30 Bloggers, 30 Days
September 1, 2010 by Katdish · 13 Comments
Times are tough here in western Virginia.
You can see it in the boarded up businesses and the long lines at the employment office. In the vehicles parked in front yards with FOR SALE signs in the windshields, right next to the same sort of sign for the house. The newspapers are full of layoffs, bankruptcies, and health care worries.
Hard times, no doubt about it.
But even in these hard times there are things we take for granted, those basic necessities we can’t live without but are in such abundance we forget their importance. Things like water. I have three bathtubs in my house. Five sinks. Two spigots outside. There’s a creek running alongside our house that give me fresh mountain water for the sprinkler. Water, water everywhere.
Not everyone is so fortunate:
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Bryan Allain (I use that term loosely, since he’s a Red Sox fan) sent me an email asking if I would join with him and some other bloggers in a campaign called 30 Bloggers, 30 Days, $30,000. The goal is to raise $30,000 in 30 days. Here’s the list of fine folks Tyler Stanton and Bryan Allain have assembled:
Bryan Allain, Matt Appling, Trey Boden, Jason Boyett, Everett Bracken, Stephen Brewster, Burnside Writers Collective, Tripp Crosby, Greg Darley, Sam Davidson, Rachel Held Evans, Evan Forester, Chad Gibbs, Susan Isaacs, Kevin Keigley, Lacey Keigley, Wes Molebash, Scott Moore, Eric Olsen, AJ Passman, Katdish, Brad Ruggles, Rob Shepherd, Jeff Shinabarger, Shawn Smucker, Tyler Stanton, Tyler Tarver, Tyler Thigpen, Karen Spears Zacharias
I’ve never asked anyone who reads my blog to dig into their pockets. Like I said above, times are tough. So what I’m going to do is provide you with the information and let your heart talk instead of me. The best part about this campaign is that all money donated will reach a specific group of needy people. Here’s where this money will go:
- Our goal is $30,000. This provides clean water to 1,500 people (300 families, 6 entire communities).
- 100% of the money donated goes towards water projects. Private donors take care of all the overhead.
- $20 provides 1 person clean water for 20 years.
- Our money will go towards building water projects in Central African Republic.
- If you give, charity: water will keep you up-to-date with the status of your project, provide you with GPS coordinates of exactly where the well you contributed to is being built, and take pictures and video along the way.
So, how can you help?
- GIVE. $20 provides clean water for one person for 20 years! Go to the 30 Bloggers, 30 Days, $30,000 site and make a donation.
- SHARE about it on Facebook and Twitter. Follow @charitywater here.
- Blog about it.30 bloggers is simply a starting point. We would love to have more people join in and help spread the word! And if you do blog about it, please let me know so I can link back to your post.
Last but not least, here’s a bunch of cool downloads, banners and twitter backgrounds you can use. Thanks for your time.
Tolerating me
August 30, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 4 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
I tend to shy away from politics and even culture in this space. Not because I’m not political or even cultural (which I am), but because I prefer to leave those things to people who are more capable and smarter than me.
That said, things do build up in me from time to time to the point where if I don’t say something, I feel like I’m going to bust. Which has been happening lately. There’s much talk about who stands for what and who only pretends to, talk of things like tolerance and equality and this freedom and that. While a lot of my friends who blog have taken it upon themselves to offer their thoughts, I’ve kept my mouth shut. Again, that’s not normally my thing.
But then last week I got an invitation from the ACLU to unzip my lip and fill out a survey. It felt good to finally get a few things off my chest. Initially, anyway.
To read all about it, stop by katdish’s website…
The key
August 27, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 18 Comments
image courtesy of A Simple Country Girl, used with permission. For info on available images, please click on the image.
I found it a while back in a dresser drawer I was cleaning out. It was stuck in the back corner behind some pens, a stack of old pay stubs, and my high school ring. There’s no telling how long it had sat there, but it must have been a while. A very long while. Because try as I might, I couldn’t remember what it unlocked.
I’ve checked all the locks in the house, including the one on the shed in the backyard and the diary my daughter keeps. I’ve asked my wife if it happens to go to anything school-related and called my father to ask if it was his.
No all the way around.
It’s too big for a key to a shed or a mailbox. Not enough teeth to unlock a door. Not fancy enough to start a vehicle. Too real to fit a child’s toy.
So…what?
I don’t know. I figure I have two options here, both obvious. I can throw the key away and be done with it, thinking that if I haven’t needed it for longer than my memory allows, I likely won’t need it again. Or I can keep it. I’m leaning toward keeping it. I can’t throw the key away. Doing that will all but guarantee I will find whatever lock it fits, and that on the other side of the lock will be something I will likely need very badly.
There are a lot of people who say it’s the big moments in our lives that show us who we really are, warts and all. I’m not one of them. I think it’s the little moments that do that. Moments like this one, with me and my key.
So I stare at it and wonder. Is this all about my tendency to hang onto things and not let them go? Or is it about my subtle distrust in the shaky maxim that “everything work out fine in the end”?
Maybe it’s neither. Maybe all this proves is that I tend to think about some things a little more than I should. Regardless, it’s all very discombobulating. I feel like I have an answer to a question I don’t know how to ask.
Maybe that’s the point.
Maybe I need to consider this as something I’ve found something that I don’t really need right now but might need later. I think that alone is reason enough to hang onto it. I know this from experience.
I’ve often found some truth, some answer, only to lose it and have to go searching again. Most of the mistakes I make are ones I’ve made before and never learned from or, worse, thought I learned from but really didn’t. And there have been a lot of times I’ve been left wondering “Why in the world did I have to go through that?” only to say later on “Oh, now I understand. It was so I could handle this.” We find the keys to a lot of life’s problems long before we come across the locks.
That’s why we have to hang onto them and keep them safe. Why the struggles we have now can grow into future blessings. Because often the key to life lies more in remembering than learning.
Hit the redneck
August 23, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 3 Comments
photo of Radivoje Lajic from telegraph.co.uk
God picks on me sometimes.
I know that sounds a little odd. Maybe even a little whiny. I’m good with that. I’m willing to concede that this is likely a misconception on my part, that instead of picking on me, God’s doing something else. He’s loving me or blessing me or preparing me, but not picking on me. I can understand that in my head, where the rational part of me lives. In my heart though, in that place where rationality often gives way to pure emotion, that’s not always true. God’s not loving me or blessing me or preparing me, He’s just playing Hit the Redneck.
I don’t think I’m alone here. Chances are there are one or two other people in the world who tend to think God sometimes messes with them, too.
Radivoje Lajic isn’t one of them, though he would be sympathetic to me. God might not be picking on him, but the aliens are. Not kidding. To read his story, hop on over to katdish’s site. Radivoje has certainly put my feelings into perspective. That God picks on me sometimes doesn’t really sound odd or whiny to me anymore. It just sounds wrong.
Ever forward
August 20, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 26 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.
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.
Jump
August 18, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 20 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
Lately I’ve taken my lunch at the park, enjoying a bit of the country in the middle of the city. I’ll park my truck by the baseball field, climb a small hill to sit on a smaller bench, and stare across the street. Just to see if it’ll happen, finally happen, today.
The facelifted but tired house is home to a family I’ve never met and a young man I’ve come to know only from a distance. Ten or so from the looks of him. All boy. Grass-stained Levi’s, alternating Transformer and John Deere T-shirts, and a filthy baseball cap. Always the cap. Homeschooled too, I suppose, since he’s home every day and I’ve yet to see a truancy officer.
For about a week I sat and watched him take scraps of plywood and two-by-fours from behind his father’s shed, gather the pile in the middle of the driveway, and proceed to hammer and nail every boy’s first serious attempt at engineering—a ramp. It started small, not much more than a pine speed bump. But either his ambitions or an innate love for hammering and nailing got the better of him, and that bump got bigger. Much bigger. So much so that the upper part of the curve on the finished product nearly came to the bill of his cap.
This was someone not merely content to give a gentle tug at gravity’s suppressive bonds. No, he wanted to break them with impunity. To fly.
He hammered the last nail a week ago and then pulled a muddy bike out of the shed, backed it up a good twenty feet, and climbed on. And then climbed off. A practice run, I supposed. The next day he actually pedaled halfway to the ramp. Halfway and half-hearted. And like any act undertaken with half a heart, it was doomed to fail. He squeezed the handlebars just as the front tire went from pavement to plywood.
And that’s how it’s been since. Every day I come here for my lunch, and every day he inches closer to that ramp but never quite close enough. And right now he’s there again, sitting on his bike and staring.
I know why.
From where I’m sitting I can look to my right at a tight circle of iron tracks. The train runs at the park during the warmer months and is quite the attraction, both for the kids and the parents who once were kids.
As a child I was terrified of the train, convinced the tunnel on the far side was in fact a door to the underworld that swung only one way. Boarding it would mean the end of me. I would race through the tunnel and be swallowed by it, lost in the darkness forever. When I turned eight, I knew it was time to put up or shut up. I rode the train. I jumped. And to my unbridled delight I found that not only did the tunnel have an entrance, it had an exit as well.
And I can look to my left and see the spot where as a teenager I parked one Saturday night and listened as my girlfriend serenaded me with Poison’s “I Won’t Forget You,” promising to never-ever-ever if I just fell in love with her. I liked the sound of that, so I jumped. She forgot about me three months later.
Which is why I understand the boy’s apprehension. It’s tough to jump. Tough to gather the nerve. Because you never know what’s going to happen after. You never know if you’ll land or crash, laugh or cry. And so we all sit and stare and wonder whether the chance to fly is worth the risk to fall. The good things in life are like that. They cost much but are worth more.
I look out over the park and see him tug on the bill of his cap. He rubs his hands and adjusts the pedals, positioning them just so for the right amount of initial oomph. And just as I think he’s about to squeeze the handlebars again, he doesn’t. He pushes harder. His eyes open wide.
And he jumps.
Staples and the human condition
August 16, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 9 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
Today’s the day we’ve all been dreading. My family, I mean. It’s a day that has been in the back of our minds for the last three months, stuck there like a burr that we couldn’t seem to get out. The fact that we didn’t really have to worry about it made it hurt a little less. It was a day we knew would come, yes. But it was also a day that would come later.
Today is later. The last day of summer vacation.
My wife is back to school already, busy with setting up desks and planning and copying and whatever else teachers do. My children seem to be going through the five stages of grief (my daughter has made it to the last stage, acceptance. My son is still stuck on denial).
The first week of school is always tough on everyone. Add to that a few pages of revisions from the publisher to go through, and that means it’s time to hunker down and wait out the brewing storm.
As such, I’ll be doing a little re-posting this week of things you might’ve missed the first time around. The first on is over at katdish’s site. And appropriately enough, it’s about back-to-school shopping. Hop on over there. Say hey. And remember, it’s not just the school kids who can start all over again.
A conversation with God
August 13, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 36 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
I was at the book fair the other day and found a copy of The Prayer of Jabez for $2.99. I’d completely forgotten about that book. Which is odd considering how popular it was ten years ago. Seemed like everyone had a copy of that book. Or the Bible study. Or the journal. Or the workbook or the copy for teens or women.
It was quite the industry really, and the reasons for it were pretty apparent. Say a little prayer, and God will bless you in abundance. It almost seemed too good to be true, but there it was. There was even a verse to back it up.
I never bought a copy. Didn’t even buy the $2.99 copy at the book fair. Not because I didn’t (and still do) want to be blessed in abundance, but because once upon a time I said my own version of Jabez’s prayer without knowing it. The answer I got was a little different than his. And though that prayer was uttered at years ago, I still remember that conversation between God and me.
It was like this:
“You there, God?”
I’m always here.
“Can I tell You something?”
Of course you can.
“I have dreams.”
Wonderful! Everyone should have dreams.
“They’re great dreams. Really great.”
I should hope so.
“Yeah. So, I was wondering if, You know, You could make those dreams come true.”
Of course I can. Why else would I give them to you?
“Oh, I don’t know. Lots of reasons, I guess. Wait. You gave my dreams to me?”
Where else would they come from?
“I don’t know…me?”
I give you the desire. You do the work. Life is a partnership between you and Me. Not 50/50, though. More like 100/100. You give your all, I give Mine.
“Great! So I can have my dreams?”
If you work and you believe, yes. But certain things have to be done first.
“Like what?”
Great dreams require great people. So first, I must make you great.
“Now I like the sound of that. So I’ll be popular and rich?”
Popular and rich doesn’t equal greatness.
“Then what does?”
Love and kindness, faith and trust. Trust especially. You need to understand that it’s not your happiness I want, it’s your trust.
“Okay.”
Are you sure? This isn’t going to be easy for you.
“Sure it will. I can be that sort of person if it means I’ll have my dreams.”
You don’t become that sort of person to get your dreams, you get your dreams because you’re that sort of person. There’s a difference.
(Silence.)
You think your dreams will bring you success, but some of the most miserable people in the world are the ones who’ve gotten everything they’ve always wanted. Stuff doesn’t bring joy. Only I do.
“Oh. So maybe my dreams aren’t all that good for me?”
Parts are. Not all. But that’s okay. I can give you better things than those.
“When I become great.”
You don’t have to be great for Me to bless you. But for your dreams, yes. You must be great.
“I still want to be great, even without the dreams. But the dreams would be nice.”
Wonderful!
“So…when can we start?”
We can start now.
“I was hoping You’d say that. Then I pray You’ll give me love and kindness and faith and trust and make me great.”
Good. But remember, there are two things that I must give to everyone in order to make them great and realize the dreams I have for them.
“Grace and blessing?”
No. Time and trial.
The tough lessons of a heart exposed
August 11, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 9 Comments
photo courtesy of Claire Burge
For proof, I will point out that I have neither blond hair nor a fair complexion. She does. Her eyes are blue. Mine are brown. And if you look carefully, you will see that her fingers are both long and thin. Mine are shorter.
Yet we share bonds. Like her father, she is quiet and reserved. Quick to laugh, yet given to bouts of melancholy. We both wear our hearts on our sleeves and try to roll up those sleeves so we may appear to be tougher than we are, but we both find they do not stay rolled up for long. Sooner or later, we are both exposed to the world again. And we both profess a love of words, both reading them and writing them.
It is this last point that has proven to tether us to something beyond father and daughter and into new worlds with skies that shine with the brightness of story. I will wake up in the morning to find several torn spiral notebook pages on the kitchen table. On it are the scribblings of an eight-year-old who has found the magic in saying something by saying something else. Her tales are full of mystery and princesses. And she will often find at her bedside scraps of paper upon which I have written my own tales, these of wonder and faith.
Ours is a symbiotic relationship of the most rewarding kind. Our words bounce off one another and back to our own hearts…
The nice folks over at High Calling Blogs have invited me to write this piece for them today, so please head over there to read the rest. Unless, of course, you have yet to read Old Yeller. Trust me.
The fear of letting go
August 9, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 8 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
The wails were coming from near the concession stand on the other end of the parking lot where I had noticed a church group was selling hot dogs and offering to wash cars. We all turned in the general direction and wondered what had caused the commotion.
None of us saw anything until my son pointed into the sky and said, “Look!”
We did, but there seemed to be nothing but blue sky and sunshine. But then I squinted and saw it. High above us, dancing with a hawk.
A balloon.
My daughter took the opportunity to offer her usual take of part philosophy and part practicality: “You gotta hang on to stuff,” she said. “If you don’t, it’ll just float away.”
Point taken.
My family finished shopping, winding into one store and out another, until we had each crossed our necessities off our respective lists. The end brought us to the concession stand. Hot dogs and a car wash were offered, but only the hot dogs were accepted. “I wash my own cars,” I told the nice lady. She didn’t understand. Guy thing.
“You two want a balloon?” I asked the kids. Which was a stupid question, really. What kid doesn’t want a balloon? I’m thirty-eight years old, and I wanted one…
To read the rest of this post, hop on over to katdish’s site. And please, don’t be afraid of the balloons in your life…
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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