The Super-Duper-Looker Box
April 29, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 47 Comments
(Much thanks to katdish for having the brilliant idea to spotlight me on her blog yesterday and effectively breaking my Google analytics in the process. If you’ve never visited her, please do. She’s hilarious, she’s honest, and she lives what she believes. I guarantee her blog will be among your favorites [besides, you know you can't pass up something called Hey look, a chicken!]. Now, back to business…)
But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Luke 9:62
My son handed it to me and said, “Look what I made today, Daddy.”
Six pieces of glued cardboard, complete with cut-out eye holes and miscellaneous graffiti—a wobbly pair of black glasses rings the top, some colored grass on the sides, and his name in the back.
“Wow,” I said, turning it over in my hands. “Now that is one great…box.”
“It’s not a box, Daddy,” he said, rolling his eyes. “It’s a Super-Duper-Looker Box.”
I had no idea what a Super-Duper-Looker Box was. Nor did I know what function it served. But I learned early on that your kids will upon occasion take much time and much effort to create something just for you, and that to them much time plus much effort equals much love. Saying something like “I don’t know what this thing is” wouldn’t score me any Daddy Of The Year points. So I had to figure out what it was and what it was for in a more roundabout way.
“You’re kidding me,” I said. “That’s the best Super-Duper-Looker Box I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot. It’s for me?”
“Yep.”
“Awesome. I’ve always wanted one of these.”
He looked at me and smiled. I looked at him and smiled back.
“Are you gonna use it?” he asked.
“Absolutely.”
“Okay!”
Again: he looked at me. I looked at him.
“The thing is,” I said, “I’m not quite sure I know how to use it. These things can be complicated, you know. And I’m not really a complicated guy.”
“Let me show you,” he beamed.
I gave him the box. He lifted the top open, pulled down the section with the eye holes, and shoved the whole thing onto my head.
“It’s a little tight,” I cringed. “Which is good. That’s how Super-Duper-Looker Boxes are supposed to be.”
“You need to push it all the way down, Daddy,” he said.
“All the way?”
“Yep.”
I grabbed both sides and pushed, effectively putting my forehead where my nose was supposed to be.
“Perfect!” he said. “Do you like it?”
“I love it,” I answered. Then: “When do I take it off?”
“You have to wear it every day,” he said, “for a half hour, I think.”
“Can I start tomorrow?” I asked him.
“Sure.”
The box made a horrific sucking sound when I pulled it off, but the pain was worth it. My head stopped hurting, and I could both breathe and see again. My son’s Super-Duper-Looker Box may well have been an expression of his love, but it felt like a medieval torture device.
There is an unwritten policy between my wife and I that all things crafty given to us by our children have a shelf life of approximately one week. After that, the kids will usually forget their gifts and we will quietly slip their creations into the trash. Yes, this sounds harsh. But you do this sort of thing if you have kids, too. Don’t lie.
My son never once mentioned the Super-Duper-Looker Box over the next three days, so I thought putting it into the trash a little early was an okay thing to do. I changed my mind when he walked into the living room yesterday evening holding it.
“Daddy?” he asked, bottom lip quivering. “Who threw away your Super-Duper-Looker Box?”
Uh-oh.
A little quick thinking and a few white lies managed to calm him, though not enough to avoid the inevitable.
“Will you wear it now, Daddy? Outside?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
So out we went, he and I and my Super-Duper-Looker Box (“I’ve been looking for this thing for days,” I told him). We sat under a shade tree and he mashed it over my head again and I was thankful for the breeze that seeped up and onto my face.
“Can you see?” he asked.
“Perfectly,” I answered.
“Then it works, right?”
“Right as rain.”
“Can you see better? Because it’s supposed to make you see better.”
Okay God, I silently prayed, My head hurts, I can’t think straight, and I don’t want to mess this up again, so how am I supposed to answer this one? Because if I’m honest, then the answer is an unqualified no. I can’t see better. I can’t turn my head to see backward. Can’t even turn it to the side. All I can see is…
What? a tiny voice inside me answered. All you can see is what? What’s in front of you?
Yes.
Wonderful! Because that’s where I need you to be looking. What’s ahead is all that matters. What’s behind you is gone. What’s around you can get you into trouble. You look ahead. You look where you’re going. I’ll take care of the rest. Understand?
Yes.
“Do you see, Daddy?” he asked.
“I do see,” I answered him. “More than you know.”
I Was Here
April 19, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 43 Comments
My wife spun the computer back around and said, “I couldn’t do what you do. I’d just give up.”
I had to admit giving up would make a few things easier, at least for the short term. But we both knew I wouldn’t. Couldn’t, even. So I said nothing and instead looked down at the email I had just received.
Pass, bu tGod bless, it said.
It wasn’t the first rejection letter from a literary agent I’d ever gotten. And it wasn’t the shortest (No thanks has won that honor, at least for the moment). It wasn’t even the first with a typo.
It was, however, the quickest. I had just sent the query letter to her five minutes earlier, along with a short prayer and what I thought would be a long wait ahead of me. I had to give credit where credit was due. That lady was prompt.
My wife knew that marrying someone who wanted to be a writer wouldn’t be all cotton candy and rainbows. Because at its core, a writer’s life is a life of emotions. Not just the good ones, either. I was told early on that the most courageous thing people can do is spill out their insides onto paper for the whole world to read. That’s not quite true. It takes even more courage to send those papers to people who may well answer by saying that maybe you should dream another dream.
In my inbox that night was another email, this one from my wife. “Listen to this,” she wrote, “because it’s about all of us.” The link was to Lady Antebellum’s “I Was Here.”
It’s my favorite song now.
I’d just give up, my wife had said. But I didn’t think so.
As a teacher, there have been plenty of nights we’ve spent apart, though only separated by mere feet. Nights spent with her reading and grading and planning and calling, counseling both parent and child, managing to juggle committees and fundraisers and meetings without snapping under the stress.
“I couldn’t do what you do,” I’ve told her many times. “I’d just give up.”
But she doesn’t. And I don’t. And, I suspect, neither do you.
There are a lot of writers who bless me by their presence here on my blog. Some are published. Others, like me, aren’t quite there yet.
There are mothers and fathers here, too. Fellow residents of Blogtown with blogs of their own.
Pastors. And college students.
And also, I’m proud to say, a lot of military folk.
I spend about two hours a day reading blogs and emails, about two more writing, and another trying to find that one agent or publisher who will not say Pass, bu tGod bless. And I’m not alone.
I’m sure all of the other writers here do the same. I’m sure all the fathers and mothers spend an equal amount of time washing dishes and cutting grass and trying to raise good children in a bad world.
I’m sure the pastors spend that much time caring for their flock and working on their next sermon, and I’m sure the college students spend that much time studying and planning their lives.
And I don’t have to ask what the soldiers here do every day. We all know.
All of us at some point have run into a wall, faced reality, and said, “I can’t do this anymore. I’d rather give up.” And we might for a while. But it’s never for long and it’s never for good.
There is an inherent need for us to stand above the masses, to embrace both our mortality and our uniqueness by resolving to leave our mark upon our world and make a difference. To matter.
We know that we walk through this life but once, never to come this way again. We don’t want to be forgotten. We want someone, whether our children or our friends, our church or our country, to know that we were here.
We know that life is a precious gift that too many waste, and we refuse to be counted among them. And most of all, we know that our lives, however small, are nonetheless infused with holy intent. More than wanting us here, God needs us here.
And we’re to discover why and for what.
The One (Family Favorites Week, Part II)
April 14, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 30 Comments
I first wrote this for my children, who had grown tired of the usual fare of bedtime stories involving knights and princesses in distress. “Tell us a real story,” they said.
So here it is. Written not just for them, but for you, too. And all I ask in return is that after your bedtime prayers tonight, you think about this and sleep well…
Loving thy neighbor
April 7, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 30 Comments
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.
Eleanor’s Story
March 24, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 24 Comments
When you see a UPS man, you get out of his way. This is for your own safety. UPS men (and women, of course) are in a hurry. They have to be. They have a truck full of packages that must be delivered before their day can be considered done. No exceptions.
So when on a morning walk I spotted a UPS man delivering a package to a lady in the neighborhood, and when I saw him actually stop and talk to said lady in a conversation, I paid attention.
Older woman, smartly dressed. She smiled and laughed and touched his arm in a motherly sort of way, and he nodded and smiled and tipped his cap as he left.
Funny thing about that house: I didn’t recall ever noticing it. Our neighborhood, though rural and against the mountain, is still a pretty big place. Very likely a few hundred houses in all. I supposed that with so many homes, misplacing one or two in my memory was bound to happen.
My kids did not trick-or-treat there. I was sure of that. And I was equally sure there were no Christmas decorations there last December. I would remember.
I passed by just as the UPS man paused at his truck to type something into his electronic clipboard.
“How ya doin’?” I called.
“Good,” he answered. “You?”
“Good. Busy today?”
He laughed. “Always busy, my man. Especially here.”
“Oh yeah?”“Oh yeah. I’m here every day.”
So began a rather lengthy conversation about the unseen woman in the unseen house. Eleanor, whom I had neither met nor seen in all my years in the neighborhood. Which was, according to the UPS man, a forgivable offense. No one else had really met or seen her either.
She was alone. No family. No children. She spent her life inside for the most part, venturing out for groceries rarely and only when the needs outweighed the trip. She wasn’t a recluse, he said. She was just shy and didn’t want to be a bother.
“Nothing wrong with that, right?” he asked.
“Not a thing.”
He turned and stared at the house. I did likewise. A corner of the living room curtain waved, as if someone was peeking out.
“But she’s lonely. Real lonely. I drop off something for her most every day. She gets these catalogs in the mail, see. Every catalog you can think of. She’ll call and order stuff all day long.”
“Guess everyone needs a hobby,” I offered.
“Ain’t a hobby,” he said. “Like I said, she’s lonely. She orders stuff just to have someone to talk to. Knows all those operators by name, mostly. Talks about ‘em like they’re her family. Which I guess they kinda are.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Seriously. Told me so herself. I guess they don’t mind. They get her money, she gets some company. She started talking to me because I always delivered the stuff. I always hustle on my other stops because I know she’ll want to sit and talk a while.”
The curtain moved again.
“Gotta go, my man. Take it easy, huh?”
“Yeah,” I answered, still looking at the house. “You, too.”
He left. I stood. Staring at the house.
The curtain moved again.
I could imagine Eleanor in her living room, scared to death and wondering what the strange man by the driveway was doing. She probably had the phone in her hand, ready to call for help. Not 911, though. Given what I’d learned, it was more likely Pottery Barn.
I always considered the forgotten among us to be confined to some faraway city street, huddled beneath park benches or in soup kitchens. That many resided here in my peaceful town was unthinkable. That one resided just down the road from me was heartbreaking.
I walked up the driveway and rang her doorbell. The curtain moved again. There was silence.
Then the door opened.
***
Eleanor passed on recently. I can say that we had many a good visit with one another. I can also say, however, that loneliness is one of those things that doesn’t disappear at once. It takes time. Time she didn’t have.
If I have one consolation, it’s that I’ve learned the company she lacked in this life was found in the next.
Because according to the nurses at the hospital, her last words were these:“I see angels everywhere.”
Bread and Milk
March 15, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 10 Comments
Tonight’s weather forecast has gotten me thinking about the grocery store.
March is the most unpredictable of months, when winter still seems determined to hang around for a while and spring urges it not to fight the inevitable. The result is a mishmash of weather designed to both lift us up from the doldrums of the cold and the bleak yet remind us that we’re not quite there yet. Robins and flowers are appearing in my small town, yet everyone is well aware of the fact that some of our biggest snowstorms have occurred closer to Easter than Christmas.
So when the smiley weatherman said there was a chance of snow showers after midnight, everyone (and likely the weatherman included) knew deep down that a “chance of snow showers” often results in a blizzard and the complete shutdown of civilization for a few days.
I responded the same way everyone around here does when preparing for the possibility of a storm. I inventoried the kitchen.
Not for food and drink, per se. Not for soda or coffee or tea or eggs or cereal or meat. No. In a storm, those things don’t matter. What matters above all else, what guarantees survival in the midst of chaos, is bread and milk.
Though well-educated and very bright, the weatherman on the television is not always accurate when it comes to predicting nature’s mood swings. If you want to know what’s going to happen and when and how bad, you go to the Food Lion on Main Street. You walk through the doors and take an immediate left to the last two aisles, and you see how many people are scrambling for bread and milk. If there are only a few shoppers milling about, chances are good that everything will be fine. If it’s a mob, however, you’d better join in. Because trouble’s coming.
Never mind the fact that even in the worst of snowstorms, the good folks at the Department of Transportation will likely have the main roads cleared within a day. And never mind the fact that even if they didn’t, the four-wheel-drive in your driveway will still likely get you where you need to go. Those things don’t matter. What matters is that you can walk into your kitchen and find milk in your refrigerator and bread on your countertop.
We are living in the modern age. We have the benefit of a plethora of choices when it comes to food and drink. A simple trip to the store can get you bananas from Brazil, Pineapples from Hawaii, corn from Iowa, beef from Texas, and fish from Alaska. There is fancy coffee, plain tea, and more varieties of soda than I can count. Still, it’s the bread and milk.
The reason why this is so has escaped me for years. But now, whether through wisdom or experience or a little of both, I think I’ve found the answer.
Extravagance doesn’t offer us the comfort we need when the storms hit. The exotic and fancy loses their appeal. Instead we crave the very things that have gotten untold generations through the tough times and weathered untold tempests.
The basics. The essentials.
Bread and milk.
I see this every day now. We’re all caught in the storm. While politicians debate and economists theorize and the media search for answers, solutions seem few and fleeting. The old doesn’t work anymore, they say. The tried and true has been attempted and found wanting. So it’s time for the exotic and fancy.
Me, I’m not so sure.
Because the very things that have seen this country through the hard times in the past can see us through the hard times now. Things like faith and charity. Family and community. Holiness and commitment.
Most are now considered outdated. Some are under direct attack. That’s a shame, I think. Because a home without the basics is at the mercy of a storm. And so are we.
Earl’s Beans
March 12, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 16 Comments
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.
How You Wear Your Hat
March 10, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 12 Comments
(My thanks to Tina Dee for spotlighting me on Bustles and Spurs. If you’d like to read her post, go here.)
Now, about that hat…
I come from a long line of hat-wearers, which has little to do with the fact that all the men in my family are…uh…follically challenged. My grandfather wore a hat every day of his life. Never went out the door without one. So, too, does my father, who carries on the tradition with an array of ball caps that pronounces his allegiance to everything from the University of Virginia football team to Callaway golf clubs.
Ball caps have become my choice of head garment as well, and I own many. But I have always wanted a fedora like my grandfather’s. He loved his hat. Always made a point to lambaste me for thinking my Yankee hat was the proper equivalent to his, too. “Comparing your hat to mine,” he would say, “is like comparing Tom Cruise to Gary Cooper.”
Point taken.
When my favorite ball cap recently began to show a little excess wear, I thought it might finally be time to buy a proper hat.
Then, after the UPS man dropped it on the porch and I tried it on, I had another thought:
Maybe it’s not.
Not because I didn’t like it (I did), and not because my wife did not give her approval (she did). No, it was because of the peculiar sensation I was getting that even though I was a fedora guy on the inside, maybe I wasn’t ready to be one on the outside.
Yes, I am thirty-six. And yes, peer pressure shouldn’t matter so much anymore. Yet here I am nearly twenty years out of high school, and I have yet to rid myself of the overwhelming need to fit in. Walking around all day hearing chuckles and a chorus of “Hey Indiana”? Not fitting in.
***
I kept the hat. I suppose I could say that I did so because I loved it and decided that meant more than what anyone else would say. That would be partly true. The other part of the truth was that returning the hat would require filling out paperwork, a trip to the UPS store, and more time than I could spare. Sad, I know. But true. Which left only one other option: I could keep the hat on the shelf in my closet, hidden away from the world, and bring it out only within the safe confines of my family.
But that didn’t sound right. I am a great pretender. Adept at not revealing those aspects of myself that run contrary to the perceived norm. The real me is masqueraded daily in elaborate costumes designed to both hide and reveal depending upon my immediate surroundings. I am rarely me in public. Not wholly, anyway.
And I’m not just talking about my love for fedoras. My desire to not cause waves, to go with the flow, extends to other things. Things like my faith.
How many times have I sat with a group of friends laughing at jokes I should not be laughing at? And how many times have I been silent when I should have spoken, and spoken when I should have been silent? How many times should I have said “I’ll pray for you” rather than “It’ll be okay”? How many opportunities have I missed to point the way to Christ?
When judgment comes and the sheep are separated, how many of the condemned will shout my name and say, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I was about to put my hat where I often put my faith. On a shelf in the closet of my life. Visible only among those close to me, where it’s safe.
Those parts of us that we hide for fear of chuckles and snorts, whether as incongruous a the love for a hat or as serious as the faith we hold true, are us. Who we are. To live any other way is to live a lie. And I for one was tired of the costumes.
***
I’ve worn both my hat and my faith the same way since: out in the open, for all to see. I’m wearing them now as a matter of fact, sitting beneath the shade of an oak at work. People pass. They smile and wave and say to those with them, “Now that’s a hat.” People like my hat. And I’m glad they do.
It’s a good start, I think. But I hope it won’t end there. Maybe soon they’ll smile and wave and say to those with them, “Now that’s a Christian.”
Pick Your Cause
February 26, 2009 by Billy Coffey · Leave a Comment
The college where I work is a great place filled with great people. The campus is beautiful, the professors excellent, and the staff both accommodating and friendly.
But it is still a college. And as it is such, my work environment harbors the sort of modern, liberal predilections that a more traditional person like me can’t seem to understand sometimes. Some days, many days, I am both generally exasperated and specifically confused by what I see.
A few weeks ago the college held what is annually billed as Pick Your Cause Week. Each day brought exhibits, lectures, and a wealth of information concerning a particular organization or subject. This year children of alcoholics, muscular dystrophy, women’s cancers, domestic violence, and the poor were chosen.
Though there are some things here at work that I find questionable and a few I find just plain strange, I like this. I like it a lot. We should all have a Pick Your Cause Week.
I find it sadly ironic that in this age of computers and satellite television, when the smallest event that happens in the smallest corner of the smallest country on the other side of the world can be instantly beamed right into our living rooms, we’ve really never been so separated from one another.
The media blitzes us with a constant barrage of suffering and need. We see footage of disaster and crime and hear stories of loss and despair. And though we try every day to nourish whatever hope we have and coax it to grow, there is the daily reminder that our world seems to be teetering on the edge of a very dark abyss and there is nothing that can pull it back onto solid ground.
It all can be just a little too much to bear. For me, anyway.
So I do what a good Christian should. I pray. But I’ve found that I often use prayer as an excuse, a poor example of doing something. As much as I pray for this world and all the people in it, I find that I do little else about it. And while those prayers are vital, they shouldn’t be the final solution. Asking God to help the world and asking Him to equip me to help the world are two different things. I don’t often get that.
I have a tendency to shrink the world. Shrink it so its dimensions extend no further than the small part I happen to occupy. Shrink it to only that which affects me. My world is my family and my town and my work. Whatever else that happens outside of my world that is sad and regrettable and unfortunate affects me emotionally. But it is also none of my business. I try to ignore it. I don’t hope it will go away because I don’t think it ever will, I just try to stay out of its way and hope it doesn’t find me or the ones I care about.
All of that is of course the silliest thing any Christian should ever believe, and yet I do. And so do a lot of us. We all at some point fall for the great lie that there is nothing we can do about the state of things, and in doing so we risk developing a mindset that is perhaps as unchristian as we can get:
We don’t care what happens so long as it doesn’t happen to us.
That is why a Cause is so important. We are all called to spend our time and energy toward something that will continue on long after we leave this world. It is our purpose, our mission. No matter who we are or what we do or where our talents lie, we are all here for the same reason: to make things better.
To heal the wounded. Clothe the naked. Feed the poor. To offer help to the helpless and hope to the hopeless.
And the light of God to the darkness.
Hugging Purpose
February 1, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 23 Comments
(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.
I’m a writer whose first novel, Snow Day, will be published by FaithWords in 2010.
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.
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