The Why and the What
November 30, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 1 Comment
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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.
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Basements
October 24, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 6 Comments
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A family down the road loves Halloween almost as much as I do. Mother, father, and son—Mikey is his name. Mikey’s seven.
Mikey already has his costume picked out—it’s Jack Sparrow this year—and already has his pumpkin carved. All that’s left are the decorations. Mikey’s folks get a kick out of decorating for Halloween.
But as with most things in life, all this excitement and elation is sprinkled with dread. Decorating for Halloween, you see, means having to get the decorations out. Not a problem usually, but in Mikey’s case it’s a big one. Because all the decorations are in his basement.
All of that old and mostly forgotten stuff down there gives Mikey the willies. It’s scary down there, he’s told me. Dark and stinky, too. It’s where the spiders and mice and ghosts live. Also the furnace, which he believes may well be the gateway to hell. When you’re a kid, nothing is scarier than the furnace.
At night before bed, Mikey doesn’t worry about the front or back doors being locked, he worries about the basement door. He’s seen the movies (though he won’t fess up to me which movies he’s talking about) and knows what can happen. He’s not afraid of someone coming in, he’s afraid of something coming up. But there’s a problem. The lock is on the inside of the door, not the outside. The builder’s mistake, on that his father never gotten around to fixing. Which means the spiders and mice and ghosts can keep everything in, but Mikey can’t keep them out.
So when the first week of October rolls around, he’s both elated and scared to death. His father expects Mikey to go down there with him. He has to help unpack it all, too. And lay it all out right there on the basement floor. “You never know what’s going to be in there,” he told me. “Spiders love to crawl in those boxes. Zombies, too. I seen em.”
This fear, this dread, is Mikey’s alone. He hasn’t told his parents about the basement, and how he worries about the lock on the basement door before he goes to bed, and how he prays that eventually his dad will change the lock around to the other side so he could get in but they couldn’t get out. It’d make him seem like a kid. And when you’re a kid, the last thing you want is to act like one.
Me, I understand all of this. The kid part, but especially the basement stuff. I might not have a basement in my house, but I do have one inside of me. Deep down, seldom seen. It’s the place where all the junk is kept, the fears and worries and failures. The sins I’ve committed and the regrets I have.
It’s a mess, my basement. Junky and moldy and dark. I suspect things crawl around down there, too. And there are ghosts. Plenty of ghosts.
I’m not alone here. Flip through your Bible and you’ll find plenty of people with junky basements. Moses had one, what with that murder charge and all. David too, with the whole Bathsheba in the bathtub incident. Peter when he denied Christ after saying he never would. And let’s not forget Paul, who had the blood of hundreds and maybe thousands of Christians on his hands. They found out, like we do, that living with junk in the basement is tough and scary.
They also found out that God can clean those basements up. He can get rid of the junk, scrub everything down, and chase away all the nasties. Problem is, He won’t do it alone. We have to open the door to let Him in. Because like the Mikey’s house down the road, there are locks on our basement doors, and they all lock from the inside.
“I know you’re going to say no, but…”
September 14, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 11 Comments
It was my son who approached me the other night after supper and prefaced his request to go play in the creek with, “I know you’re going to say no, but…”
He was right, I did say no. It was getting dark, it was already cold, and he had chores to finish and homework to do. But that preface bothered me a little.
“I know you’re going to say no, but…”
Meaning I must say no to him a lot. A whole lot.
And that bothered me to the point where I began keeping track of the ratio of yeahs and nopes I give my kids over the course of a normal day. Finished my research the other night. The results were…well, I’m not really sure yet what the results were. All I have is numbers. Their meaning is still up in the air.
According to my calculations, I tell my kids no about ten times a day. Where that fits on the scale of Excessive Parenting is debatable. Even I’m not quite sure. Considering how much I talk to my children, I suppose ten isn’t an unreasonable number. But when I consider the fact that for most of the day they’re at school and I’m at work, ten sounds like a lot.
In my defense, many of the things my children ask to either have or do are things few parents would allow. Few children should have an elephant as a pet or their own television show or be allowed to dress like thugs and prostitots.
They, of course, do not see the wisdom in my refusals. And I have no doubt I sometimes transform in front of their very eyes from Nice Daddy to Mean Tyrant. Once, my daughter even told me I wasn’t cool.
But stripped down to its most bare essentials, saying no is what parenting is all about. I’ve learned in my nine years of being a father that kids will ask for anything—anything at all—without much thinking involved. Their tiny minds are based on the principle of immediacy. It’s now they think about, and seldom later.
That’s where I come in. As a father with thirty-nine years of experience in later, I can testify to the wisdom found in keeping one’s eyes forward rather than the small amount of space at one’s feet. Life has taught me this one thing: everything leads to something else. Everything has a consequence.
I tried a little show and tell about this with my kids once. We were sitting by a pond. I told them to watch as I tossed a rock into the water, then explained how the things we do are like the ripples that come after the toss. They reverberate.
They didn’t get the lesson, they just wanted to throw some rocks of their own. To them, it was the splash that mattered. The ripples were inconsequential.
I can’t blame them.
I was like that once.
I often still am.
To them, I can be the mean parent who won’t let them have any fun. That’s okay, because God willing one day they’ll be mean parents themselves.
But there’s more to this.
The study of my ten-times-a-day No has made me realize I’m somewhat of a hypocritical father. It’s not always easy to answer my kids in the negative, but I’m comforted by knowing it’s for their benefit. Children need boundaries, and they need to be kept safe. And bottom line, they really don’t know what’s best for them.
That’s why it’s a bit disheartening to realize I act like them when it comes to the things I ask for from God.
He tells me no a lot, too. Probably more than ten times a day.
I once thought that was because He didn’t love me or because I wasn’t good enough. That I wasn’t worthy.
I know better now.
The truth is that He does love me, and that both His yes and His no come from that very love. Being good and worthy doesn’t matter much. I know it’s because I need boundaries and to be kept safe. And because bottom line I really don’t know what’s best for me.
And that’s okay.
Because He does.
Farther along
August 22, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 23 Comments
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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.
In the name of Jayzus!
July 25, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 14 Comments
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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
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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.
It’s all music
July 5, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 13 Comments
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For the most part, I seem to be the only one immune to the music bug. Not so for the rest of my family. My wife caught it first, passed to her via a visit with the music leader at church. They were starting an instrument ensemble. My wife played the trombone in high school. Would be she interested in playing it again?
My daughter came down with it the following day. It was a variant—ivory keys rather than a brass horn—but just as bad a case. For the past week, she’s been practicing finger placement and note recognition at the piano in the dining room under the watchful eye of her mother.
Not to be outdone, my son has borrowed an acoustic guitar from the aforementioned music leader. He’s since become attached to it, would even sleep with it if I let him. We’re looking for a guitar instructor.
Fast.
Because, you see, whether just starting out or starting out again after years of neglect, making beautiful music requires three things—time, practice, and instruction.
All three are currently missing in the musical lives of my family.
It isn’t easy for me. My nerves are already frayed to the point of snapping. I’ve just finished driving my children home from their grandparents’ house, five miles of my son’s guitar and my daughter’s singing, both trying to match the perfectly-pitched tones of the Zac Brown Band’s “Knee Deep” that was wafting through the speakers. I’d spent much of that ride with my head out the driver’s side window, trying to escape the pain.
Yes, it’s that bad.
All you would need for proof of that is to be sitting here with me right now. Each of them are scattered throughout the house, trying to find music where music is yet to be. If I were honest—and I always try to be—I could say my wife’s attempt at the trombone sounds a little like two wounded hippos attempting to mate. And my daughter’s struggle at the piano sounds much like the tortured screams of someone walking over broken glass. And my son’s endeavor with the guitar is nothing less than the musical equivalent of waterboarding.
But still I endure, as do they. Because something is going on here that until two minutes ago I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Because that was the moment my daughter yelled, “Did you hear me play, Daddy?”
“I did,” I said, and let the second part of my answer—Pretty sure the whole neighborhood heard you, too—go unsaid.
“Am I getting better?”
“I believe you are.”
“Good, because I can’t tell. Sometimes the wrong notes sound as good as the right ones. Isn’t that silly?”
Ah.
“Not really,” I told her.
I suppose one would think the point of my family’s newfound musical training is straightforward—one learns to play an instrument in order to make good music. That’s where the time, practice, and instruction come into play. And yet my daughter has just shown me there is another something beyond that, a deeper and more necessary requirement.
I think learning to play music isn’t all that different from learning to live life. We try to do the best we can to make something beautiful, knowing all the while there will be a lot of the unbeautiful in the meantime.
There will be sour notes and awkward movements. Blatant frustration and unreasonable expectations. Failures abounding. And yet now I wonder if the beautiful lives we are all trying to build must be devoid of those things—if they must be perfect in order to be good.
I doubt it.
I think my daughter is right. Sometimes the wrong notes sound as good as the right ones. Sometimes a little girl struggling to play “Chopsticks” on the piano and a little boy trying to find a note—any note—on a guitar is better than even angel song.
When it comes to song and life, the point isn’t so much to play it well as it is to play it, to try and sing and dance despite the sour notes, and to believe and love and hope despite the pain that can result.
Because when it comes to God, it’s all music. Every single note.
God is good
April 27, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 23 Comments
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So evidently the valve that sends water from my pipes to my refrigerator has been leaking for about a year and a half. Not gushing, mind you. I would notice gushing. Dripping instead, and one drop every six seconds to be exact (I’ve counted). You can’t hear dripping like that, not amongst the noises of a stovetop, a dishwasher, and the normal chatter of a normal household. That’s what I tell myself. And though I also tell myself I should have known something was wrong—very, very wrong—I counter by asking who in the world makes it a habit to look behind their refrigerator?
Ten drops of water per minute for 547 days.
Know how many drops that is all together? Almost eight million.
Know what eight million drops of water can do to those parts of your home you can’t see? Grow the sort of mold that resembles something out of the X-Files. Scary mold that kills people.
And apparently, it’s now everywhere in my home.
I called The Guys (there are always Guys, those who make their living solving most every problem one can have, even X-Files mold). They came over the other evening to check things out in the deep recesses of Casa de Coffey. They were polite, almost sorry they had to be there. I was sorrier. They spoke in soft tones and carried Buck knives on their belts. Almost every Guy I’ve ever known has carried a Buck knife on his belt.
They took air samples and pictures, showed me what was happening. Asked if we’d had any recent health issues. They brought in an air scrubber that hums with all the stealth of a jet liner and said to keep it running every day all day.
Guy 1 and Guy 2 took turns relaying the bad news. Two walls would have to come down. Cabinets and floors would have to be replaced. A quarantine zone would have to be put up, which meant we’d have to go elsewhere to live.
“As far as cost goes…” Guy 1 looked at his boots. I looked at Guy 2, who had suddenly taken a great interest in the painting on the wall beside him. I’ll admit that was the moment my palms began to sweat. “…well, it won’t be inexpensive. I can’t give you a number until we get the air samples back. But it’ll be okay. We do this all the time.”
It’ll be okay.
We do this all the time.
The Guys left with the promise they’d get in touch once the lab finds out exactly what sort of poison we’re all inhaling. A nice thought, that.
Normally in such circumstances—as if such circumstances could ever be thought of as normal—I would be freaking out. Big time. But I’m not, at least not yet. Mostly because of what else happened around here the day we found our creeping mold.
Stand on our back deck and turn your head to the left and you’ll see some woods, beyond which lie the western half of town. That’s where the tornado hit. Hurling and destroying and whipping and gnashing through neighborhoods and farms and leaving behind a scene that one would literally take your breath away.
Just on the other side of the railroad tracks live one Amish family in particular. Their house burned the day after Christmas. No injuries, but most everything else was lost. True to the Amish way, relatives and strangers from as close as next door and as far away as Ohio showed up to rebuild everything. It was quite a scene, one that made the front page of the paper. The sort of story that made you feel good inside.
Now, just a few months later, their farm gets hit by a tornado. The new house is damaged, but not nearly as badly as the grove of oaks that ring it.
The mother and father were on the news tonight. Standing on their front porch, he with his long beard and she in her homemade dress. Smiling as they answered questions that bothered us all.
The mother answered for them both when she said, “God is good.”
Yes, that’s what she said. God is good, despite it all.
My family and I are making plans to find a place to stay for a while. Insurance won’t cover the cost (seepage, they said, which seems to be a fancy word for You’re On Your Own). We’ll have to take a loan out for the repairs.
It’ll be okay. That’s what The Guys said. I believe that. Trouble comes to everyone uninvited. It barges in and kicks up its feet and announces that it’s going to stay awhile. It says, “What do you think now?”
When it does, I’ll give the Amish mother’s answer.
“God is good.”
A question of prayer
April 25, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 20 Comments
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I would call none of our conversations a sharing of ideas. Their words and the diplomas that hang on their office walls are proof enough they are much more intelligent than little ol’ me. I’m good with that. There are advantages to being the dumb person in the room.
So the other day when my mind asked a question my heart had trouble answering, I went knocking on some office doors.
The first chair I sat in was in front of four bookcases that stretched floor to ceiling and were stuffed with titles I could barely pronounce. The professor—smart fella, with a Ph.D. in philosophy courtesy of an Ivy League school—looked at me with kind eyes and asked what was on my mind.
“What’s the point of praying for anything?” I asked him. “I mean, if God knows everything and has a perfect plan, then won’t His plan work out regardless of what I tell Him?”
The professor took off his glasses, rubbed the lenses with a handkerchief. Then he put the glasses back on and looked at the bookshelves behind me, looking for an answer.
“Let’s see,” he told me. He rose from the chair by the desk and brought down one book—this one old, with a worn leather cover and yellowed pages—and then another, this one so new the spine cracked as he opened it.
He talked for ten minutes about free will and time being an unfinished sentence. Or something. My nods at first were of the understanding kind. The ones toward the end were because I was fighting sleep.
I still don’t know what he said.
The door down the hall belonged to a religion professor (Ph.D. again, Ivy League again). I sat in a different chair in front of different books and asked the same question with the same results. More free will, plus something about alternate histories and God “delighting in Himself.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d walked into a professor’s office with one question and walked out with a dozen.
To make matters worse, my mind was still asking that question and my heart was still having trouble answering it.
What’s the point of praying for anything? Because it seems a little presumptuous to ask for anything from a God who already knows what I need (and what I don’t).
I was at a standstill over all of this until I talked to Ralph at the Dairy Queen last night. Ralph doesn’t have a Ph.D., and the only Ivy he knows is the kind that grows on the side of his house. And though far from an expert on matters of the spirit, he does preach part-time at one of the local churches when the regular preacher is sick or on vacation. And since he waved at me and was eating his cheeseburger all alone, I figured what the heck. I’d ask him:
“What’s the point of praying for anything?”
Ralph paused mid-chew. Cocked his head a little to the side. Said, “What kinda stupid question is that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just popped into my head the other day. But seriously, why ask Him for anything. And really, why pray at all? If God already knows what’s in my heart, why do I have to speak it?”
Ralph finished his bite, swallowed, then said, “B’cause it ain’t about you, son.”
“It’s not?”
He drawled out a slow “No” that sounded more like Nooo. “Boy, prayin’ ain’t about askin’. Ain’t even about praisin’, really. Nope, prayin’s about you gettin’ in line with God. It’s not about Him gettin’ in your head and heart, it’s about you gettin’ in His.”
Ah.
I left Ralph to his cheeseburger, answers in hand. And honestly, that answer made sense. Because life—better life, anyway—is always about Him more than about us.
And I left with other wisdom, too. The next time I have a question, I think I’ll spend less time in a professor’s office and more time down at the Dairy Queen.
Go out in the world and live
March 28, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 17 Comments
photo by Aaron Jarrad
The story in the newspaper was accompanied by a photo of the street on which she was last seen. It was that eerie time just after the earthquake and before the wave hit. Taylor was riding her bicycle home from an elementary school in the city of Ishinoma-ki.
Use your imagination, and you will see houses and storefronts and perhaps children playing on the street corners. You will see that strange combination of resistance and joy that defines human life everywhere, that sort that makes you feel melancholy but happy to be alive.
That’s not the picture the photograph displays, however. All you see is death and destruction.
Though I do my best not to, all I can think of is her last thoughts as that wall of water came rushing toward her. I like to think it was fast. I like to think it was over before she knew it was upon her and that she didn’t suffer.
Derek Kannemeyer is a French and English teacher at St. Catherine’s, the school which Taylor once attended. In the article, he described his former student’s philosophy of life this way:
“You’ve got to go out in the world and live.”
This is the first time I’ve written about the events in Japan. I’ve wanted to ever since it happened, but I just…couldn’t. There are a great many things in this world meant to be written about by better writers than I, and what happened in Japan is one of those things. It raises questions in me about the things I believe and why I believe them. I’ve done my fair share of questioning God and shaking my fist at Him.
You should know better, I tell Him. Why didn’t You do something?
People smarter than me have been asking that question for a very, very long time. I suppose they always will.
Me, I have no answers. There is a lot in Christianity that must be accepted on faith. It is a rock you can break yourself against, that can tear you to pieces, unless you realize there are answers only God can know and you never will.
I still struggle with that.
But today I am thinking of Taylor Lane Anderson, whose life was cut short by shaking earth and raging ocean, but who still chased and managed to grab hold of her dreams. Her death was a sad tragedy, but knowing she died doing what she loved somehow takes a bit of the sting away. In the end, death that comes out of fulfilling our purpose is something to which we should all aspire.
I still question God. I doubt neither His existence nor His love, but I do His ways. They are higher than my ways, Isaiah said, as His thoughts are higher than my thoughts. I believe that. But believing that also brings a mixture of calm and fear, and I don’t believe I’m the only one to feel such things.
It is a scary time to be alive. There just seems to be so much going on—so much bad. There are days when I feel as though a black cloud hangs over this world, rumbling and swirling and ready to dump catastrophe upon us all. It’s easy to wake up in the morning and wonder, “What’s next?”
I’m sure I’ll wonder what’s next again, sure I’ll look up hoping to see the light and instead see that black, swirling cloud. When I do, I’m going to remember Taylor Lane Anderson. I’m going to remember the way she lived her life.
Because no matter what happens, no matter what fear entangles us, we’ve got to go out in the world and live.
Not only survive. Not just get by.
Live.
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.
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