Toward the sunrise
July 16, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 27 Comments
Funny thing, I actually spoke with Carla a few weeks ago on Facebook. Carla’s not her real name, by the way. My idea, not hers. I’m pretty sure none of my ex-girlfriends would actually admit to dating me, so I decided to spare her the humility…
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Her name was Carla, and God had made her just for me. I knew that from the moment I first saw her in Mrs. Harrison’s third grade class. And it was confirmed five years later when I accompanied her to the eighth grade dance.
A big deal, that dance. Held the week before summer vacation. The next year would be high school, which meant all of us would take a tumble down the hard-climbed mountain of acceptance. Eighth grade was the pinnacle of middle school. Ninth grade was the bottom rung on high school’s ladder. So we danced that night on the edge of where the two met.
It was understood among the eighth grade class that Carla and I were a couple. I never actually made that official, mostly because I was ignorant of the proper protocol. I was always a little clumsy around the girls.
But it’s amazing what a tuxedo can do for a guy’s confidence. I stalked around the gymnasium that night like Sonny freaking Crockett, calm and cool and gentlemanly with my date. I was impressive. So impressive that I left Carla’s doorstep that night with her unlisted phone number and a promise that I’d call over the summer.
In my defense, I tried. But the seven digits that were firmly lodged in my mind were evidently the wrong ones. I tried to call Carla the first day of summer vacation, and the nice mechanical operator coldly informed me that the number I had dialed was not in service and to please try again.
I’ve heard insanity defined as performing the same task over and over again and expecting a different result. If that’s true, then that was the summer I went insane. I called Carla dozens of times over the next weeks, and all I got for my efforts was much disappointment and more than a little frustration.
The lone bright spot of the whole situation was the fact that the town carnival would be starting in a few weeks. Everyone came to the carnival. It was the social event of the summer. I would see her there, get the whole phone number thing straightened out, and move on together. No worries.
Good news: I did see Carla there. Bad news: she was with another guy.
I remember walking home in utter confusion. Not over the fact that the love of my life was now evidently the love of someone else’s, but over the fact that the whole thing was bothering me so much. My pulse was racing, my head was pounding, and my heart felt…bruised.
No, worse than bruised.
Broken.
Yes. That was it. Carla had broken my heart.
Just as my luck would have it, when school started two months later Carla had the seat right in front of me for English class. Come to find out, I’d had the last four digits of her phone number reversed. She had waited all summer for me to call. When her phone finally rang, it was someone else.
The news did little to make me feel better, so I brooded and sulked until the homecoming dance. Carla decided to wear her dress to school that day, and I couldn’t help but think she did so just to rub it in my face. It infuriated me so much that under the cover of Mrs. Glass’s discussion of Mark Twain, I found a permanent marker and wrote “Motley Crue” on the back of her dress.
Strangely, that did not turn out to be one of my finer moments.
Then again, not many of my freshman moments were fine. It took me a long time to get over Carla, and for a while I swore it would never happen. But it did. I would find out a few years later that God had made someone else for me, and me for her.
And I learned a valuable lesson in the process: God often allows our hearts to break just so He can put them back together bigger. Bigger so they can both give and receive ore love than they could before.
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I saw Carla yesterday. We were both braving the crowds at the local Target. We spoke and laughed and caught one another up on the happenings of our lives. Thankfully, she never mentioned the whole Motley Crue thing.
But all the while I was listening to that little voice in the back of my head. The voice telling me that more important than praying for God to remove our obstacles is praying for Him to help us through them. We can’t avoid hurt in this life. Not just because we’re fallen people in a fallen world, but because nothing helps us grow more.
Keeping on is a virtue, I think. No less than bravery or love. Often our greatest blessings come disguised as our greatest hurts. Hanging in there is a hard thing do to if you try to do it all at once. But running through the darkness is never a good idea. That’s when you trip and fall.
Better to take small steps, I think. One at a time, over and over. On toward the sunrise.
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.
What We Can
March 8, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 12 Comments
My house is a disaster. Complete and utter. And there is no escaping it. The mess is upstairs and down, inside and out. Courtesy of a perfect storm of cold weather, a Saturday afternoon, and four children who think they’re adults.
Two kids can clutter a house on their own. No assistance is required. But when those two kids are joined by two more kids, this is the result. Toys strewn across floors and furniture. Hand and even foot prints on the walls and doors. Not to mention spilled drinks, dropped food, and a mammoth pile of dirty dishes.
This is why I frown upon play dates. They have a tendency to turn my home into Lord of the Flies.
And now, with my wife gone to take my children’s friends back to where they belong, this mess is all mine.
Where to start is always the toughest question to answer when faced with this sort of situation. Everything seems so overwhelming. How am I supposed to prioritize what needs to be done first and what can wait? Am I supposed to begin with the small or the large? Should I start upstairs and work my way down, or downstairs and work my way up?
I don’t know. It all too confusing. And in my confusion I find myself asking one more question:
What can one person do to fix all of this?
“Nothing,” I mutter, trudging into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. And since I’m there, I figure I might as well start with the dishes. So I fill up the dishwasher then transfer what’s left to the sink, where I begin the process of wash/rinse/dry.
Meanwhile, the television in the living room is broadcasting the day’s news. Bailouts and unemployment. Taxes. Inflation, deflation, and stagflation. War. Even a reference to Revelation.
Such is life in this modern age. Struggling not to overcome, but to simply keep up. Trying to hang on to job and family. Trying to still believe in this world, that we can fix things and make a difference.
I hate the news.
Not because it’s so bad or usually slanted one way or the other. No, I hate the news because it never stops. There’s always something new to worry about and something more that needs fixing.
Not unlike my house, I suppose.
Both have been made a mess by children who thought they were adults, and both need a good straightening up and cleaning.
I know this. And I know that as God has seen fit to put me here, now, then He must expect me to do some of that straightening and cleaning. But again come those questions. Where do I start? Big? Small? What should I do now and what should I wait to do later?
I don’t know. It all seems so overwhelming, this mess. It’s not just the news stories of people losing their jobs and homes. It’s the feelings those stories breed. It’s the sense of despair and resignation that so many seem to be feeling now. If we are to pull ourselves out of this, we need more than governments and stimulus packages. We need hope. Hope that not only can things get better, we are the ones to make it that way.
It’s easy sometimes to think we’re powerless to alter the course of things. Easy to think we’re too small and too puny to make things better. But I don’t think we’re so powerless.
I can’t clean my whole house, but I can wash the dishes. I can’t go everywhere and do everything, but I can take care of what’s in front of me and do what I can.
The great secret? If we all do our part, however small it may be, we will find in the end that just because things are tough now doesn’t mean they have to stay that way. And just because we can’t clean up the whole mess doesn’t mean we can’t clean up a little of it.
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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