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On settling and being settled

January 4, 2012 by Billy Coffey · Leave a Comment 

The thing about Troy Heatwole is that he’s settled. He’ll be the first to tell you that. Not outright, mind you. Troy never says anything outright and never has. He prefers instead to take the long way around to the point he’s trying to make. So instead of simply saying, “I’m settled,” he’ll say something like, “I ain’t as young as I used to be an’ I ain’t as smart, but the world’s quiet.”

And really, who doesn’t long for a quiet world?

Not that life doesn’t pose any challenges. Troy’s like all of us in that he has bills to pay and ends to meet. That’s not what I’m talking about when I say he’s settled. What I’m talking about is that Troy not only knows his place in the world, he’s accepted it with all the happiness and peace one could ask. There is no striving in him, no longing, no unmet expectations. Just a nice, peaceful quiet.

I say this because I want to say that I envy Troy Heatwole. Not so much for what he possesses (which isn’t much aside from a small cabin in the woods, a battered Ford truck, and a coon dog named Bo), but for what he has. There’s a difference between those things. What you possess can be taken from you. What you have can’t. And Troy possesses a settled life. I do not.

But that’s not really what I’m getting at, either. I suppose I’m taking a page out of Troy’s book—I’m taking the long way around to the point I’m trying to make. How else could I bring myself to admit that I’m envious of a man whose life, settled or not and quiet or not, revolves around cleaning and draining septic tanks?

Oh yes, that’s right. Troy’s the septic man.

It isn’t that he loves his job. He does, however, find a purpose in it. Because just as Troy once told me that “Even the Lawd woulda had trouble lovin to do what I do,” he also said that, “Dis here world’s fulla crap, an’ somebody’s gotta clean it all up.” Wise words, those. Kind of makes you think.

I pass Troy on the road often. Our workdays tend to end around the same time and converge at a stoplight just outside of town. He usually gets the green while I’m stuck at the red. He blows by in his big pumper truck, windows down and long stringy hair waving in the breeze. And smiling, always smiling, because Troy has a quiet life and he’s settled.

Me, I’m not.

That’s not a big deal, I guess, assuming you’re not closing in on 40 and you don’t have a family and a mortgage. All of which describes me. If I’m ever going to be settled, this should be the time when I should get started. But I can’t. Even though I’ve been blessed with much, I can’t escape the feeling there’s more out there I should be shooting for. There are other lands to travel and other things to do and other Me’s to be. I want to settle and yet I feel I shouldn’t settle for less than I should.

That, in a nutshell, is why I’m envious of Troy the septic man. He has no need to ponder such things. He’s found his life. He doesn’t have to wander anymore.

But there are times when he passes me at the stoplight after a long day and I see his hair waving and his face smiling and I think differently. I think that maybe I have it all backwards. Maybe we should all be craving to be a little more than what we are. Maybe we should all be wanting to grow a little more each day.

Deep down we all want to be settled, but that may be more a trap than a treasure.

Maybe only as far as we’re unsettled is there any hope for us.

The post I almost didn’t write

September 12, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 9 Comments 

I almost didn’t write a post about 9/11 this year. That would’ve been a first for me since beginning this blog. Sometimes it was a post, sometimes a video, but it was always something. If not on 9/11, then right around that time.

But this time I thought maybe not, even though it’s been ten years now. A decade. Anyone else feel as strangely about that as I do? I’ve read that scientists are studying why it seems that time speeds up as we grow older. Something in the brain, if I remember correctly. Some chemical or a certain pattern of neurons. Regardless, I remember a time when my days seemed to stretch on into forever. Now they pass so quickly. If there is anything I miss about childhood, it’s that sense of earthly eternity—that permanence.

That’s one reason I wanted to let this 9/11 pass. It feels like only yesterday I sat on the edge of my bed and watched those towers bleed fire and ash. Watched those poor souls jump from stories high, choosing death by gravity over death by immolation. Even now I see them. Those images will haunt me for the rest of my days. But I did not see that yesterday, I saw that ten years ago, and so much has happened since.

Another reason was how politicized the commemoration of 9/11 has become, how over-the-top. I hear religious leaders are not allowed to speak at Ground Zero this year, nor firefighters, nor policemen. I don’t understand how that could be. Then again, I don’t understand much these days. Sometimes I feel as though we’re all galloping toward some final end, and the ones leading the charge are the ones who are supposed to be protecting us.

But mostly, I wanted to let this 9/11 pass because of how strongly I still feel about it. To this day I cannot see an image of those ash-covered people fleeing for their lives or hear Alan Jackson’s “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” or be reminded of the phrase “Let’s roll” without feeling my eyes sting and my throat tighten. Ten years seems a long time to hang on to such emotions. There comes a point when the mourning must stop and time must continue on. We all must learn to let go. After all, life is a straight line. It isn’t a circle.

That’s why I didn’t want to write anything.

And yet here I am, doing just that.

Because no matter how well-intentioned the people who say it’s time to get over it and move on may be, I know I never will. There are some things that should not be whisked away into the haze of our yesterdays to fuse with other memories until it becomes more fiction than fact. There are some stories that should continue to be told and retold not out of a sense of anger, but a sense of honor.

It is human nature to want to set aside pain and cover up old wounds. It is also human nature to hold onto those things because they are a reminder of both the coldness of this world and the faith we must possess to live upon it.

I could forget. I could move on. I could bow my head each September 11 and pause, and then I could move on as if it were any other day.

But I’m afraid if I do I will also forget the men and women who ran toward those flames rather than away.

I will forget an outpouring of love and kindness, of unity, that I had never experienced in my country.

I will forget the stories I heard like the man who believes he was guided to safety by an angel and the man who chose to stay and die in the North Tower rather than abandon his wheelchair-bound friend.

I’m afraid that I will forget not only the horror, but the wonder as well.

Because on that day ten years ago I saw what evil there lurked in the souls of men, and I also saw what grace abides there, too.

The art of walking

May 11, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 16 Comments 

I see her five days a week, Monday through Friday. Always at 10:00 or so, just as I’m dropping off mail and picking up more.

She’s always dressed the same—faded jeans, white T shirt. Always has a cup of coffee in her hand, held up close to her mouth, even if she’s not sipping. Her strides are as short as her age is long, to the point where she seems to patter along instead of walk.

There are, of course, many walkers around campus. The scenery is green and quiet and safe. But her routine ensures she stands out from the rest. She will take three steps and pause, her head down as if in prayer, then sip. Take three more steps, repeat. Every day, Monday through Friday. And probably the others too, but I’m at home and can’t see her.

I was at the 7-11 this morning, hunting for lunch, and said hello to the person in line in front of me. Turns out it was her.

“I know you,” she said. “You’re the boy who passes me every day.”

I said yes and smiled, thinking it had been a very long time since someone called me boy.

She sipped her coffee and smiled. “You must think I’m a crazy person.”

“Why’s that?”

“For the way I go about my morning constitutional,” she said. “You know.” She moved out of the line and proceeded to take three small steps toward the candy aisle, stopped, sipped. “That.”

“I don’t think that makes you a crazy person,” I said.

“Yes you do.”

I paused. Said, “Though I’ll admit it has upon occasion made me a mite curious.”

“Ha!” she said, stepping back into line. “I knew it. You know how many people think that? That I’m crazy? I get that all the time.”

I nodded, not sure of an appropriate response.

“But I’m not,” she said. “Not crazy at all. I’m smart. Smarter than all the other walkers.” Then she leaned in close and whispered, “Wasn’t born that way, though. I got smart the way you’re supposed to—by screwing up a lot first.”

The man at the cash register finally bought his lottery tickets. He left, the line moved up.

“Makes sense,” I said. “If that’s true, then I’m going to be a genius one of these days.”

“Wanna know why I do that? Why I walk that way?”

“Sure.”

“I forgot how to walk.”

I looked at her, this woman who said she wasn’t crazy at all but sure did seem like she was.

“I was a lawyer in a former life,” she told me, the line moving once more. “That’s a horrible existence. Always running around, always in a hurry. Know what happens when you’re always in a hurry? Life passes you. I got rich, but I lost entire years of living. Isn’t that horrible?”

“Sounds like it,” I said.

She laid her coffee on the counter and smiled at the cashier, a tired-looking young man who would rather be somewhere else.

“I retired last year and decided I was going to learn how to walk again. Not like the other people who parade around on that campus. They’re always out there with some intention. Shape this or firm that. Not me. My only intention is to feel and listen. When I’m walking, I’m feeling. But I always stop, because the only time anyone can listen is when they stop.”

She paid and left. I sat my lunch on the counter and watched her go. She paused at the edge of the parking lot and sipped her coffee. Stretched out her arms. Then she walked three steps and stopped.

Feeling and listening.

I like this lady. She’s taught me much.

Like how sometimes we have to slow down so life doesn’t pass us, and how we can live entire years and yet lose them just the same.

Go out in the world and live

March 28, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 17 Comments 

Taylor Lane Anderson, a fellow Virginian, became last Monday the first known American to have died in Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. The twenty-four-year-old had spent the last two and a half years fulfilling what had become her dream—to teach English in Japan.

The story in the newspaper was accompanied by a photo of the street on which she was last seen. It was that eerie time just after the earthquake and before the wave hit. Taylor was riding her bicycle home from an elementary school in the city of Ishinoma-ki.

Use your imagination, and you will see houses and storefronts and perhaps children playing on the street corners. You will see that strange combination of resistance and joy that defines human life everywhere, that sort that makes you feel melancholy but happy to be alive.

That’s not the picture the photograph displays, however. All you see is death and destruction.

Though I do my best not to, all I can think of is her last thoughts as that wall of water came rushing toward her. I like to think it was fast. I like to think it was over before she knew it was upon her and that she didn’t suffer.

Derek Kannemeyer is a French and English teacher at St. Catherine’s, the school which Taylor once attended. In the article, he described his former student’s philosophy of life this way:

“You’ve got to go out in the world and live.”

This is the first time I’ve written about the events in Japan. I’ve wanted to ever since it happened, but I just…couldn’t. There are a great many things in this world meant to be written about by better writers than I, and what happened in Japan is one of those things. It raises questions in me about the things I believe and why I believe them. I’ve done my fair share of questioning God and shaking my fist at Him.

You should know better, I tell Him. Why didn’t You do something?

People smarter than me have been asking that question for a very, very long time. I suppose they always will.

Me, I have no answers. There is a lot in Christianity that must be accepted on faith. It is a rock you can break yourself against, that can tear you to pieces, unless you realize there are answers only God can know and you never will.

I still struggle with that.

But today I am thinking of Taylor Lane Anderson, whose life was cut short by shaking earth and raging ocean, but who still chased and managed to grab hold of her dreams. Her death was a sad tragedy, but knowing she died doing what she loved somehow takes a bit of the sting away. In the end, death that comes out of fulfilling our purpose is something to which we should all aspire.

I still question God. I doubt neither His existence nor His love, but I do His ways. They are higher than my ways, Isaiah said, as His thoughts are higher than my thoughts. I believe that. But believing that also brings a mixture of calm and fear, and I don’t believe I’m the only one to feel such things.

It is a scary time to be alive. There just seems to be so much going on—so much bad. There are days when I feel as though a black cloud hangs over this world, rumbling and swirling and ready to dump catastrophe upon us all. It’s easy to wake up in the morning and wonder, “What’s next?”

I’m sure I’ll wonder what’s next again, sure I’ll look up hoping to see the light and instead see that black, swirling cloud. When I do, I’m going to remember Taylor Lane Anderson. I’m going to remember the way she lived her life.

Because no matter what happens, no matter what fear entangles us, we’ve got to go out in the world and live.

Not only survive. Not just get by.

Live.

Allison

March 7, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 24 Comments 

I had life figured out by the time I was seventeen. My future was planned, crystal clear and meant to be.

I was the starting second baseman on my high school team and had already received interest from several colleges and even one professional team. I was going to play baseball forever. I had to. Because the kid who roamed the halls of my high school and drove his truck around town wasn’t me. Not the real me, anyway. 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 out that last year as far as they can, enjoying every moment. Not me. I wanted to get out. I had a life to start living.

Not that high school was hard, mind you. I had the prototypical jock schedule of classes—math, history, English, and four study halls. Brutal. On day my English teacher decided I needed to do something besides sit around all day, 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 she was my favorite teacher. Every Tuesday evening, I would sit down with a pad of paper and write between innings of the Braves games on television. It was busy work, nothing else. Just something to pass the time.

Then everything fell apart.

I blew out my shoulder three weeks later. Trips to doctors and specialists resulted in a shared consensus that though I could kinda/sorta play baseball again, I’d never play the way I had.

It’s tough being seventeen and knowing that every dream you’d ever had was gone. Tough knowing that your entire life lay in front of you, but it wasn’t going to be the life you wanted. Tough.

Too tough.

So one night I got into 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 not really 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. About how, in the end, we all just have to keep on.

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’d 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 it 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 up my girlfriend from work and decided to walk down 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 if she was all right, to which she replied 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 once more. Just to say I’m was sorry for not saying more. To tell her to keep hanging in there and she’s not alone.

And to tell her she rescued me, too.

***

This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Future hosted by my friend Peter Pollock. To check out more posts on this topic, please visit his website, PeterPollock.com

Compassion in the Cold

June 14, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 34 Comments 

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 

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  Author of Snow Day and Paper Angels (November 2011), both by FaithWords.

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