Billy Coffey

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Gently down the stream

January 23, 2018 by Billy Coffey 19 Comments

Billy and momMy mother passed on early in the morning of January 15, 2018. Her loss will be felt far beyond our family and into our small town where she served as a nurse for thirty-three years. Her service was held this past Friday at a little mountain church not far from home. By the time my daughter sat at the piano and began the first notes of It Is Well, the pews and vestibule were filled to capacity.

She was a good woman and a better mother, the sort of person you could not be around without feeling a little better about yourself and your world. I’ve been asked to publish here the words I spoke that night. Feel free to read as much or as little as you like.

It’s strange, the things that come to mind in a time such as this. Mom wouldn’t want this to be a sad occasion, wouldn’t want us all to sit here long in the face and short in hope. She would rather us leave here smiling out from full hearts, knowing it is well. All is well.

That was my only aim in deciding what to talk about this evening. So when I sat down to decide what I wanted to share with you, I did so reverently. Seriously. I dug through scripture and studied the wisdom of church fathers and philosophers and writers, but the only thing that crept its way into my mind and refused to budge wasn’t a psalm or a proverb or a saying of some great person of faith, it was the beginning of a nursery rhyme:

Row, row, row your boat…

And I thought, Really? That’s all I can come up with?

So I prayed. I said, “God, give me some wisdom here. Give me some direction.”

And I waited. And He answered, “Gently down the stream…”

So I gave up on finding something profound and comforting to tell you, because a nursery rhyme is a ridiculous thing to talk about in a situation like this. I went downstairs and tried again later, and this time I decided to go straight to the source. “Mom,” I said, “I have to do this, now. There’s going to be a lot of people there, Mom, and I want to tell them what you need them to know.

And Mom said, “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.”

And with that some old dusty drawer long untouched in my mind slid open and out fell a memory, one so clear and sharp that it could have happened mere hours ago instead of forty years—Mom and me riding down the road in her old yellow Camaro, singing that nursery rhyme.

Then other drawers flew open, other memories of other times we would sing that rhyme together: when she tucked me into bed and as we sat on the porch snapping beans, while I sat at the kitchen counter watching her make supper.

Mom taught me that song when I was five, maybe six, and I remembered that I became obsessed with it. Sang it all the time, and Mom would always sing it with me. We’d do it as a round, me starting off alone and Mom starting when I reached the word “stream,” the two of us trying to keep our parts right but never quite making it, leaving us both laughing by the end. I was so young that I thought that was the point of it all—to laugh. Now, I don’t think so. Now I think even those many years ago, Mom was getting us all ready for this night.

I’ve found myself these last days wanting to grab everyone I meet by the shoulders and give them a good shake, tell them “Don’t you know that none of this will last?” We all know that, don’t we? Nothing in this world lasts. But death is something we do our best to cast aside and try to forget. We run from it, ignore it, do all we can to stave it off.
But that doesn’t change the fact that life is a stream we all are set upon, and we begin every day in one spot along that stream and end it a little further along. Those two things are absolute and unchanging. There’s no going back against that current, no floating in place. We can only move forward bit by bit and little by little, on and on and on.

We are each given a boat to move along those waters. Some are large and fancy, others tattered and plain. Mom’s was tiny in some ways, having to hold only a small woman and a small town. She would tell you her boat was somewhat defective—to the day she passed on, she would laugh and blame all of her troubles on Amish inbreeding—but her boat was strong nonetheless, with a good rudder to keep her far from the shallows and the rocky places where so many become stranded. No, Mom lived in the deep part of the stream where the waters are calm and where she could look out and see the beauty and joy in all things. She rowed her boat straight down the middle all her life.

That is an important point to make. Mom rowed. You would perhaps take such a thing as that for granted—if you’re in a boat out in the middle of the stream, of course you have to row. But not all do. Some will stow their oars and sit back and let the current take them wherever, not caring where they go.

My mother was never like that. She was as driven a person as I have ever known, and she believed in work.

I’m not sure at what point nursing became her calling, but I’ve never known anyone more suited for her job. She spent long hours at the doctor’s office in Stuarts Draft, leaving early in the morning and often not returning until past dark, coming in tired and worn not merely from her labor but from shouldering the burdens of her patients. And she did that no matter who you were. When she called your name and led you back to an examining room she did so with a loving firmness—Mom was going to make you step on that scale whether you wanted to or not.

And when she asked you what was wrong, she felt your pains and worries as her own. She was the only person I’ve ever known who would ask, “How are you doing?” not out of social convention or politeness but of genuine concern. Mom wanted to know because that was the only way she could do her part in having you feel better, whether that was taking your temperature or drawing your blood. A smile and a dose of laughter. Or a prayer she would say for you at night that you never knew.
Her job was hard on us, on Dad and my sister and me. Amy and I grew up believing that to go to the store with Mom was some form of punishment. A simple trip for milk and bread to the IGA or the Food Lion would often stretch into hours because everyone knew her and she knew everyone.

There would be someone to greet her in the parking lot and another just inside the door, and then still more as we made our way down the aisles, patients and people from church and longtime friends, and she would make it a point to talk to them all no matter how busy she might have been, asking them how they were getting along and if there was anything she could do to help, because that’s who Mom was and who she remains.

She knew people, you see. Knew the human heart and mind and soul as well as any preacher. Her job taught her that. It didn’t matter how rich you were or how poor, what color you were or what your address happened to be, at some point you were going to get sick and need to see Dr. Hatter, and you’d have to go through my mother first.

She saw people who went down life’s stream bitter and those who went with anger. Some had lost the will to row at all. Still others had come to believe the stream we’re on was meaningless, and that there was only darkness at the end.
Mom always pitied the ones who believed such a thing. She came to understand early that the best way to row down that stream was gently. Gently down the stream. That is how Mom lived. That’s how she treated everyone, friend and stranger and family most of all. That’s how she taught her children, and her grandchildren. “You got to be nice to people,” she would say, “because you never know what they’re going through, and you might be the only bit of Jesus they’ll ever meet.”

That is what people know of Mom—her gentleness. But that certainly isn’t all. So many have called and written and spoke with me these last days about how she always seemed so happy. And she was. I stand here right now and say none of that was an act. But she wasn’t merely happy. She was joyful. Always quick to laugh with a unique ability to find humor in almost anything, and to me that will always be the one quality of hers that I will remember most.

You couldn’t be in a bad mood around her. There were so many times, especially as a teenager, when I would look at her and think, “What is wrong with you? How can you be so happy? Don’t you know how messed up everything is? Here I am barely managing to hang on, and you’re acting like things are great. I’m sulking, but here you are hopping merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily on your way.”

I’ll be honest. There was a time in my life when I was foolish enough to believe my mother lived in a tiny bubble and didn’t know much about the world. I was wrong about that. My mother knew more about living than I ever will. She hurt and endured and yet she remained joyful, and I believe that joy was present not in spite of those trials, but because of them. Mom came to know what so many of us never truly understand, and that is the power and grace and mercy of suffering. It is our nature to avoid hardships yet still they come, and because of our avoiding we don’t know how to deal with them. Mom did, and she did not flinch. She never once lost her joy.

And do you know why? How?

Listen to me, because this is important. This is what she wants you to hear.

Hard times, illnesses, trials, pain, grief. These things come to us all sooner or later. They come upon us like a storm that won’t pass, stripping away one layer of our lives after another until nothing is left but the soul, but those storms can go no further.

That’s what Mom found. That’s what she knew. The world can leave us bruised and maimed, but it cannot touch our souls. Our souls are God’s alone. They are always in His tender care.

And that brings me to my last point. I look out over this room in wonder that a single woman can touch so many lives. I’m not sure how, but I know why. Not long back I ran into a friend who wanted to know how Mom was doing. He said something that I’m sure was meant well. “What Sylvia needs,” he said, “is just a little more faith.”

That was all the proof I needed that he didn’t know my mother at all. You ask me how it was that Mom rowed her boat so well for so long, how she kept to the deep places in the stream so gently, so merrily, I’ll tell you it’s because her faith never wavered. Not once. We are gathered here in this place tonight, we sing her favorite songs, we pray and worship because that was the center of her life.

God never let her down. That is what Mom wants you to know. And she wants you to know that God will never let us down either. He is the one that made this stream we are on. His Son is the water and his Spirit is the current that leads us ever forward and all of it, every single bit of it, is for one purpose.

Love.

It would be easy to dismiss that right now. What I feel, what you feel, very likely doesn’t resemble love at all. And that’s okay.

I am reminded of the story of John the Baptist. At the end of his life he was imprisoned because Herod didn’t like the things John was preaching. John held on as best he could, wasting away a little every lonely day and dark night. Waiting. Praying. And when he couldn’t take anymore, he sent a few of his disciples to Jesus with a simple question.

“Are you the one, or should I wait for another?”

What John the Baptist was asking is this: Are you really the Son of God? Because I’ve spent all this time telling everyone you are, and I could really use you help here. Because I’m in trouble, and I won’t last much longer. Come and save me.”

So his disciples found Jesus, and do you know what Jesus told John’s disciples to go back and say?

Tell John that the blind can now see, the lame can walk, the lepers are healed, the deaf hear, the dead are being raised, and the poor have the good news preached to them.

That’s it.

You can imagine what John’s disciples were thinking. “Well, Jesus, that’s all just great. Really. But we’re just not too sure it’ll make John feel any better about things.”

So they turned to go away, and as they did Jesus said one more thing, saving it for the last because it’s so important: Tell John, he said, that “blessed is the one who does not fall away because of me.”

I’ve probably read that story a hundred times in my life, but the meaning of it never really clicked until this week. John had faith enough when his life was chugging along just fine, but there’s something about a prison cell and impending death that can bring doubts to the most faithful soul.

And that’s what this time feels like to so many of us right now. A cell. Four close walls and no window to see the light. Faith is easy when life is good and things are moving along exactly the way we think they should. But when they don’t? When our days become a prison like John’s, the world shrinks around us, and we are tempted to doubt the very things that are meant to give us strength, and hope, and faith.

Like John, we say, “You sure you’re up there, God? Because I really need you right now, and it feels like you’re not paying attention, and You’re not making much sense at all.”

And God says, “Of course I’m here, and I’m doing things so wonderful that you can’t even imagine them.” Then God says the same thing to us that Jesus said to John’s disciples. “Blessed is the one who does not fall away because of me.”

What does that mean? “Don’t lose faith just because you don’t understand it all. Don’t stumble because you don’t know why things have to be like this for now.”

Because I am working toward something incredible. Because this, all of this, this stream and this current, this life, isn’t all there is. Those we love and lose are never lost at all. They’re not gone, they’re just a little ways farther down the stream. They’re home, waiting for us, ready to celebrate our arrival.

All of that from a nursery rhyme Mom taught me as a boy. All of it true. And the great thing is the last part of that song is the best part, the most comforting. David said in Psalm 17, “when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.”
Did you get that? It isn’t passing on, its waking up.

David knew too, you see. He knew what Mom knew, and that is what Mom wants us all to know as well.

Life truly is but a dream. So row your boat. Go gently and merrily. Hold dear to Christ, and when you wake you will find what Mom has found: the face of God.

Filed Under: death, endurance, faith, family, grief, hope, loss

Blessed are those who mourn

December 14, 2017 by Billy Coffey 10 Comments

Winter scene

So, here’s what happened—

My wife was diagnosed with leukemia. Our daughter continued on with her mostly up but sometimes down battle with Type 1 diabetes. Our son broke his wrist. Mom’s health took a turn for the worse and then the very worse. It all got so bad there for a while that people at work started referring to me as Job. But while things by far have yet to settle down, it is Christmas—my favorite time of the year—and I do have a new book coming soon. And I really missed popping out a blog post every seven days. So here I am, doing my darnedest to get back into the swing of things.

The problem with taking so much time off from a blog is that you have too much to say when you get back. It all tends to get muddled up in the mind. That’s a little of what I’m feeling right now. So instead of one story about one thing, I thought I’d take this bit to share some of the things that have been on my mind.

You remember the story of John the Baptist being put in prison? Herod had reached the limits of his patience with this hillbilly out in the desert and so tossed John in jail to rot (and ultimately to have his head literally served on a platter). While there, John hears reports of all the things his cousin Jesus is doing and sends his disciples to ask Jesus one simple question: Are you really the Son of God? Because I’ve been spending all this time telling everyone you are, and I could really use your help here. For his part, Jesus told John’s disciples to go back and say that the blind now see, the lame walk, the lepers are healed, the deaf hear, the dead are being raised, and the poor have good news preached to them.

And then Jesus adds this, saving it for last because it’s so important.

Tell John, he says, that “blessed is the one who does not fall away because of me.”

I’ve probably read that story a hundred times in my life, yet it never really clicked with me until these last months. John had faith enough when his life was just chugging along—great faith, even—but there’s something about a prison cell and the threat of death that can bring doubts to even the most faithful soul. You sure You’re up there, God? Because I kind of need a miracle right now, and it seems to me You’re just not paying attention. And God says Of course I’m here, and I’m there, and I’m doing things so wonderful that you can’t even imagine it all. But don’t lose faith just because I’m not fitting into the little box you made for me. Don’t stumble because you don’t understand why things have to be like this for now.

A hard lesson for sure, but one my family is learning.

I was walking through town one morning a while back and happened upon an honest-to-goodness professional singer. You wouldn’t know him. He plays a few of the clubs across the mountain on the weekends, that’s all. But he gets paid for doing it, and in my book paid equals professional. I was one street up along a little hill, walking parallel to him and minding my own business. No traffic, no people. That’s when I heard him sing. Rich baritone, smooth as butter. Enough to make me stop and watch. What I noticed is that he would sing when walking by the buildings, then stop whenever he came to an open space like an intersection or an alleyway. It got me so curious that I bumped into him accidentally on purpose a few blocks later to ask what he was doing. Testing his voice, he said. You can’t tell how strong your voice is if you’re singing out in the open. But when you sing while surrounded by something like brick and stone built up so high that it dwarfs you, then you know. Things like that bounce your voice right back to you. You hear your true self rather than the noise in your head.

Maybe that’s a little of what John the Baptist was doing, and me, and maybe you. Testing our voices up against things we can’t move. Finding out who we really are.

You know you’re getting up there in age when all the stars of your childhood start passing on. That’s the first thing I thought when I heard that David Cassidy had died. The Partridge Family ended when I was two, but I grew up with the reruns. Was there anyone cooler than David Cassidy? Nope. He had the looks and the hair and the voice and got to travel around the country in a funky school bus. I remember him on magazine covers and being mobbed by girls. Rich. Famous. What a life.
And yet I read an article last week that mentioned his final words to his daughter. Know what they were?

“So much wasted time.”

Kind of hits you hard, doesn’t it? Especially when you realize everything that man had is everything the world says is necessary to live a good life, and everything most of us are either chasing after or wish we had.
I’ve heard he suffered from dementia at the end. Maybe that was the prison cell David Cassidy found himself in, like John the Baptist. Maybe that’s what allowed him to face the hard truths of his life. Or maybe he just found himself singing into a wall too big and wide for him to get around, and he finally heard his real voice for the first time.

Maybe.

But this I know for certain now, and maybe you know it, too—life can sometimes be a terribly hard thing to endure. Sometimes the things that happen make no sense. But that’s no reason to stumble. No cause to throw your hands up and say it’s all for nothing.

I know it true.

Filed Under: burdens, doubting God, encouragement, endurance, faith, family, grief, loss, pain, perspective, seasons

When things were right

May 19, 2017 by Billy Coffey 2 Comments

creekMy kids tell me they’d rather be growing up when I did.

Trade 2017 for, say, 1978. Anything with a “19” as the first two numbers will do. I’m certain the bulk of their evidence for this conclusion can be handed to the stories I tell about how life was once lived in our little town, which isn’t little so much anymore. “Back in the day,” as some would put it. Or, as I’m apt to say, “When things were right.”

Like how during the summer you might go all day without seeing your parents and your parents were fine with that, because they knew you were safe and you’d be home either when you got hungry or when the streetlights came on.

Or how you’d just keep your hand raised above the steering wheel when you drove down Main Street because everybody knew everybody else. You either went to school with them or went to church with them or were kin to them through blood or marriage.

How there was Cohron’s Hardware right across from Reid’s mechanic shop, and if you were a kid and knew your manners you get a free piece of Bazooka! gum at the former and a free Co’Cola in a genuine glass bottle that was so cold it puckered your lips at the other.

How, back then, you rode your bike down to the 7-11 to play video games—Eight-ball Deluxe on the pinball and Defender and RBI Baseball—and then pool what money you had left for a Slurpee and a pack of Topps baseball cards.

How maybe in the afternoons there’d still be change enough in your pocket to buy a Dilly bar from the hippie who drove the ice cream truck around the neighborhood. You’d hurry up and eat before the sun could melt it away and then head over for pickup games at the sandlot which rivaled any Game 7 of any World Series, and after, once all the playing was done and the arguing finished, you’d have the best drink of water in your life out of Mr. Snyder’s garden hose.

Evenings were for supper and bowls of ice cream fresh from the machine your daddy spent and hour cranking on the porch. You spent the nights catching lightning bugs and lying in bed slicked with sweat because there was only that one fan in the hallway. You’d go to sleep listening to the lonely mockingbird singing through the open window from the maple in the backyard.

So, yeah. I get it when my kids say that’s the life they want. Who wouldn’t want a childhood like that?

Truth be known, I spend a lot of time thinking about how I’d like to grow up back then again, too. Not so much to right certain wrongs (I have none, other than the day when I was six that I crushed a frog with a cinderblock just to see what it’d look like), but just to go back. To feel that sense of freedom again, and safety, and to know the world as wide and beautiful instead of small and scary.

I’ve talked to others over the years who feel the same way. Some grew up with me in this tiny corner of the Virginia mountains. Many more did not. They were born elsewhere in towns and cities both, yet each carry a story not unlike my own as one would a flame in the darkness. Even many who suffered horrible childhoods look back over them with a sense of fondness. They tell me things like, “Those were some good years, weren’t they?” Even when they weren’t.

This is part of what it means to be human, I think. We spent the first years of our lives wanting nothing more than to get away from where we are, only to spend the rest of it trying to get back.

My kids will be the same way. Yours, too. They will grow and flourish and have kids of their own, and those kids will be regaled with tales of how much better the world was back in the day. When things were right.

It’s only been in these last few years that my own parents have begun telling me the truth about my golden childhood. How they often struggled to keep a roof over my head and food on my table and clothes on my back. How it seemed like the country was on the cusp of some great abyss. People at each other’s throats. War looming. Nuclear missiles. How it was hard to tell the truth from the lies. Sound familiar?

My parents don’t look back on that time with fondness at all. To them, it was their childhood world of the 50s that was back in the day. That was when everything was right.

I’m sure my grandparents would disagree if they were yet here.

There were no good old days. I think we all know that deep down.

But that doesn’t stop us from believing there were, from wanting so desperately to know that one lie a truth in its own right. Because that’s part of what it means to be human, too. Maybe the best part. That deep longing and need for a time when things are right.

There are some among us who believe that will never be the case. Things were never right and never will be. I’m not one of them. Sure, deep down I know that my childhood wasn’t always the bright summer day I remember it to be now. But on some distant tomorrow? Well.

I’ve heard that heaven will be made up of all those secret longings we carry through our lives. I hope that’s true. Because if it is, I can take comfort in the fact that I’ll be spending eternity on a quiet street in a quiet town in a quiet corner of Virginia. I’ll be listening to mockingbirds and playing a pickup game of baseball and drinking from a water hose.

That’s all I want. Nothing more.

Filed Under: change, family, future, heaven, human nature, life, memories, perspective, small town life

Release Day: Some Small Magic

March 14, 2017 by Billy Coffey 3 Comments

some small magic coverLet me tell you about a kid I know, a boy named Abel.

In many ways he’s not unlike a lot of children around here, meaning Abel’s family is poor and he has only one parent at home. That would be Lisa, Abel’s momma. Lisa spends most of her time waiting tables down at the diner. The tips aren’t much but they provide. There’s groceries enough, along with the rent money for their little rundown house along a dead-end dirt road outside town. Abel stays home most times. He came into the world with a mild form of brittle bone disease. Any awkward step can leave Abel casted and laid up for weeks. He’s got to be careful in what he does. Lisa worries about her boy. There are times, many times, when Abel knows himself a burden his momma cannot bear.

But I don’t want you thinking everything in Abel’s life is bad.

Far from it. He doesn’t have much but believes that okay; very often the ones truly cursed in life are those who have more than they know what to do with. It’s hard for Abel to get around with those soft bones, but there isn’t much exercise involved in reading. That’s what he does mostly, Abel reads, which has turned him into maybe the smartest kid I’ve ever known. And you can say all you want about the way his classmates pick on him, Abel’s got someone who will do just about anything in the world for him. Dumb Willie Farmer might only be the janitor at the elementary school (and might only be Dumb, as the name implies), but you will find no better friend. Ask Abel, he’ll tell you.

And about that house: sure it’s nothing more than a rented little shack, but it’s set along the edge of a field where the trains pass three times a day. Abel loves his trains. He’ll limp out there every day to count the cars and wave at the conductor. His daddy’s gone, prayed into the sky before Abel was born, but some days Abel will wave at that train going by and imagine a daddy he never knew waving back.

I’m not sure how life would have turned out for Abel had he not gotten into trouble with his momma and cleaned their house as an apology. Have you ever noticed how quick things can change off one small decision? It happened to Abel that way. He even cleans up the spare bedroom in back of the house where Lisa says he should never go, and that’s where he finds his daddy’s letters—shoved into an old popcorn tin and addressed to Abel Shifflett of Mattingly, Virginia. Some of these letters are dated from years back, but the one on top? Sent three weeks ago. Abel can only sit and ponder it all. His daddy’s not dead. And more than that, one of those letters reveal where his not-dead daddy is: a place called Fairhope, North Carolina.

It’s one of those times when all of life’s murky darkness gets shot through with a beam of light.

Abel knows what he’s supposed to do. He’s going to find his daddy and bring him home. Because that will fix everything, you see? His momma won’t have to work so hard anymore. The two of them won’t have to struggle. If Abel can get his daddy home, they’ll all be a family. It’s all Abel has ever wanted.

The problem is how a ten-year-old boy with soft bones is supposed to make it all the way down to someplace in Carolina without getting found. It’s too long of a way, and there will surely be danger. But then Abel realizes he has a secret weapon in his friend Dumb Willie, and the two of them hatch a scheme to run away from home. They’ll hop one of the trains coming by Abel’s house and ride it as far as they need. It isn’t a terrible idea so far as ideas go, but one which doesn’t take long to go awry. Hopping a moving train at night is an act fraught with peril, especially with a broken little boy and his not-so-smart friend. Abel’s journey seems to end before it begins when he is crushed under the rails.

But this isn’t a tragic story—oh no. This is a tale of magic big and small, and Abel and Dumb Willie aren’t the only ones at the train that night. Death itself has come in the form of a young woman to take Abel on. One look at this broken boy is enough to convince her this is a thing she cannot do. Even Death carries a burden too great, having witnessed so many children having their lives ended in so many needless ways. And while both Death and Dumb Willie (who is not so Dumb after all) understand what has happened to Abel, Abel himself does not. He convinces the strange but pretty girl who saved them to join in their journey, after which he promises to let her take them home.

So it is that Death itself accompanies two boys along the rails through the wilds of West Virginia and eastern Tennessee, clear to the Carolina mountains. Looking for a father long thought dead. Looking for a little magic.

That is the story in short for my eighth novel, Some Small Magic, which is out today.

There’s more to Abel’s journey (trust me, a lot more), but the rest is for you to discover. Believe me when I say you won’t be disappointed.

It’s my favorite book so far, and you can pick it up by heading here.

In the meantime, should you find yourself at a railroad stop in central Appalachia, do yourself a favor. Scan those boxcars as they fly past. They might not be all empty. And if you see three faces peering out at the blue sky, send a little prayer their way.

Because those three are bound west, toward home.

Filed Under: Adventure, challenge, choice, death, faith, family, home, magic, publishing, Some Small Magic, Thomas Nelson, trials, writing

Still easily broken

March 9, 2017 by Billy Coffey 3 Comments

image courtesy of google images
image courtesy of google images

It’s pretty rare that I ever get into anything truly personal here.

Family and the issues we face are usually dealt with in a funny or poignant way (at least that’s what I hope), which can sometimes give the impression that we in the mountains have this business of living down pat. I’m about to buck that trend.

The past month or so has been pretty hard on our family. I’ve had loved ones in the hospital for the flu and another whose body has all but given up. The word “cancer” has gone from being whispered about in private company to being acknowledged at the kitchen table. It’s been a trying time, a scary time—the sort of thing you start thinking only adults should have to handle and maybe you aren’t as much of an adult as you thought.

It’ll all be okay, of course.

The days will right themselves. It isn’t lost to me that everything I’m feeling is considered old news to a great swath of folks. Life’s only given is that we must all pass from it. Nothing of this world is made to be permanent, which is a lesson that comes early on in the Appalachian foothills. Things wear out, get tired and used up. Crops and seasons both rise up and bloom before being cut down. Our woods are filled with forgotten graves and the foundations of old homes left now to hold only memories and ghosts. Even these mountains, tall and solid as they are, wear away with the eons a millimeter at a time.

I know this. You know this. And yet they remain the hardest words to speak and hear:

each of us were born for leaving.

From an early age I was raised with the knowledge that each of us hold two parts—one temporary, the other eternal. Our shell of bone and muscle will decay at some point, freeing that holy spark within us to burn bright elsewhere. My mother’s parents drilled this into my head often, as the Amish usually do—all this world is for is getting us ready for the next. George MacDonald once said that “We should have taught more carefully than we have done, not that men are bodies and have souls, but that they are souls and have bodies.” My grandparents would have agreed.

But somewhere between the ages of nine and forty-four I seem to have forgotten that knowledge, or at least set it aside. Those thirty years or so had the opposite effect by convincing me life was a solid thing, wholly predictable, and if not permanent then at least long-lasting. There were reminders of otherwise along the way. My grandparents died. Several high school friends. I remember holding my daughter when she was born and my son a few years later and feeling a mix of awe and terror at how fragile and easily broken they were. Then all of that went away again, muddled by passing years which held nothing but the same old, the everyday.

Until this past month. These last weeks. Until the time came when the thin curtain over my life and my family’s lives was eased back a bit to reveal the truth on the other side. That’s why I decided to buck a trend with this post, because the truth I’ve seen is one we should all start holding a little closer to the heart—we don’t ever get stronger. Not really. We come into this world children, and I think that’s how we stay. We can pretend otherwise. We can lean on our intelligence and the strength of our bodies, we can seek shelter in the things we collect and the jobs we have and the dreams we count upon, but we’re still kids. Still fragile. Still easily broken.

Still sure to wear out.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve started paying a little more attention to that spark within us all. To the soul. It’s the one thing of us the ground cannot one day claim, the fire burning ever upward, pointing us on.

“There’s rest for the weary, a rest that endures.
Earth has no sorrows that heaven can’t cure.”
— David Crowder

Filed Under: burdens, endurance, faith, family, grief, life

The symphony of us

January 26, 2017 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

image courtesy of google images
image courtesy of google images

I’m not sure how I’ve come to share my house with a group of musicians, but such has been the case for the last few years.

Between both kids and my wife, no less than seven instruments can be heard playing within our walls on a nightly basis. For hours, I’ll add. Which is nice, don’t get me wrong, if there’s anything the world needs more of it’s music, but when you have a piano and flute and guitar playing three different songs in your ear at the same time, it can get hard to read your book. Or think. Or keep from going crazy.

The dog and I spend a lot of time outside in the evenings. It’s quieter out there.

Not that they’re bad, mind you. My family is gifted in ways I never was with the songs they play and the manner by which they play them. The kids especially. Though in all honesty, I’ve had my doubts.

Take the past week. Both kids have been hard at work practicing for a special district symphony performance—think an All-star game for band nerds. One plays flute, the other sax. Nights now they’ve sat in their respective bedrooms wailing away, and to be honest—to be very, very honest in a very loving way—I must admit this:

It sounds awful.

Seriously.

Now, sure, I have zero musical training beyond a fifth-grad stint with a plastic recorder. The only thing I can play well is the radio. But still. It’s bad. Off, somehow. They’re hitting the notes they’re supposed to, but there’s not doubt something is missing. Something vital.

Aside from you, the only living thing I’ve shared this with is our dog Lucy. She agreed and wanted to go outside.

But here’s the thing—my kids might sound awful and off, but they’re not.

I know this because I’ve been through the whole district thing before. Last year I sweated through the days leading up to their performance, thinking both of my kids would get up there with everyone else and hit one clunker of a note after another. Didn’t happen.

What did happen is they both played their notes to perfection in the same way they’d played them in their bedrooms, only now there were dozens of other instruments around them to fill in the gaps. My daughter played her flute, my son his sax, and where they left off other parts took over before my children swooped in again. The broken and jumbled sounds I’d heard them play at home weren’t broken and jumbled at all, those were merely the parts for them to play.

I’d forgotten they weren’t solo performers, they were part of a symphony.

I say all of this because it’s easy sometimes to take a look at my own life and see nothing but a jumbled and broken mess that sounds a little off. Maybe a glance at your own life would reveal the same. Days of the same old and nights spent so tired you can barely get one foot in front of another. Living for the weekend or the next day off. Watching the years tick by and wondering where they’ve all gone and what the point of it all is, and running beneath it all is a soft current of desperation because you just don’t know if it matters at all.

It’s easy for me to think that way when I catch myself believing I’m a solo. But what if I’m not? What if none of us are? What if we’re all playing our own parts in some greater orchestra instead, letting our instruments mingle with billions of others, leaping out and in such that we add to a melody so pure and beautiful the sound of it carries and carries on forever?

What if it’s not about us at all, and instead it’s about us all?

Filed Under: beauty, creativity, family, music, perspective

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