A Girl Scout’s love
November 11, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 7 Comments
These little notes have been showing up a lot around the house lately, courtesy of my seven-year-old Girl Scout.
I found one waiting for me in the mailbox the other day. Turns out there was no need to perform that small part of my coming-home ritual. My Girl Scout had gathered the bills and junk mail for me. Yesterday when I went into the office to sort the mess of papers on my desk, I instead found four neatly stacked piles with one sign in the middle—A Girl Scout was here! And this evening I found another beside my washed and dried coffee cup that had been placed (handle facing toward me, no less) by the espresso machine.
I like having a Girl Scout in the house.
And I like these notes….
To read the rest of this post (and to find out what those notes really taught me), I’ll invite you over to High Calling Blogs, where I’ve hung my shingle for the day. And thanks to everyone for all the get-well wishes!
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…
___________________
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.
_________________
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.
Love made visible
July 8, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 32 Comments
Love has always intrigued me as one of those divine aspects of life that is both fleeting and permanent, fragile and strong. For thousands of years Poets and philosophers have tried to define it, but to no avail. You can’t speak about love and get it just right. You have to see it in action to really know what it is.
Which is why I can appreciate the spectacle of a fine wedding.
I’m sitting in a church pew on a bright Sunday afternoon looking very James Bondish in a suit and tie. Because what I expect to see in the next fifteen minutes or so is not just a marriage ceremony, not just candles and pretty music and maids all in a row, but true love made visible.
The groom stands at the front of the church, hands folded in front of his cummerbund. He is not nervous, this man. There are no pre-wedding jitters or thoughts of a quick escape through the side door. No, he knows exactly what he’s doing. Not marrying this woman never crossed his mind.
The organist launches into a fevered rendition of “Here Comes the Bride,” and the gathered stand and turn to face the opening doors. A beaming bride and her proud father make their way down the aisle.
Hand in hand. Not just out of love, but out of necessity.
The father passes off his princess to her prince, and the two stand facing one another. I’m sure they have spent many moments over the past weeks staring into each other’s eyes, wrestling in their own way with the prospect of this moment. And though they are surrounded by God and a few hundred friends and family, I can tell that to them no one else exists. The world has been shut out and the door barred.
There is just them and nothing else. For now, anyway.
The preacher begins the standard reading of 1 Corinthians 13. I wonder how many times I’ve heard that scripture read. How many times those words have skidded over the surface of my heart but not really plunged to its core.
Love is patient, love is kind…
They’ve known one another for about four years now, this bride and groom. About a year and a half ago over a nice dinner picnic in the park, he pulled out a diamond ring along with the potato salad. Marry me, he asked. Yes! she answered.
…love does not brag and is not arrogant…
That their love was pure and true was unquestioned. God had crafted them as the only two pieces of a beautiful puzzle. It was cliché, yes, but true—they completed one another.
Both knew they didn’t deserve such happiness. But both praised God daily for allowing them to have it. And now that they had found each other, they would be together always.
…bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things…
When you’re in love, everything seems possible. There are no sudden bends in the road ahead, no ruts to fall into. There are only clear paths and sunny skies. Whatever darkness your life was under is now bathed in sunny skies.
And it’s true. Everything is possible.
Not just the good. The bad, too.
When the bride began suffering headaches a few months ago, the doctors told her it was likely migraines. Don’t worry, they said. Just the stress of planning a wedding. When they continued despite medication, tests were ordered. Don’t worry, they said. Just a precaution.
She worried anyway. Her fiancée did what any man would do for the woman he loves. He comforted her, held her, and told her everything would be okay. After all, their love was meant to be. He busied her with thoughts of caterers and flowers, but he busied himself with that same worry.
A few days later, they both sat numb as the doctor informed her of the cancer eating away her brain.
…endures all things…
After the tears and the confusion and the silence, the two talked. How could this be? How can God let this happen? What can we do now?
They had no answer to those first two questions, but they knew what to do about the third. They would marry. They would celebrate their lives together as long as they could. Their love would endure.
It must. Because as I watch them staring into one another’s eyes, my attention returns to the words of the preacher. He is finishing his scripture reading, and I whisper to myself the last three words he speaks to them:
“Love never fails…”
Yes.
Here this bride and groom stand, in front of God and two hundred people, testifying to those three words. They are true love made manifest. And we are all witnesses.
And now, so are you.
Planted with love
June 29, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 30 Comments
“I’m comin’, Daddy,” my daughter answers.
Around here there are many signs of approaching spring, everything from the return of the robins to the spousal ducks waddling around our house. But nothing quite says spring like tilling the garden and planting what will become, with plenty of sweat and prayers, future groceries.
I like planting a garden. Like getting into the dirt. Especially on a cool Saturday in May when the sun’s out and there’s a gentle breeze blowing off the mountains.
I generally do very well keeping my priorities in line. I know what comes first and what doesn’t. The problem is that very often those priorities shift according to both season and day, which is a fact that certain small members of my family cannot comprehend.
For instance. A Saturday in March will revolve around a trip to Charlottesville or pizza with my folks. But a Saturday in May will revolve around one thing and one thing only: baseball. And when that Saturday afternoon game features the Yankees? Let’s just say I’m focused and leave it at that.
And yet here, now, my focus is not just on the game. It’s on the fact that the game started ten minutes ago and my daughter is taking her sweet time planting the beans.
I stand watching her, swinging the hoe in my hands like a baseball bat and tapping my boot into the dirt in the hopes that my aggravation will drain out of my foot and into the ground. She is crouched in front of me, slowly placing one seed a time into the furrow, then gently pressing down on it with a small finger.
“Honey,” I tell her, “you don’t have to do it that way. You sow beans.”
“How can you sew beans?” she asks.
“Not sow, sew,” I answer, then realize how absurd that sounds. “Like this.” I take a handful of seeds and wave my hand from side to side, spilling them into the dirt.
“I don’t think that’s right, Daddy.”
“Trust me,” I say, glancing at my watch. Fifteen minutes late. I’ve missed Derek Jeter’s first trip to the plate. “You trust me, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then whaddya say we do it that way?”
“No.”
“Why? You said you trusted me.”
“I do, but you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Oh. Okay, then.
“Why should we do it your way?”
She rises, dusts off the knees of her jeans, and looks me in the eye. “You’re not treatin’ the seeds right, Daddy” she says. “You’re just throwin’ them. I’m planting them.”
“But we’re gonna just cover them with dirt,” I explain. “Either way, they’re just planted.”
She shakes her head. “No, Daddy. With your way they’re just planted. With my way, they’re planted with love.”
“With love?”
“I take each bean and tuck it into the dirt, like it’s going to bed. And then I kiss it with my finger. And then I say in my head, ‘Please God, let this seed grow.’ Then it’s planted and I can do the next one.”
“So they have to be planted with love?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says.
“But if they have food and water, they’ll grow anyway.” I have her there. Think so, anyway.
“People grow with food and water, too,” she says. “But don’t they grow better with love?”
My foot stops tapping. I swing the hoe around, transforming it on one motion from a Louisville Slugger to a pole to lean on.
I gaze upon this little girl, bundled against a brisk May wind. I am her father. The provider. The food and water to her life. And she is my daughter, the fragile seed I’m coaxing to grow.
But I want her to do more than just grow. I want her to bloom. And I know she won’t with just food and water. She needs love, too.
The sort of love that comes from ignoring a ballgame and spending some time with my daughter in the garden on a cool Saturday in May.
So we stood there, the two of us, planting each bean one at a time until the sun snuck over the mountains and said goodnight.
June 29, 2009
And the beans? Well, judge for yourself:
Looks like my daughter’s on to something.
I missed that Yankee game, but I’m certain I watched the highlights. I can’t remember who won, though. Can’t remember how many hits Derek Jeter got or how many innings Andy Pettite went. Can’t remember any blown calls by the umps or all the things the announcers said that I disagreed with.
But I will always carry the memory of a father and his daughter planting four rows of beans, all with love. And I will remember that whatever planting I do in life needs to be done with love as well.
Redneck love
June 26, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 33 Comments
I’ve been following them now for five stoplights, all of which have turned from yellow to red just as we approached. Sitting here, staring at the rodeo decals on the back of his battered ’74 Ford.
Hanging from the gun rack in the back window are the two prerequisites every teenaged country boy must display in his truck—an axe handle and a lasso. Neither of which seem to have been touched since he first put them there.
But I suppose he hasn’t had the time to either get into a fight or rope a steer. Not with the young lady beside him. Right beside him. The absence of bucket seats and a console has allowed her to sit practically on top of him. “That’s the problem with those old trucks,” the older men around town say. “No power steering. Takes a fella and his girl both to drive the things.”
The lack of power steering, of course, has nothing to do with it. Love does. Despite all the red lights, I should have been halfway home by now. I just happened to get stuck behind two people who consider a red light as the perfect excuse to kiss.
And boy, do these two know how to kiss.
It’s been the same scenario every time—red light/brake/kiss/breathe/kiss. And then, a few moments after the light turns green, she pulls away and mouths I love you. He stares, not quite believing someone this special, this perfect, could ever say such words to someone like him.
I could pass them. Could blow my horn to get his attention onto the road rather than her. But I do neither. Not because I’m some sort of highway peeping Tom. Because I am witnessing one of the truly great things in this cold, dark, depressing world.
Young redneck love.
It is a marvelous thing, this phenomenon. Not rare, at least around here. But special nonetheless. Here are two people barely out of high school, waging war together against both fate and circumstance. Common sense and reality says that neither are college material. Both have likely moved into the job force, occupying one of the many barely noticed positions in town. Cashier or factory worker, maybe. And whether together or apart, both will face the very future that so many here have been given: lots of worry, lots of struggle, and not a whole lot of rest.
Yet here they sit anyway. Despite all the odds. Because they no doubt feel the odds don’t matter. In fact, nothing matters. Nothing in the world. They are together. Apart they may be down and out, struggling to find their own places in the world. Powerless and lost. But together? Together there isn’t anything they can’t overcome.
Love does this to people.
It convinces them neither that the world is too big or too little, but that the world just doesn’t matter. They have their own world, one full of rainbows and blooming flowers. Dinner at McDonald’s might as well be dinner at Sardi’s. Watching the semi-pro baseball team play on the field behind the fire department might as well be watching the Cubs at Wrigley. To them, there is no best place in the world. The best place in the world is wherever they happen to be at the moment.
The final light turns green. One more kiss/breathe/kiss/I love you later, and he turns his signal on for the next right. I drive past and cast them one more look. She’s sitting even closer now, her head on his shoulder. Riding off into the sunset, just where they belong.
Tonight when my head hits the pillow and I thank God for both today and the promise of some tomorrow, I’ll pause and think of this young couple. I’ll say a prayer that the angels watch over them.
And I’ll say another that they hang on.
(First publishsed as a column for the Staunton News Leader on June 20)
Holding on…
May 29, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 40 Comments
“So,” she asks, “what do you think?”
“I think you should ask your boyfriend,” I say.
“He says he’s not worried. We can still keep in touch.”
“He has a point.”
“But I told him that’s not the same.”
“You have a point, too,” I concede.
Then, she repeats: “So what do you think?”
A year’s worth of accumulated college stuff is packed into her battered Ford outside. It’s been a long year of studying and cramming and writing, enough to make even the most ardent student eager to turn tail and run home for the summer. But she’s stuck around, unwilling to leave because of what she will leave behind.
“It’s not that far, you know,” I offer.
“It’s Utah,” she says. “That’s a long way from Virginia.”
“Could be worse. You could live in California. That would add a few hundred miles.”
I smile, but she doesn’t smile back.
“Why did I have to fall for a guy here?” she asks.
I shrug. “The heart knows what it wants,” I answer. “Rational thought is sometimes left out of the equation.”
“But he’s here, and I’m going to be there.”
“But you’ll be back here in three months,” I say. “That’s not a big deal. And there are plenty of ways to keep in touch until then.”
“But I can’t see him,” she says. “Talking over the phone and emailing isn’t the same as seeing him.”
“Because you’re in love?”
“Yes.”
The nod I give her isn’t a sarcastic one, but an acknowledgment of the truth. They are in love. Truly, madly, deeply in love. Love in its truest sense is not solely the domain of people who have been around for longer than twenty-two years. I see them on campus and I know. Love has a look.
“I don’t want to go,” she says. “I want to stay here. With him.”
“But you have to go, right?” I ask.
I get silence as an affirmative.
“And you want to know if your love for each other can withstand the distance between you?”
More silence.
She sits across from me, chewing on a fingernail. In the background the radio is playing Alan Jackson’s “Small Town Southern Man.” Fitting, I think, because that’s exactly what this city girl from Utah has found. And though I don’t know him well, I know enough to think she’d better hang on to him. Because it’s always been my opinion that those small town Southern men are worth keeping around. My own bias of course, since I’m one of them.
She breaks her silence and says, “So what do you think?”
“I think yes,” I say. “I think if you love him as much as he says he loves you, then distance is irrelevant. I think that wherever either of you are, the other one will always be. Faith is a powerful thing. Hope, too. But love? Nothing stops love. And if it’s as strong as you say it is, then that love will always be something you can stand under whenever the rain starts pouring.”
“We’ll be all right?” she asks.
“As long as the two of you don’t give up on each other.”
She smiles at that. She has hope now. Hope that life and circumstance do not have the last say when it comes to matters of the heart.
That in the end, love always holds on.
Roots
May 2, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 34 Comments
In aisle three
April 9, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 41 Comments
My wife and I will have been married thirteen years this August, and we dated five years prior to that.
Eighteen years is a long time to be with someone. Time enough, even, to go beyond togetherness to an almost oneness. I’m thirty-six, and I’ve lived almost a third of my life with this lady by my side. I couldn’t face a day without her. No doubt about it.
But I didn’t really start loving her until last Thursday. Seven-thirteen in the p.m., to be exact. In the third aisle of the grocery store, next to the cans of green beans, while reading the newest issue of Men’s Health.
Sounds strange, doesn’t it? That I could say such a thing about my angel, my soul mate and the mother of my children seems a little heartless. But it’s true, and I’ll tell you why:
Going to the grocery store is not a man’s idea of a great night out. Ask any of us. They’re intimidating. You walk in and there’s all this stuff. Food and drink and cleaning supplies are all arranged in some sort of satanic version of the Dewey Decimal system that can only be deciphered with a healthy dose of estrogen. Women instinctually know where everything is in a grocery store are. Aside from the beer and magazines, men do not. Grocery stores scare us in a Twilight Zonish sort of way.
And it’s even scarier with my wife.
Because a trip to the store exposes the differences between us. My wife is methodical and deliberate. I am distracted and hurried. She compares prices and clips coupons and has even been known to barter to get the cheapest price possible. I will pay three hundred dollars for a softball bat, use it for a dozen games, and then buy another. Because that’s how I roll.
Her philosophy of shopping closely parallels her philosophy of life: if you take your time and plan accordingly, you can get a lot of what you need, some of what you want, and a little extra of both. I generally take the Navy SEAL approach, whether it be in life or in shopping: hit first, hit hard, and go home.
In other words, my wife and I are opposites. Not in values, maybe. But definitely in personality. And I’ve spent much of the past eighteen years trying to rectify that by convincing her that her way of doing things wasn’t right, so she should be more like me. The logic seemed inescapable. What better way to improve a marriage?
But then we went to the grocery store together and wheeled our shopping cart into the third aisle, where the cans of green beans were stocked. Where we sat for what seemed like an eternity as she looked through her coupons and studied every brand, every size, to find exactly what her family needed.
Normally, I would coax her along. I would start to slowly ease the cart away from her and toward the next item on the list (wherever that was). I would sigh and pace and sigh again, and then I would tell her that we could plant green beans, watch them grow, and pick and snap and cook them in less time than it took for her to make up her mind.
But I didn’t do that. Not that time. I simply reached into the cart for a magazine I was hoping to save for that night, opened it up, and started reading.
I wasn’t going to change my wife. I knew that then. And I also knew that didn’t matter. Because I didn’t marry her for who I wanted her to be, I married her for who she was. And I had the sneaky feeling she had done the same.
I looked at her as she studied her options, flipping a lock of blond hair from her eyes, and I realized, finally, that I loved this woman. Loved her truly. Loved her with a passion and depth that defied words. And it occurred to me that we could stand there in that aisle and look for green beans forever, and it wouldn’t matter.
Just as long as we were together.
For those of you out there who haven’t had the opportunity to hear or see this song, I invite you to do so. It says what all men think about the ladies in their lives but sometimes just can’t find the words to say. I dedicate it now to the woman in my life, and the women in yours…
Happy Easter, everyone. He is risen. Rejoice!
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.
Dear Alex, Part II
February 17, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 8 Comments
(This is the second part of my last post. If you need a little refresher, here it is.)
I walked back to the hotel room and out onto the balcony, where my wife was waiting for me. I explained to her what had happened. For the next two hours, we scoured the crowd below for a glimpse of either Alex or Lauren.
We spent the rest of that day on the beach reading and cooling off in the surf. But Alex was never far removed from my thoughts. Around lunchtime I offered to go get a couple of slices of pizza, which was mostly just a ruse to get back up on the boardwalk and keep looking. I asked the lifeguard there if she knew either of them. Their names did not sound familiar to her. I tried describing them, but that didn’t help. Apparently Virginia Beach was full of muscular men with tattoos and beautiful women who wore sun dresses.
Guilt set in. I could not help but think I had failed him. I couldn’t accept that it was merely by chance that I happened to be standing at that particular spot at that precise time. I had believed for years that God had sent angels into my life from time to time, but that day was the first time I ever thought that maybe God had wanted to use me as an angel for someone else. And I had failed. Miserably.
As the day wore on, I began to piece together what I could have said to Alex. Should have said, really. I wrote it down in fragments at first, bits and pieces of random thoughts and observations. I wrote, then rewrote, then rewrote again, until I had what amounted to a letter. A letter, of course, with no recipient.
But I wrote it anyway with the faith that sometimes you just never know. Maybe, just maybe, Alex is out there somewhere. And if he is, this is for him…
Dear Alex,
I hope that somehow, sometime, this letter reaches you. I know it probably won’t. In fact, I’m writing this more for my comfort than yours. But life can be funny, and sometimes even the most improbable things have a way of surprising us.
You walked away from me this morning before I had the chance to tell you what I was thinking. I can’t blame you. I imagine I was just standing there looking like an idiot. I promise you, I was trying to find the words. But something kept me from saying anything.
I suppose it was for the best. Maybe you didn’t need any words. Not then. When people are hurting, the last thing they want is advice. I don’t think you needed words as much as you needed time—time to fall apart, gather yourself up, and move on. I’m sure you’re not there yet, but I’m also sure you will be.
Don’t feel embarrassed because of the way you handled yourself this morning. Such situations tend to bring out the worst in people. You did, however, ask some serious questions, and you deserve some answers. I’ve seen my share of love, both the good kind and the bad, and though I am neither philosopher nor poet, I’ve been around the block enough to know where everything is.
For thousands of years the wisest and brightest of us have pondered the very questions you now face. What is love? Why does it sometimes hurt so badly? And why, if it hurts so badly, do we always go back for more? Despite their vast knowledge and unparalleled wisdom, they haven’t come up with much in the way of answers. In the end, those people were just as lost as you and I.
No one can say what love is all about. It’s beyond words and description. You can hint, you can analogize, but you won’t get it quite right. I never understood why it had to be that way. Now I think I do. It has something to do with the fact that we’re all describing love, but we can’t seem to agree on exactly what love is.
Are you sure it was love you felt for Lauren? I don’t mean to call you a liar, nor do I want to seem as if I am belittling your feelings for her. But from the few things you said, I had to wonder.
You asked me if I knew how beautiful she was. I did. You were right, she was beautiful. But that was really all you seemed to dwell on, wasn’t it? You never mentioned her kindness, her charm, her intelligence or humor. I cannot believe that the only lovely features she possessed were those on the outside. Maybe I’m over analyzing. But you made it seem as if you weren’t going to miss her nearly as much as you were going to miss her body. And that is exactly the point I’m trying to make. It didn’t sound to me like you were in love, Alex. It sounded like you were in lust. You don’t fall in love through the eyes; you fall in love through the heart.
You no doubt felt something, and that, I suppose, is good enough at first. I remember you telling Lauren that you professed your love to her every day. With words, I believe you said. And that is, of course, a good habit to adopt. But words are not nearly enough.
Love is the most overused word in the English language. We can say we love anything: chocolate or a shirt or a pet or a picture. We love cars, houses, movies, even certain days of the week. Is it any wonder, then, that when we say we love someone, the true meaning of those words becomes lost? If I say I love steak and then say I love my children, what have I really said? Sure, it might simply be a matter of semantics, but that’s why love cannot be fully communicated in words alone.
It took me all of five minutes to tell my first girlfriend that I loved her. It took almost a year after I started dating my wife. Why? Because between those two were many others who showed me that words aren’t enough, and that what I thought was love really wasn’t.
I’ve known a lot of Laurens, Alex. I’ve given my heart away, just like you. And just like you I’ve had it handed right back. I swore each time that I would never allow myself to fall in love again. That vow usually lasted about a month, at which time my heart would meet another’s and the dance would begin anew.
Why would I continually subject myself to this torture? Easy. I wanted someone to love, and I wanted someone to love me back. There’s nothing wrong with that. Most of us couldn’t imagine not having someone to share our lives and our hearts and our dreams with. The hurt that comes from losing someone we love can be unbearable. But the hurt that comes from closing ourselves off from the world is much worse. Pain isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Numbness is.
We are meant to love and to share, and if we do not allow ourselves the opportunity to do so, we become less than we should. Any time not spent on love is time that is wasted. Why? Because the more we are able to love, the more we are able to do. We can lose anything else in life—hope, desire, even faith—but when we lose our love, that is when we truly die.
I don’t think the love you had for Lauren was the love you are looking for. Your feelings for her were like the waves we watched crashing onto the shore. It was a love of action, of ups and downs, of surging forth and falling back, here one moment and gone the next. Such love is wonderful and exhilarating, but it is also frail and passing. The love that matters is like the waters we saw farther out—calm and deep and abiding. Eternal. That is the love of wonder.
Even though you might feel like you’re all alone in the world right now, you aren’t. A broken heart is like the common cold. We all know there isn’t a cure, we all know someone who’s suffered through one, and we all know that despite whatever precautions we take, sooner or later we’ll have to suffer through one too.
We are the only creatures who sometimes hurt our own loved ones for no other reason than just because we feel like it. Falling in love comes with a price. It means fully giving all of yourself, warts and scars and all. That’s the only way it can be. If it isn’t head over heels, it isn’t enough. And we give all of this to someone who is bound to one day at least disappoint us and at worst make us wonder if we can ever love the same again.
Is it, then, worth all the risk?
Every time.
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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