Saying no
March 9, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 15 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
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-eight 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.
Difficult losses
January 31, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 20 Comments
image courtesy of gamescrafters.berkeley.edu
We Coffeys are a competitive bunch. Life most character traits, that particular one has both its plusses and minuses. But by and large, our competitiveness has served us well. We are not content to be merely good at something. We have to be the best. And of course, in order to be the best, you first have to beat the best.
Which I suppose is why my son kept challenging me to games of Connect Four. You know the game, right? Big yellow rectangle on a pair of blue plastic stilts. One person has black checkers, the other red, and the winner is the first to get four of his or her colors in a row. Santa brought it for Christmas. Mostly because I played it all the time when I was a kid.
My son took to the game just as I did in my once-upon-a-time. We played a game under the tree on Christmas night, then again the night after, and then every night since. Until tonight, anyway. But I’ll get to that.
The thing about playing games with your kids is that you wonder when and if you should let them win. I’ve let my kids beat me at wrestling and boxing and Scrabble and chess. Not often, mind you, but often enough. It’s important they learn graciousness. Both when they win and when they lose. But I never let my son beat me at Connect Four. Some things needs to be a challenge. And to be honest, I like my kids to think I’m a genius at something for now. I know it won’t always be like that.
So we played. He tried, I toyed. He lost, I won.
Until last night.
My son beat me. Snuck in a backdoor diagonal of four red checkers. I never saw it. And what’s worse—what’s maybe worst of all—is that by that point I really was trying to beat him. He had homework to do, and so did I. I’d used my last move to set up my third black piece in a row, hidden from his sight on the opposite side of the board. It was a brilliant move. His was more so.
He dropped in his fourth checker and bulged his eyes.
I bulged mine.
“I win!” he shouted. Then he jumped up and crawled around to my side of the board just to make sure. “I win!”
There had to be some mistake. He’d miscounted. There were three checkers, not four. Or four, but not in a row. Something. Anything.
But. No.
“You win,” I whispered.
He danced. He screamed. He told his mother and sister. He even took a picture of it.
I was happy for him. And not. Like I said, I’m competitive. I don’t like to lose, especially when I’m trying to win and ESPECIALLY when I’m trying to impress my son with my staggering strategic intellect. That’s bad, I guess. But honest. At least I was a gracious loser. I allowed him his celebration. All three hours of it.
He was still awake when I went to bed, though barely. The excitement had worn off by then, leaving behind a sheen of quiet reflection on his face. I tucked his blankets and kissed him on the forehead, then headed for the hallway.
“Dad?” he asked.
“Yeah, bud?”
“I’m sorry I beat you.”
I smiled and told him not to be, that he’d won fair and square and should be proud because I was proud. The next morning, he said he hadn’t slept well. Neither did I.
I waited tonight for him to suggest another game. He didn’t. The box still sits untouched in the basket behind the recliner. I supposed it will be untouched for a while.
I suppose every child must inevitably arrive at that moment when he realizes his father is not the perfect man he’s always believed. That he in fact makes mistakes and misses things. That he loses. That he is a fallible, fallen person. It is a difficult moment, but a necessary one.
Both for the parent and the child.
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!
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.
In praise of fathers
June 19, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 41 Comments
Yes, the Bible covers just about all we need in the way of raising children. Just about, though. But just as a lot of things were left out of the Bible that in my opinion really shouldn’t have been (what made Jesus laugh? For some reason, I really want to know that), there are a lot of things missing on how to be a dad.
Like what to do when your three-year-old daughter accidently locks herself in the bathroom and can’t figure out how to unlock the door (what I did: pull a Jack Bauer and kick the door in. Result: louder crying). Or what to do when your four-year-old son manages to shove his peanut butter and banana sandwich into the DVD player just because that’s not where it goes (what I did: “What were you thinking?” Result: “I dunno.”).
I wish the Bible was clearer on those sorts of things. I need the guidance. When it comes to fatherhood, I resemble more a turtle on its back than Ward Cleaver. Every father is like this.
For some reason the women tend to outnumber the men around here, at least as far as the comments go. I’m not really sure why that is, but I’m not going to think about it now. Now, I’m going to use that to my own advantage.
I’m not all that different than any other man, with maybe the only difference being I write down what I think rather than keeping it all inside. So on this Father’s Day weekend, I’m going to tell you what I’m thinking, and I’m going to trust that you’ll know either your father or the father of your children is feeling the same way, even if they don’t always say it.
To the daughters out there:
Yes, we’re protective. And because of that, we’re hard on you. And as much as I would like to say that we’ll change that, I can’t. We won’t. We’ll always subliminally threaten your dates, we’ll always secretly distrust your husbands, and we’ll always think that no man is worthy of your love. We are or were hard on you in high school because we remembered well what we thought about as teenagers and how often we thought about it. We’re guys, and we know guys. That’s why we won’t change. You’re just going to have to deal with it.
We know early on that the day will come when you’ll give your heart to someone else. That Daddy will at some point vacate the pole position in your heart. We know it. It kills us anyway. Because no matter how old you are, in our minds you’re still in pigtails running to greet us at the door when we get home from work.
To the sons:
We’re harder on you, no doubt about it. We expect more, demand more, and need more. There is nothing in the world more difficult than raising a boy to be a man, if only because our culture now demands the opposite. There are a lot of people who’d rather boys remain boys, who believe that the strong, silent types are archaic and hurtful. They’re not. They’re needed. This world needs more men, men who will both love and fight, bend to God but never man, and dedicate their lives to standing for something bigger than themselves. Our country is defined not by its politicians or schools, not by opinions, but by the sort of men who walk its streets.
And to the wives of our children:
We don’t always show it, don’t always act it, but we take being the father of your children with the utmost seriousness. We work hard to provide for you, enduring things at our jobs that you cannot know because we don’t want to bother you with it. Yes, we know we should. But we also know that home is our haven, the one place where we can leave the world we hate for the world we love.
We’re quiet sometimes around our children. Withdrawn. We don’t mean to be. It’s just that they have managed to conjure within us a love we thought impossible, one that has taken us utterly by surprise. It’s a breathtaking love, what we feel for our children. And also frightening. Because we know what the world is like, we know what shadows lurk, and we know we are the ones responsible for keeping those shadows at bay.
Deep down, whether you know it or not, all we want is to be your knight. The one who protects you and our children, the one you feel safe with. All we do in life revolves around that one thought.
We want to be needed.
To be your hero.
Ever forward
May 25, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 43 Comments
“You know that brush is wet, right?” my wife asks.
I don’t. Not till then. I smear the blue against my jeans, thinking that if I had bought them at the store like that, it would have set me back about a hundred dollars.
“Is he sure he wants to do this?” I ask.
“He said he did,” she answers.
“Do you believe him?”
She pauses then says, “I don’t want to.”
“Me neither,” I say, “but it’s his room, right?”
Another pause. Then: “Right.”
We had painted the Winnie the Pooh mural when our daughter was born, and she had slept beneath it for two years until she had to move out to make room for our son. But at five, he thinks Winnie the Pooh is for kids. And he is no longer a kid. My task today is to erase it. To paint over it and cover it up with pictures of Derek Jeter and Lou Gehrig.
I do not want to do this.
So this morning I painted the trim, the doors, and the other three walls, trying to postpone the inevitable. But with everything else done, the inevitable is here.
It’s just a stupid wall, I tell myself. But it’s not, and I know that. This is a symbol. A memory of the fear and joy of becoming a parent for the first time.
You battle the passage of time with your children. You fight to keep them small and innocent and on your lap. And even if you know they will soon be big and experienced and on their own, you fight anyway.
Painting over this feels like surrender. And I’m not quite ready to wave the white flag.
My eyes gaze around his room, and I catch myself wondering how much longer my son will be in it. He’ll start kindergarten next year. No doubt it’ll seem as if he’ll start high school the year after that, graduate from college the year after that, and the year after that I’ll be holding my grandchildren.
Somewhere in between, my son will realize something. He’ll find the truth about his old man. He’ll discover that I’m really not the superhero cowboy he thinks I am. That I might be tough on the outside, but I’m pretty soft on the inside. That I can’t fix everything, don’t know anything, and fret over a lot more than I let on.
He’ll have his own life with his own family. I’ll have to let him go so he can find his own way.
Such is the constant churning of life, ever forward and never backward. And though we plant our shoulders to the gears of our days and beg them to stop, they roll on anyway.
But just as I am ready to surrender after all, I spot something on my son’s dresser that makes me smile. Sitting there beside his Lightning McQueen lamp is my father’s wallet, left by him just a few hours ago. My normally steady hand seems to disappear whenever I’m painting trim, so I had called him for a little help.
And he answered. Just like he always has.
My thirty-seventh birthday is a little more than a month away. A lot has changed in my life since I was my son’s age. A lot hasn’t, too.
Still, after all these years, my father is there for me. There to help me fix the truck or cut some wood or tend the garden. There for advice or wisdom or to shoot the breeze.
Just…there.
The fact that I have my own life and my own family, the fact that I’ve found my own way, hasn’t changed everything. Time doesn’t always break our bonds. Sometimes it grows them deeper.
I move from my son’s bed to the tray of paint next to the wall, pick up the roller, and begin. Gone is the leafy tree, pouty Eeyore, Piglet, and Tigger. Gone is Christopher Robin and the unknown book he’s entertained his friends with for over seven years. And then, finally, Pooh is gone, too.
And that’s okay. Because as I paint I have in my mind a far-away picture of another man’s house and another child’s dresser. And I think of that man sitting upon the edge of that child’s bed, staring at my wallet.
On the porch
May 17, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 36 Comments
That’s why when I passed Davey Robinson’s house and observed the angle and the waggle of his wave, I stopped. The invite was there, even if the words weren’t.
I climbed onto Davey’s porch and saw the oil and the rags next to his shotgun. Not an uncommon sight in these parts. We take the second amendment with the utmost seriousness. When I asked what he was doing, Davey simply said, “It’s gettin’ dark.”
Davey’s wife poked her head out of the screen door just then. “Hey, Billy,” she said.
“Afternoon Rachel,” I answered.
She looked at her husband. “Davey, this is the last time I’m going to tell you. Put that stuff away.”
“Almost done,” Davey told her.
“Well, hurry up. Caitlyn’s almost ready.”
“What’s Caitlyn up to?” I asked them.
Davey said nothing. Rachel, however, did: “It’s prom night.”
I looked at Davey and smiled. “You’re actually cleaning your gun for Caitlyn’s prom?”
“It’s dirty,” he answered. “I’d be cleanin’ it no matter what Caitlyn’s doin’.”
Uh-huh.
“Honey, please,” Rachel said. “Put that stuff away. If Caitlyn sees you, she’ll go bonkers.”
“Gettin’ dark,” Davey said again.
Rachel rolled her eyes and went back inside, leaving the two of us alone on the porch.
“Caitlyn’s going to prom, huh?” I asked. “Seems like just a few months ago she was still running around here in pigtails.”
“Don’t I know it,” Davey said, running a cloth through the barrel. “I enjoyed every minute of it, too. Guess growin’ up was bound to happen sooner or later, though. This prom thing has been goin’ through her mind for months. Wasn’t much I could do about it.”
“Who’s her date?”
“Guy named Kevin. She’s had him over a few times. Seems like a good enough kid.”
“If he’s a good enough kid,” I said, “then why are you out here sittin’ on the porch with your shotgun? I’m sure they’ll be fine.”
Davey paused with his rag and said, “Fine, huh? Tell me, what sorts of stuff were you thinking about all the time when you were sixteen?”
I thought about that, then said, “Maybe you’d better load that thing.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Caitlyn came onto the porch just then. Her blue dress shimmered in the sunlight, and Rachel had done her hair up into a bun. I understood then why Davey was so nervous. Caitlyn had always been a pretty girl, but right then she looked almost stunning.
“Hi, Billy,” she said.
“Hey, Caitlyn,” I managed.
“How do I look?”
I had to be delicate here. I couldn’t well gush and say too much, not with her father sitting beside me with a shotgun in his lap. But if I said too little, Davey might shoot me anyway.
“You’re easy on the eyes, Miss Caitlyn,” I said. Davey nodded out of the corner of my eyes, and I let out a happy sigh.
“Daddy,” she said, “what in the world are you doin’?”
“Gettin’ dark,” he said.
“I don’t know what that means,” Caitlyn told him, “but please put that thing down before Kevin gets here. For me, Daddy.”
Kevin pulled up in his parents’ car a few minutes later. He was nervous when he saw Davey and me on the porch. He was more nervous when he saw Caitlyn. By the time the two of them had posed for a dozen pictures for Rachel and left, Kevin had nearly sweat through his tux.
Davey and I watched as they pulled away.
“You know,” he said, “I used to come out here on this porch every evening and call that youngin’ in. ‘Gettin’ dark!’ I’d tell her. Now here she is, going out in that dark. And I can’t call her in. Not anymore. She’s gettin’ older. Becoming a woman.”
“Guess so,” I said.
“But I know this,” he said. “She’ll always be my little girl. And I’ll always be waitin’ here on the porch until she comes home.”
The Dinner
May 12, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 39 Comments
It is also a favorite for teenagers on their first date, like the couple who was seated in the booth beside ours last week. Bad for them, maybe, but good for us. It’s not often that regular folks like my wife and I get both a dinner and a movie at the same time.
Sixteenish boy and very nervous, trying in vain to impress his classy date and not doing very well at it:
“Sit me first,” she said.
“Okay,” he answered.
“Do I look nice?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me I look nice.”
“You look nice.”
“Mean it.”
“That’ll do,” she says. (He breaths a sigh of relief. This is much harder than he thought it would be.) “Now, I order first, then you. Don’t order for me, though. Some ladies like that. I don’t. Did you bring enough money to pay for my food?”
Silence. Then his confession: “I thought you’d pay for your own.”
“No,” came the exasperated answer. “NO. You pay. Always.”
“Okay.”
“Sit up straight. Don’t fidget. Look me in the eyes. Smile.”
“Okay.”
“You’re going to pray, right?” his date asked.
“Um. I dunno. Should I?”
“You’d better,”
And on it went.
From the small beads of sweat on his forehead, plenty hard. His date was demanding. She offered little in the way of praise and much in the way of criticism. He was confused, frightened, and unsure of himself. All because of her. Why had he agreed to take her out in the first place? he wondered. And even asked. But she merely smiled and winked and said it was the only way he’d ever be allowed to take anyone else out ever.
He knew she was right, and so did I. She had all the power, you see. She’d had it for about sixteen years now.
Because his date, this unimpressed, hard, stringent lady, was his mother.
I manage to get the backstory when her son excused himself to the bathroom. Presumably to flush himself down the toilet, which also happened to be right where his evening is headed.
He’s a good boy, according to his mother. Always has been. And she wanted to keep him that way, too. But he’d gotten to that age when children began to feel a little too sure of themselves. Their world brightened and grews bigger, and they were under the impression that they were growing brighter and bigger right along with it. It was easy to get muddled and begin thinking they were in charge. That it was all about them.
So, mother and father decided that before they would allow their son to start dating, he would do a trial run with mom. It’s important that he knows how to treat a lady, she said. And it’s important to know how to spot one, too.
“Understand?” she asked.
Yes.
We pass onto our children what we consider to be the necessities of crafting a good life—the attributes of honesty and hard work, the values of education and faith. But too often what’s left out is the most basic necessity of them all: how to behave when mom and dad aren’t around.
Too many of us mourn the fact that today’s younger generation is so over-the-top rude. Too few of us take the time to consider the fact that much of the fault is our own. It was nice to see a parent put forth just as much effort to ensure her child got into the right life than she would to ensure her child got into the right college.
Education can get you far in life. Good manners can get you further.
Still, I couldn’t help but express my empathy for the young man.
“This has to be the longest night of his life,” I said.
“Oh, don’t feel sorry for him,” she smiled. “Feel sorry for his sister. She’s fifteen, and her first date is next year. With her father.”
In A Gray World
May 8, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 33 Comments
I’m sitting in bed on a Tuesday night that has just become a Wednesday morning, watching reruns of M*A*S*H while sipping a strong cup of coffee. My family is tucked safely into the arms of slumber, but there will be little if any sleep for me tonight.
My daughter is sick.
Stomach ache, fever and all general malaise. Usually an inconvenience for parents of small children, but a big deal to us. Our daughter is diabetic, and anything as small as a cold can either send her blood sugar through the roof or through the floor.
The presence of a fever requires a glucose check every two hours, so to stay awake I have a stack of papers on the nightstand beside me. Hidden among the local and national news is an article from ABC News that I printed off the internet. “Researchers Use Embryonic Stem Cells to Treat Diabetes,” it says.
On March 9, President Obama signed a bill that increased government funding for embryonic stem cells, which can morph into any cell and could theoretically cure a number of diseases and handicaps from Alzheimer’s to paralysis. And diabetes.
These cells are considered by many a potential gold mine for medical advancements. They could both save millions of lives and give life back to millions.
And to this father of this child, it would be an answer to countless prayers.
Of all the traits my wife displays in her life, the one I try to emulate and make my own is what she calls the black and the white. To her, life in this world is either/or. There is no middle ground and no tightrope to walk. Either you do good, or you do evil. Either you do right, or you do wrong. You either stand with the angels, or you don’t.
It’s a way of life that has served her well over the years. If I would have followed her lead earlier, my life would be missing many of the regrets I carry every day. But as I follow her lead now, I’m working on it. Trying.
For instance: my faith states that using embryonic stem cells, even for noble purposes, is wrong. To me and millions of others, these cells are life. And to manipulate them in any way cheapens that life, which is something that happens in our society enough as it is. One of the biggest reasons why there is so much violence and hate in this world stems from the fact we no longer honor life. That it is no longer considered holy and sacred.
This is what I believe.
And yet here we are, so technologically advanced that a few tiny cells could conceivably cure my daughter’s disease. Could give her the new life that her old one was, one without finger pricks and insulin shots and keytones and carb counting.
Do you know what it’s like for your child to look at you through tears and say, “I just want to go to heaven with Jesus, Daddy, because then I won’t feel so bad anymore?”
I do. And it hurts.
Faith is supposed to take care of that kind of hurt. It’s supposed to prop you up when you feel you are about to stumble. It is supposed to be your constant. Your First.
It is exactly that for me and my life, with perhaps the one exception of the little girl in the room next to mine. Trying to live by black and white is a noble task, I think. It’s good to know where you stand and what you stand for. But it’s also a hard thing. It’s hard to live by black and white in a world clouded by gray.
Because even if I feel that what our president has done in furthering embryonic stem cell research is wrong, a part of me now has hope. And I just don’t know what that says about me.
Because the day may come when I will be forced to answer this question:
If this can cure my daughter’s diabetes, will I withhold it from her because of my faith?
Or will I grant it to her because of my love?
(this post was published as a column in the Staunton News Leader on 5/8/09)
The Second Thing God Wants To Hear
May 4, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 39 Comments
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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