Compassion in the Cold
June 14, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 34 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
I remember standing at an overlook in the mountains on a December night in 2006. I remember it was cold. Very cold. And though it made sense for me just to get back into the truck and turn the heat on, I couldn’t. I had to be outside with the stars and the wind. What I had to do couldn’t be done from inside the truck.
So I went ahead and built the fire. Walked down into the woods, found some rocks, dug a fire pit, and gathered kindling. I got the fire going despite the wind and tossed a few bigger sticks onto the pile. Cedar, I remember. I always liked the smell of burning cedar. And then I leaned back and half smiled and half didn’t, because it was all ready whether I wanted it to be or not.
I reached into my bag and pulled out a thick wad of paper bound by two rubber bands. I turned it over in my hands, watching the firelight dance against it.
Now, I thought…now.
But nothing happened. Whether it was the cold or God or the fabled spirits of the mountain, something had severed the connection between my head and my hands.
Failure seemed too bitter a word, so I decided it was all about letting go. About knowing how to as much as when to. The how was easy. I would burn it. That was the first thought that came to mind a few days before when I got the latest reply. The when, though? Not so easy. I thought for sure it would be that night, but I was having my doubts.
When you spend ten years of your life hanging onto a dream, it takes a lot out of you. You learn to get by on things like faith and hope and tenacity. You try to accustom yourself to blocking out the army of voices both within and without that scream you have no idea what you’re doing and therefore you shouldn’t even bother pretending anymore. It takes strength to endure more than it does talent.
I had the strength. The faith, too. Even had the hope and the tenacity. But something was still missing, and it was a big something. Something that seemed important enough that missing it brought me there in the mountains sitting in front of a fire, ready to incinerate five years of my life.
I was going to burn my manuscript. Release it into the ether once and more all and let its memory float away. I wanted to be done with my dream. I wanted to let go of it so it would let go of me.
I tried once more—
…now—
but I couldn’t, so I simply sat there in the cold and watched the flames dance.
This was not about letting go after all, I decided. No, it really was about failure.
I had pushed myself. Worked and tried and refused to give up, and still after all of that I had nothing to show for my life. It wasn’t that I was too weak to hang on or even too strong to let go. It was that I was stuck in the middle, wavering. A tough place to be. Maybe the toughest. But looking back I think that’s a place we all need to find ourselves at some point, if only so we can find out if our dreams are worthy of the people God calls us to be.
I was thinking about that night one day last week while I was looking over the Fall 2010-Winter 2011 catalog for my publisher, FaithWords. Not only was it pretty darn exciting to see my book on page nine, it was even more so to see they’ve used the cover art for Snow Day as the cover for the catalog. If you’d like, you can see it here.
My point?
My point is that in the end, your dreams are all on you. That means having the faith to see them through.
Having the hope to keep believing.
And it means forgiving yourself when you fail.
The compassion we’re called to show others is the very compassion we’re called to show ourselves. That alone is a source of divine strength.
That alone can move mountains.
I’m proof of that.
This post is part of the blog carnival on Compassion, hosted by Bridget Chumbley. To read more, please visit her site.
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.
The One (Family Favorites Week, Part II)
April 14, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 30 Comments
I first wrote this for my children, who had grown tired of the usual fare of bedtime stories involving knights and princesses in distress. “Tell us a real story,” they said.
So here it is. Written not just for them, but for you, too. And all I ask in return is that after your bedtime prayers tonight, you think about this and sleep well…
Dyin’ Right
March 31, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 35 Comments
Four days ago:
Eleanor’s Story
March 24, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 24 Comments
When you see a UPS man, you get out of his way. This is for your own safety. UPS men (and women, of course) are in a hurry. They have to be. They have a truck full of packages that must be delivered before their day can be considered done. No exceptions.
So when on a morning walk I spotted a UPS man delivering a package to a lady in the neighborhood, and when I saw him actually stop and talk to said lady in a conversation, I paid attention.
Older woman, smartly dressed. She smiled and laughed and touched his arm in a motherly sort of way, and he nodded and smiled and tipped his cap as he left.
Funny thing about that house: I didn’t recall ever noticing it. Our neighborhood, though rural and against the mountain, is still a pretty big place. Very likely a few hundred houses in all. I supposed that with so many homes, misplacing one or two in my memory was bound to happen.
My kids did not trick-or-treat there. I was sure of that. And I was equally sure there were no Christmas decorations there last December. I would remember.
I passed by just as the UPS man paused at his truck to type something into his electronic clipboard.
“How ya doin’?” I called.
“Good,” he answered. “You?”
“Good. Busy today?”
He laughed. “Always busy, my man. Especially here.”
“Oh yeah?”“Oh yeah. I’m here every day.”
So began a rather lengthy conversation about the unseen woman in the unseen house. Eleanor, whom I had neither met nor seen in all my years in the neighborhood. Which was, according to the UPS man, a forgivable offense. No one else had really met or seen her either.
She was alone. No family. No children. She spent her life inside for the most part, venturing out for groceries rarely and only when the needs outweighed the trip. She wasn’t a recluse, he said. She was just shy and didn’t want to be a bother.
“Nothing wrong with that, right?” he asked.
“Not a thing.”
He turned and stared at the house. I did likewise. A corner of the living room curtain waved, as if someone was peeking out.
“But she’s lonely. Real lonely. I drop off something for her most every day. She gets these catalogs in the mail, see. Every catalog you can think of. She’ll call and order stuff all day long.”
“Guess everyone needs a hobby,” I offered.
“Ain’t a hobby,” he said. “Like I said, she’s lonely. She orders stuff just to have someone to talk to. Knows all those operators by name, mostly. Talks about ‘em like they’re her family. Which I guess they kinda are.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Seriously. Told me so herself. I guess they don’t mind. They get her money, she gets some company. She started talking to me because I always delivered the stuff. I always hustle on my other stops because I know she’ll want to sit and talk a while.”
The curtain moved again.
“Gotta go, my man. Take it easy, huh?”
“Yeah,” I answered, still looking at the house. “You, too.”
He left. I stood. Staring at the house.
The curtain moved again.
I could imagine Eleanor in her living room, scared to death and wondering what the strange man by the driveway was doing. She probably had the phone in her hand, ready to call for help. Not 911, though. Given what I’d learned, it was more likely Pottery Barn.
I always considered the forgotten among us to be confined to some faraway city street, huddled beneath park benches or in soup kitchens. That many resided here in my peaceful town was unthinkable. That one resided just down the road from me was heartbreaking.
I walked up the driveway and rang her doorbell. The curtain moved again. There was silence.
Then the door opened.
***
Eleanor passed on recently. I can say that we had many a good visit with one another. I can also say, however, that loneliness is one of those things that doesn’t disappear at once. It takes time. Time she didn’t have.
If I have one consolation, it’s that I’ve learned the company she lacked in this life was found in the next.
Because according to the nurses at the hospital, her last words were these:“I see angels everywhere.”
Pick Your Cause
February 26, 2009 by Billy Coffey · Leave a Comment
The college where I work is a great place filled with great people. The campus is beautiful, the professors excellent, and the staff both accommodating and friendly.
But it is still a college. And as it is such, my work environment harbors the sort of modern, liberal predilections that a more traditional person like me can’t seem to understand sometimes. Some days, many days, I am both generally exasperated and specifically confused by what I see.
A few weeks ago the college held what is annually billed as Pick Your Cause Week. Each day brought exhibits, lectures, and a wealth of information concerning a particular organization or subject. This year children of alcoholics, muscular dystrophy, women’s cancers, domestic violence, and the poor were chosen.
Though there are some things here at work that I find questionable and a few I find just plain strange, I like this. I like it a lot. We should all have a Pick Your Cause Week.
I find it sadly ironic that in this age of computers and satellite television, when the smallest event that happens in the smallest corner of the smallest country on the other side of the world can be instantly beamed right into our living rooms, we’ve really never been so separated from one another.
The media blitzes us with a constant barrage of suffering and need. We see footage of disaster and crime and hear stories of loss and despair. And though we try every day to nourish whatever hope we have and coax it to grow, there is the daily reminder that our world seems to be teetering on the edge of a very dark abyss and there is nothing that can pull it back onto solid ground.
It all can be just a little too much to bear. For me, anyway.
So I do what a good Christian should. I pray. But I’ve found that I often use prayer as an excuse, a poor example of doing something. As much as I pray for this world and all the people in it, I find that I do little else about it. And while those prayers are vital, they shouldn’t be the final solution. Asking God to help the world and asking Him to equip me to help the world are two different things. I don’t often get that.
I have a tendency to shrink the world. Shrink it so its dimensions extend no further than the small part I happen to occupy. Shrink it to only that which affects me. My world is my family and my town and my work. Whatever else that happens outside of my world that is sad and regrettable and unfortunate affects me emotionally. But it is also none of my business. I try to ignore it. I don’t hope it will go away because I don’t think it ever will, I just try to stay out of its way and hope it doesn’t find me or the ones I care about.
All of that is of course the silliest thing any Christian should ever believe, and yet I do. And so do a lot of us. We all at some point fall for the great lie that there is nothing we can do about the state of things, and in doing so we risk developing a mindset that is perhaps as unchristian as we can get:
We don’t care what happens so long as it doesn’t happen to us.
That is why a Cause is so important. We are all called to spend our time and energy toward something that will continue on long after we leave this world. It is our purpose, our mission. No matter who we are or what we do or where our talents lie, we are all here for the same reason: to make things better.
To heal the wounded. Clothe the naked. Feed the poor. To offer help to the helpless and hope to the hopeless.
And the light of God to the darkness.
Life’s two sides
February 3, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 23 Comments
Ever have one of those days? The ones when nothing seems to go right, when you start to question the very value of your existence and wonder if there is actually a point to anything?
I had one of those days yesterday.
Confusion is often our constant companion. Our eyesight and the extent of our understanding reach no further than the present moment. It’s hard to see how some things could ever possibly work out for the good. Rather than nice and neat, our lives are tangled and messy. Full of knots.
These were the things preying on my mind when I arrived home this afternoon and found my wife cross stitching.
Cross stitching is an art, I think. No less than painting or composing a poem, it demands much in the way of effort and time, of undoing and redoing. Yet my wife finds it relaxing in a meditative sort of way. The fruits of her labor adorn the walls of our hallway, where past creations have been framed and displayed for the world to see.
She sat patiently, running her needle and thread up and over and down, as I vented the constant frustration that is my life. Then she got up, kissed me on the cheek, and suggested that maybe a cup of coffee was in order.
My depression glued me to the couch. Then I noticed the cross stitch she had sat on the chair.
A teaching career and two children had limited the amount of time my wife could devote to her hobby. It looked to me as if she had lost her touch. Really, really lost it.
Thread lines were arranged in a hodgepodge of clusters and colors that zigged and zagged with no discernible pattern. Knots of various sizes dotted a maze of tangles that seemed to have neither a beginning nor an end. This was a mess. A catastrophe. And just about the ugliest thing I had ever seen in my life.
But just when I began to seriously question my wife’s mental stability, I noticed something. She had placed the cross stitch face down. I was looking at the wrong side.
I took the material in my hand and turned it over. Sure enough, the colors there were blended to form one seamless picture. No tangles. No knots. Just perfect.
That’s when I understood.
There were two sides to life. There was a side we faced, a side that on the surface appeared tangled and confused, where thick knots dotted the landscape and colors zigged and zagged with no apparent purpose.
But beneath that jumbled surface, beyond the reach of my eyes, there was another side. The side God sees. Where the tangles were transformed into intricate designs of perfection and colors seamlessly interacted and flowed. Where there was no confusion, no zig or zag, but a complete, flawless piece of art.
We all pray for God to undo our knots. What rational person wouldn’t? But as I turned the cross stitch over and back and over again, I realized that the knots in my life served a purpose I had never considered. They had to be there. Otherwise, a color might have been gone or a pattern may have been incomplete. The tapestry of my life would be missing something valuable. A knot wasn’t just a knot, whether it was in a cross stitch or a life. It was simply where one part of the picture ended so another could begin.
I couldn’t see how it all fit together because on my side and from my vantage point it didn’t. But from God’s vantage point, everything was coming along just fine. And who was I to argue, really? I was merely the material. God was the Weaver. Does the canvas tell the artist how to create? The fabric doesn’t say to the weaver, “Please, no more knots. No more tangles. It will hurt too much. I will look too ugly.”
Besides, when it was all finished, when God’s plan for me was fulfilled and my purpose in life completed, which side of the picture would He frame for the world to see?
Hugging Purpose
February 1, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 23 Comments
(This piece was first published as a column in the Staunton, Virginia News Leader)
My daughter wants to be a writer. Also a Sunday School teacher, a regular teacher, an artist, and a geologist. The latter come and go depending upon the whims of her six-year-old mind. The former, though, has been a constant in her young life. One she has become more passionate about in the last couple of years.
I asked her one morning what exactly she wanted to be a writer of. Fiction? Nonfiction? Poetry? Would she write books or newspaper articles? Would they be secular or religious? The possibilities are many, I told her. Best to narrow things down a bit, even this early in the game.
She shrugged her answer and munched another bite of Cheerios. “Books, I guess,” she said.
“What kind of books?”
“Books for diabetic kids.”
I raised an eyebrow. My daughter continued munching. Then, feeling as though further clarification was needed, said, “God wants me to write books to help kids with diabetes. He told me.”
“He did?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Well,” she explained, “He didn’t tell me tell me. But why else would He have let me get diabetes if He didn’t want me to help kids who had diabetes?”
I managed a weak nod. Such is the faith of children, faith that sees clearly what adulthood often fogs.
My daughter was diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes two years ago. Up until that time, I had never truly doubted God. Doubted myself? Yes. Humanity as a whole? Absolutely. But never God. Because He had always been there, always kept things right in my life, and always protected my family.
But when you’re sitting at the end of a hospital bed watching your sick child struggle to find sleep against the beeps of machines and the IV tubes running into her tiny body, you doubt God. You doubt Him a lot.
You wonder how He could allow such a thing to happen to someone so undeserving. How any sort of purpose or meaning could possibly be found in this happening. And you wonder if maybe, just maybe, all those people who say God is figment of our primeval imagination are right. Because if there was a God and if that God really loved us, then he wouldn’t let children suffer like this.
That’s what you think. What I thought, anyway. And though I still went to church and read my Bible and prayed, those thoughts just wouldn’t go away.
The faith that I held in God, faith that had been built and stripped and built better over thirty-six years, was crumbling. But my daughter’s faith, all two years of it, was growing stronger. The anger I held toward God paled in comparison to the love she continued to show towards Him. At nights when I would lie motionless in bed, praying but not, I could still hear her in the next room speaking to God as if He were sitting attentively on the edge of her bed.
“Bless Mommy and Daddy and thanks for the macaroni and cheese,” she would say. Thanks and thanks and more thanks. Never asking, never wanting, because in her mind she had all she needed, diabetes or not.
I pushed God away. She hugged Him closer.
We all have a why in life. Why did this happen? Why does it have to be this way? We all have questions we want answered. It’s just that some want to know because they want an excuse, and others want to know so they can do something. I wanted reasons. She wanted purpose. I suppose that’s why I never got my answer, but she did.
God wants her to write. He wants her to give Him the bad things that have happened and watch as He turns them to good. He doesn’t want her to give up, doesn’t want her to doubt. He wants her to help. Because in the end, that’s why she’s here. Why we’re all here.
To help.
I have no doubt she will do just that. And I have no doubt about this, too: I give my every day to teach my daughter something about this life. But she teaches me more.
Allison
January 11, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 17 Comments
I was tagged last week by Sarah and had to come up with six random or weird things about myself. Some were both random and weird (glad to know that I’m not alone in my fear of clowns). My mentioning of the girl whose life I saved drew much more response via comments and emails than I thought it would. A few of you suggested that I expound upon that a little. So I will, with a little background…
I had everything figured out at seventeen. My future was planned, crystal clear and meant to be. I was the starting second baseman on my high school team, had already gotten letters from several colleges and had been scouted by the Milwaukee Brewers.
I was going to play baseball forever. I had to. Because the person who roamed the halls of Stuarts Draft High School and drove his truck around town wasn’t me. Not the real me. No, the real me was the guy on the ball field. It was the only place where I ever really felt I belonged.
School was an irritant. Most high school seniors try to stretch that last year out as far as they can, enjoying every moment. Not me. I wanted out. I had a life to get living.
Not that high school was hard. I had the prototypical jock schedule of classes–Math, History, English Composition, and four study halls. Brutal. Then one day Mrs. Houser, my English Composition teacher, decided that I needed to do something, so she pulled some strings and got me a job: writing a weekly column for the local newspaper. Write about anything, she said. Just make it good.
Oh. Joy.
I obliged, partly because I had to but mostly because Mrs. Houser was my favorite teacher. Every Tuesday evening I would sit down with a pad of paper and watch reruns of Gilligan’s Island, writing during commercials. It was busy work. Something to pass the time. Nothing more.
Then my world fell apart.
We were playing at Fort Defiance High School when someone hit a ground ball to my right. I backhanded it and threw off balance to first base for the out.
And my shoulder exploded.
Four trips to doctors and specialists resulted in a shared consensus: I would never played again.
It’s tough being seventeen and knowing that every dream you ever had was gone. Tough knowing that your entire life lay in front of you, just not the life you wanted. Tough.
Too tough.
So one night I got in my truck, drove into the mountains, and found the highest rock I could so I could jump off.
Almost did it, too. I got to two and a half on my count to three when a voice popped into my head and said, “You’re really not afraid of dying, are you?”
No. Not at all.
Then you’re afraid of living.
Whether that voice was God’s or my own still escapes me. But I sat for a long while on that rock, thinking. Then I got back into my truck, drove home, and wrote my column. Really wrote. About how things sometimes don’t turn out the way they’re supposed to and how sometimes life can be more night than day. And how, in the end, we have to keep on. We just have to. That was the night I learned to strip myself bare on the page, to risk exposing fears and worries and doubts. To quit pretending I was someone I wasn’t. It was the biggest act of courage I think I ever displayed.
Three days later, a letter was sent to the high school with my name on the front. Thank you, it said. “I’m having a really tough time right now, and a few days ago I thought I just couldn’t take anymore. I was going to end it. Then I read your article and, well, I’m still here. So thank you. You rescued me.“
It wasn’t signed, and there was no return address on the envelope. I didn’t know who sent it, but I did know this: God didn’t want me to play baseball. He wanted me to write.
***
At the mall, a month later. I was picking my girlfriend up from work and decided to walk to the bookstore. Approaching me was a teenage girl in jeans and a leather jacket. I nodded as she passed, and then she called my name.
“Allison,” she said. “My name’s Allison. I’m the one who wrote you that letter.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what she wanted me to say. So I asked her if she was all right, to which she replied that she was, to which I replied that it was nice to meet her. I was so shy, so backward, so unnerved, that I simply nodded again and walked away.
I have had many bad moments in my life. That one? Top three.
I never saw Allison again. I do, however, still spend many a day wishing that I would have. Just one more time. Just to tell her I was sorry for not saying more. To tell her to keep hanging in there and that she’s not alone.
And to tell her that she rescued me, too.
Either/Or
January 8, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 14 Comments
People a lot smarter than me say there were never any permanent native settlements in this area. The Shenandoah Valley was instead a kind of ancient superhighway that various tribes traveled through on their way from one place to another. Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Catawba, and Delaware Indians visited this area at various times, as well as my ancestors, the Cherokee.
The problem was that in a fairly limited amount of space, one tribe was bound to run into another. The results weren’t pretty. For thousands of years, much of our valley was one big battlefield.
Evidence of these tribal wars can be found every spring when the farmers start plowing their fields. There are arrowheads by the millions, flint scalping blades by the thousands, and sometimes, the head of a tomahawk.
I’ve spent many a lost moment with this tomahawk in my hands, asking the unanswerable.
Who made this? When? How did it end up in a cornfield?
Why, I suppose, is a question that that doesn’t need asking. To the Native American male, a tomahawk was his most prized possession. Much like the samurai and his sword, the tomahawk held an almost mythical position. It was the weapon of a warrior. A instrument of death.
But maybe asking why it was made does matter. Maybe that’s the question that matters most.
I never go hiking without a tomahawk. From building a shelter to securing food and water, it can perform tasks that a knife simply cannot. One of the wisest pieces of advice about going into the woods came from my father: “You can take a knife into the mountains and live like a prince. But you can take a tomahawk into the mountains and live like a king.”
My point?
Though the tomahawk can certainly be used as a weapon, it is first and foremost a tool. It’s a thing. And like all things, it can be used for good or for bad. It can improve life or destroy it. It all depends on the user.
Maybe it’s no surprise that the ancient people who once roamed these parts chose to use their tools to destroy life. After all, they were ignorant savages. Right?
But consider what you’re using to read this post. The Internet is quite possibly greatest invention of the last century. It allows people from almost any country to connect with people they would otherwise never meet. To be exposed to other cultures and ideas. To connect. It is a treasure of information and knowledge. Don’t know something? Google it. You’ll have your answer in seconds.
But this wondrous invention that can improve the lives of millions of people has destroyed just as many. There are an estimated twenty million websites devoted exclusively to pornography. You can google how to make a bomb just as easily as how to make a birthday cake. And for every highcallingblogs.com there is a jihadist calling for death and destruction.
Maybe we’re all ignorant savages.
Not much has changed since that unknown person dropped his tomahawk and my uncle picked it up. We’re still taking what was made for good and using it for bad. And I suppose we always will. We may be smarter and more capable than our ancestors, and our children may grow to be smarter and more capable than us, but we all carry around the same fallen nature.
That’s why I get a little leery when I start hearing about how things will get better when this person’s in charge or that country gets fixed or that peace agreement gets signed. I know better.
And I know this, too: each day we are faced with this one choice: what will I do? What will I do with what God has given me? Will I use my mind to think about how I can help others, or will I use it to think about how I can help myself? Will I open my heart and risk loving even more, or will I close it because I’m too frightened of hurt? And will I use my faith as a salve to pour on open wounds, or as a weapon to fester those wounds more?
This ancient tomahawk sitting beside me was likely used to both preserve the life of its owner and take the life of his enemy. Us? We’re not a matter of both, I think. I think we’re either/or. Either serving God or serving ourselves. Either helping others or not.
Either bringing the world a little closer to heaven or a little closer to hell.
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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