things He hath done…
The slow movement to my left was hers. She placed one frail hand upon her husband’s and bid him to help her stand. He placed his arms around her and hefted her up, steadying her against the gravity that pushed down on her and the mind that worked to make sense of it all. I wondered if this too was the glory of God, a great thing He hath done.
I watched her as she sang, her voice too soft to stand with the others but her lips moving free, mouthing not O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood, but I love you I love you I love you I love.
I watched her, and what I saw was the woman she once was rather than the woman she was now. The Sunday school teacher, the choir member, the woman who organized Bible School in the summer and the Christmas program in the winter, the woman who at the young age of barely fifty had suffered a stroke that erased much of who she’d been and replaced it with a child imprisoned in a cell of flesh and blood. A child who needed help to move and wash and eat and whose vocabulary was condensed to three words.
I love you.
Act II of the Sunday morning ritual contained further announcements and a brief presentation by the church’s youngsters. Do not ask me what was said, I don’t know. I suppose I should have been listening, but I was watching her. Watching as she eased back into her wheelchair and looked out with bright but confused eyes. Watching as she said I love you to her husband.
We rose for the offertory hymn, this “Worthy of Worship,” a congregational favorite. She remained seated this time—she’s so tired now, not like before—but mouthed her own translation nonetheless, mouthing
I love you I love, you I love you
where we sang
Worthy of rev’rence, worthy of fear
And I wondered upon looking at her—God help me, but I did—that her sight made me fear God but also tempted me not to reverence Him. What God was worthy of reverence who could allow such a thing to one of His own? To pardon the darkness of this world and allow it to strip this woman down? To leave her a husk of what she once was and call it good?
For much the same reasons I missed the children’s presentation, I missed the sermon. The congregation rose. I joined them when I saw that she and I were the only people not standing. Three men stood behind the podium, songbooks in their hands, as the piano began the closing hymn, Farther Along.
I did not sing. Could not. I was watching her instead, still not knowing the Why—it’s always the Why that trips me up—but knowing that the fears and worries that once upon a time defined her living did no more. Like her body, her life had been reduced to the most fundamental level, one where Hello and Goodbye and Thank you and Praise the Lord all mean I love you, and perhaps that is what it should mean for all of us.
I joined in on the last refrain:
Farther along we’ll know all about it,
Farther along we’ll understand why.
Cheer up my brother, live in the sunshine,
We’ll understand it all by and by.
Nighttime prayers
August 15, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 14 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
An important part of my nighttime routine is making a final pass through the house. I make sure the doors are locked and the outside light is on. Make sure the morning coffee is ready—it’s the smell of coffee and not the sound of the alarm that gets me out of bed—and the lights above the sink are shining—just in case someone wakes in the middle of the night thirsty. I’ll check to make sure my son is adequately covered and hasn’t flopped and flipped his blankets off. My final stop is to check my daughter’s sugar, because she may sleep and we all may sleep, but diabetes never does.
I always pray over my children then. Every night, without fail. They don’t know this; I’ve never told them. I suppose doing so is as much for my benefit as theirs. I have an uneasy relationship with the night. It’s the time of day when I often get most of my work done, and yet I spend much of that time peering into the shadows for what isn’t there.
My prayers are the usual ones—help us to sleep well, bless our family, let Your angels stand guard. And keep us safe, always that. Always a lot of that.
I heard a preacher the other day talk about praying for safety. He said Christians shouldn’t place so much of a premium on that, that this is pretty much one of the safest countries in the world and so we’re pretty much wasting our words, that we should instead pray for boldness because that’s what we need more. He said we’re often content to remain where we are because that’s where everything is safe and familiar, when God wants us to go forth and conquer new lands within and without.
I’ll admit he stepped on my toes a little with that. It’s probably true that I need more boldness than safety, just as true about those new lands. And I’ll say that fear plays an important part in my life and maybe too much, what with all those shadows and whatnot.
So maybe instead of praying that God will keep us safe, I should pray that He will keep us on our toes. And rather than asking that His angels stand guard over us, I should pray that they will charge ahead of us into new places and new ways of seeing things. Maybe I’ve been tricked into thinking that my life is better thought of as something to be endured rather than made better, as if my purpose in being here is to comfort myself before I comfort others.
Maybe.
But maybe praying for safety is important, too. It reminds me that despite what everyone in my family may believe, I’m small. Just a tiny speck in a big world, one that oftentimes is much more scary than it is beautiful. And one who often needs a great deal of help.
Perhaps if I had the faith of the preacher I heard the other day, I wouldn’t need to ask for so much safety. Perhaps if I had his view of the world, I would see no reason to fear anything. I would see the battle as already won and the last sentence already written, one with an exclamation point rather than a period.
I hope to have that sort of faith one day. For now, I don’t. For now, I look at this world and see more shadows than light and more of what could go wrong than what has already gone right.
In the name of Jayzus!
July 25, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 14 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
I was winning.
Nothing too strange about that. The backyard baseball games with my son are usually close on purpose, which is much more important than who wins or loses. Sometimes I let him win in an effort to teach him how to be a gracious victor. And sometimes I makes sure he loses, because being a gracious failure is equally important. He’s going to face both triumph and setback in life. Best to teach him about both now, when he’s young.
This time, though, I was going to leave the end result to him. He would win or lose on his own, and it all came down to one pitch.
So.
Tie game, two outs, last inning. A homerun (in our backyard, homeruns are anything that passes the maple tree in the air) wins. Anything else, and he’d have to wait until the next evening to try again. Mother and sister were on the porch, watching and cheering. He took his stance, glared, and tapped on the rock we used for home plate.
I had already started my windup when he called time. Rather than take another practice swing or spit, he raised his hands in the air, looked to the heavens, and said, “In the name of Jayzus, lemme hit a homer!”
Laughter from the porch. I wrinkled my brow. Said, “What are you doing?”
“Heard it on the radio,” he told me. “Preacher said God gives me anythin’ if I ask in the name of Jayzus.”
Oh. Jayzus = Jesus. Okay then.
He stepped back in, tapped the bat on the rock. Glared. I threw. He hit.
Over the maple tree. Homerun.
That’s how it started.
Since then, the name of Jayzus has been bandied about quite often in our house. I heard it the next evening when my son lost the Lego spaceship he’d built—“In the name of Jayzus, come back to me!” Heard it again a few hours later—“In the name of Jayzus, save me from the bathtub!”
And then this morning—“In the name of Jayzus, let me at a Pop-Tart and not eggs!”
Comical, yes. And I suppose it’s even more comical that in all those instances, things worked out just the way he wanted. He did find his Lego spaceship. And since he’d stayed indoors all day because it was about a million degrees outside, we allowed him to forgo his bath. And we were out of eggs this morning, out of everything really. Except for Pop-Tarts.
My son thinks he has quite a thing going on here. He believes he’s just stumbled on the secret to life, that he’s won some sort of supernatural lottery. You should see him strutting around.
Me, I say nothing. Sometimes it’s best to let these things play out on their own. Sticking my Daddy Nose into it, telling him he’s really kind of wrong about the whole thing, won’t work. The big things in life tend to be the ones you have to learn on your own.
Besides, I really don’t think I’m qualified to add any wisdom. Not with this. Because I pretty much do the same thing.
I use God as a rabbit’s foot. I tend to keep him around in my pocket and pull Him out whenever there’s trouble. Not so much when I lose a Lego spaceship, but definitely when I want something bad to go away. Or when I want something good to get a little closer.
Or just when I want.
Truth is, I’m no better than my son.
Maybe what’s best is that I talk to him about this after all. Just be honest and say that yes, he’s doing something wrong, but so am I. And maybe we can figure out this thing together.
Because God wants us all to love Him for who He is, not for what He can give.
For reasons unknown
July 11, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 18 Comments
Josh Hamilton image courtesy of photobucket.com
Josh Hamilton was just a kid in 1999. The only difference between him and most other kids was that he was given four million dollars to play baseball.
He was a can’t-miss pick, the scouts said. A golden boy. A natural. But two years later he was involved in a car accident, and shortly thereafter began a downward spiral into drugs and alcohol. He was suspended by major league baseball for failing several drug tests. And just like that, The Natural was gone.
His story could have ended there, yet another sad tale of a promising athletic career ruined by personal demons. But somewhere along the way Josh Hamilton found something special that not only helped them beat those demons, but helped resurrect a career most considered dead.
He found faith.
The road back started with The Texas Rangers, who traded for him in 2007. Last year, he won the award for Most Valuable Player in a year that ended with the Rangers winning the American League Championship. When they celebrated afterward, the traditional champagne was replaced with ginger ale for Josh’s benefit.
He’s a favorite with baseball fans and open with his faith, giving glory to Christ rather than turning attention to himself. Josh Hamilton is a humble man. A good man. A natural.
Last Thursday a 39-year-old father named Shannon Stone took his young son Cooper to Arlington to watch the Rangers play. Cooper loves baseball, and he’s a big Josh Hamilton fan. And though the game itself was enough, both father and son knew what they were really there for. As they took their seats in the front row along the railing in left field just in front of Cooper’s favorite player, all they wanted was to catch a ball.
In the second inning a foul ball was hit down the line that Hamilton tossed into the stands. Someone yelled, “Hey, Hamilton, how about the next one?” He turned and saw Shannon sitting with Cooper and gave him a nod.
Another foul ball, this again in Hamilton’s direction, which he picked up and tossed in Shannon’s direction. The father reached for it, thrilled to get the ultimate souvenir.
He fell headfirst twenty feet over the railing onto the concrete below.
Paramedics rushed to the area. Shannon was bleeding was conscious—“Please check on my son,” he said. “My son was up there by himself.” He died before the paramedics could get him to the hospital.
It isn’t enough (at least not enough for me) to say in circumstances like these that sometimes bad things happen. Not enough to say that some things just don’t make sense, that dwelling upon them serves no purpose and the best thing to do is move on. I doubt little Cooper Stone is managing that feat at this moment. I doubt Josh Hamilton is, too.
“It was just hard for me, hearing the little boy screaming for his daddy after he had fallen,” he said, “and then being home with my kids, really hit home last night.”
He said his faith was not shaken, nor would the experience plunge him back into the abyss from which God pulled him four years ago. He plans to speak with Cooper when the time is right, and I have no doubt he will. I can only imagine how difficult that conversation will be.
If I’m honest, I’ll say what bothers me the most about this is the fact that Josh Hamilton was the one who threw that ball into the stands. He with the story of redemption and the lasting faith, rather than another player with perhaps no faith at all. It’s difficult enough as a believer to abide by the jabs and assaults of an increasingly secular world. Harder to know that for reasons unknown, God somehow allowed this man of faith to be involved in the death of a father in front of that father’s son.
Had the ball been thrown a bit harder, had it traveled an inch farther, had it been thrown to someone else, had the pitcher thrown a curve rather than a fastball or the batter taken the pitch rather than swing, this would not have happened.
Or maybe it would have. Maybe all of this is set in stone and our time is our time and there is no changing these things. God has His reasons, however flawed those reasons may seem to pitiable creatures such as we.
I do not know.
That is not the first time I’ve come to that conclusion. I’m sure it will not be the last.
What I was doing when the Rapture didn’t happen
May 23, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 10 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
Saturday, May 22, 5:50 pm.
I could tell you the reason why I’m presently walking the widow Pence’s dog has nothing at all to do with Harold Camping’s promise that the Rapture is mere minutes away, but I’d be lying. The truth is that I’m doing this precisely because we’re all going to die.
You’ve heard of Harold Camping, yes? Me neither. Not until this week, when the Drudge Report got hold of his story. Seems Mr. Camping, who runs some sort of religious broadcasting network in California, fancies himself a bit of a math whiz. He’s crunched the numbers and decided that according to the Bible, Saturday is the beginning of the end. Better hang on folks, he says, because this ain’t gonna be pretty.
This is what I’m thinking about while walking widow Pence’s dog—Buttercup is her name, a white poodle who looks like the business end of the mop I use on the wood floors in the house. She’s a happy dog, unlike her grouchy owner.
The problem with Buttercup in general and the widow Pence in particular began a few Saturdays ago. Ms. Pence had moved into the house down the road and minded her own business. There was no neighborliness about her. Rumor on the street was that she chased away a few neighborhood kids whose kickball had strayed into her front yard. That seemed to be the sum total of her social interaction.
She’s a non-waver too, which does not help her case. Neighbors wave to one another. It’s common courtesy. Ms. Pence was not interested in waving, much less saying hello. She walked Buttercup nightly around the block, their heads both high and pompous and their eyes fixed straight ahead.
So, Saturday a few weeks ago.
Busy day, lots to do, the first of which was to pile a load of trash and brush onto the back of my redneck hoopty truck and haul it all to the dump. I pulled out of the driveway and turned left—why it was left and not right I do not know, I can only assume God decided to teach me something—past the widow Pence’s house.
I assumed the white mass in the middle of the road was a bit of discarded trash whipped there by the wind, but then it moved. Wagged, actually.
Buttercup.
She did not move, merely sat right there where she was and looked at me. I stopped ten feet in front of her, the hoopty’s engine growing, impatient, as if asking me what was going on and hurry up already because we had a lot to do that day.
I put the truck into neutral and gunned the engine, thinking that would be enough to scare her out of the middle of the road. No such luck. Tried the horn. Same result. She just sat there with her tongue out, which was likely because she was hot but I nonetheless took for mockery.
I couldn’t pull around her to either side; a boat and a car were blocking the way. So there I sat, my Saturday and my pride in peril because some little pansy dog wouldn’t get out of my way.
I stuck my head out the window. Said, “Hey dummy, get outta my way.”
Nothing.
So I tried louder, “I’m gonna squish you into a fluffy white pancake.”
At which point Buttercup sauntered toward her front yard. Not because of me, mind you. Because of the widow Pence. Who had been standing there watching and listening the whole time.
“You have some nerve, young man,” she said. “How dare you speak that way?”
What followed was not among my brighter moments. In deference to space and time, I’ll skip over that. Suffice it to say that by the time I pulled away, the widow Pence and I did not like each other. At all.
And that’s how it stood between us until this week, when I read about Mr. Harold Camping’s math skills. The truth is that I fully expect this world to chug on as it always has in the next ten minutes. If Jesus doesn’t know when the end is going to come, I doubt some guy with a pencil and a piece of paper does.
But still, the end will come. Sometime.
We don’t know when or where, but it’ll happen for each of us. We’d better be ready. Say the things we need to say, do the things we need to go. Love and make amends.
Which is why I walked over to the widow Pence’s house and apologized. Why I talked her into letting me take Buttercup for a walk. And why she is at this moment two steps in front of me on the leash, no doubt relishing in the snickers I’m getting from the other people on the street.
But that’s okay. Because if my end doesn’t come in the next few minutes, it will eventually. At least I’ll have one less thing on my mind when I go.
Author of Snow Day and Paper Angels (November 2011), both by FaithWords. But don't let that fool you. I'm just as confused as anyone.
And that is fine with me, because the great thing about wandering around in the fog is that you never know what you might run into.
Don't miss anything: Subscribe now-
You can catch up with me here:
-
