Billy Coffey's Blog, page 46

Who is your angel?

[image error]Today is the official pub date for Paper Angels, my second novel published by the good folks at FaithWords. Feel free to mosey on over to Amazon or Barnes & Noble or your local bookstore for a copy. And if you're around Twitter today, come say hi during our Twitter party. We will be using the hash tag #PaperAngels.

There will be book giveaways, trivia, interviews and reviews by @faithwords, @katdish, @amysorrells, @cathylynnl and @gyoung9751.

I'm also giving away three signed copies right here. I'll take your thoughts through Saturday, at which point three winners will be randomly chosen (and by random, I mean the kids will pull out three names from my cowboy hat). All you have to do is leave a comment below that answers this question—

Who or what has been an angel in your life?

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Changing the world

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My daughter wants to change the world.

She's nine, only a couple months removed from ten—that age when the world reveals itself to be a bit darker and more foreboding than once imagined, but it still retains a hue of rainbows and promise.

She's studied history and knows about things like wars and slavery. She catches snippets of the news and sees the hunger and the hate. She knows what rape means. A few weeks ago, someone in her classroom was caught selling weed.

"Marijuana is bad, Daddy," she told me. I told her yes, it was.

Much of me says it's too early for any of this. I didn't know what marijuana was until I was well into my teens, and my childhood was largely spent pondering the hitch in my baseball swing than the socio-economic ills of modern society. But these are different times, I suppose. Everything seems to be happening so fast. You try to let your kids be kids, but the world gets in the way.

My daughter, she doesn't hide from any of this. Sometime in the last few years the thin veil that hangs over the world slipped away and revealed its true face to her, and she did not look away in horror. She was not afraid. She simply saw that something was broken and knew she was the one to fix it.

I can understand this. From the time I was eighteen until almost thirty, I felt the same way. I was going to be the one to fix the world. I was going to be the one to make a difference. And I acted as such in my own warped, disillusioned way until the day I realized just how tiny and powerless I was.

My daughter will learn that one day, too. I suppose I could try and soften that blow now, gently tell her that she isn't all she thinks herself to be, but I won't. There are things best learned while standing and things you can only learn after a fall. That lesson is of the latter. Most of the important ones are.

But on the other side of that she will learn one of the more valuable lessons in life, and that is that none of us can change the world. It is too big. We are too small. It has always been that way, and it always will.

That's no cause for surrender, though. That's what I'll tell my daughter. That's what I discovered for myself. Because even if we can't change the whole world, we can change tiny pieces of it. We can change the small part of the universe around us. We may not be able to save millions, but we may be able to save one.

It's the small scale that counts—doing the little things in a big way. Maybe one day my daughter will cure cancer or end hunger and make it rain in the desert. Maybe she will fight for peace where there is war and teach people to replace hate with love. But in the meantime, she can smile at a stranger and say hello. She can plant a flower where there is only muddy soil. She can choose to believe and not doubt.

In the end, that's all we can do.

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The last thing I'd ever write

The note above was penned by an eighty-five-year-old man named Robert. One day last month, he drove his car down a steep rural road to look at a pond. When he tried to drive back the way he came, the car rolled off the path and became mired in a ravine.

Robert was unable to walk out of his situation due to back problems that left him only able to get around with the help of a walker. He had no food. The only water he had barely filled an 8 ounce bottle. He honked his horn until the car battery was depleted.

Robert sat there, alone in his car, for two days.

With no food, little water, and temperatures in the upper 90s, he realized things didn't look good. So he grabbed a pen and began writing on the car's armrest.

Look closely and you can make a bit of it out. The first—and Robert said the most important—was that he make sure everyone knew it was an accident. Robert didn't want anyone thinking he committed suicide. He wrote that the car's wheels spun out. He asked that his family give him a closed casket.

About forty hours later, Robert was found. Turns out that final note wasn't needed after all. As you can imagine, the whole ordeal changed him. Robert has a new outlook on life. He understands its delicateness. He knows every moment is precious.

It's a good story with a happy ending. But me, I can't stop thinking about that note.

What would I tell my family? What would I tell you? What would I say if I could never say anything more? Those questions have preyed on my mind since reading Robert's story. I figured the only way I could start thinking about something else is to go ahead and write my letter.

So here it is, the last thing I'd ever write:

Dear All,

I don't know how I managed to get myself in this mess. I think a lot of times you can't see the trouble that's coming until it's on you. This is probably one of those times. I guess I should hurry. I never used to think much about time. Suddenly, time seems pretty important.

To my family, I want to say that the very last thing I want to do is leave you behind. You need to know that as much as I'm ready for heaven, I'm thinking the angels will have to drag me there. But don't worry, I'll find me a bench somewhere near the gate and wait for each of you.

To my wife, I'm sorry I was never the man I wanted to be. I'm thankful you overlooked that. Take care of the kids. Raise them to believe like you and fight like me.

To my son, there are few things more difficult in life than knowing how to be a man. I'll give you a quick summary—work hard, laugh much, pray often. Love dignity rather than money. Face your darkness. Let your word be your bond. You'll do well in life if you cling to those things. Know that I will always be proud of you.

To my daughter, you've taught me more about faith than anyone I've ever known. Remember this: we seldom have any choice as to the wars we must fight, we can only elect to face them with honor or cowardice.

To my friends, I know it may appear at times that I prefer silence to speech and solitude to company, but you mended the gashes I had rent into my own heart. Whatever goodness is in me was fostered by you.

I ask that you dispose of my remains as you see fit. I have no preference. Whatever flesh and bone is left behind is not me, it is merely an empty house that God has deemed I've outgrown.

Do not mourn, laugh.

Do not look back, look forward.

Live intently.

And last, know that all that separates the two of us is but one stroke of heaven's eternal clock. Life is but a dream. Death is simply when we wake.

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Ghosts, zombies and monsters

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The thing about Halloween is that it's all fine and dandy until bedtime. Before then, it's dressing up and walking around outside at night and "Trick or treat!" and candy. After, once the candy has been sorted and costumes have been exchanged for pajamas, there is only the darkness and whatever may live in it.

I've learned this firsthand.

Like me, my children enjoy a good ghost story. They enjoy tales of eerie things, impossible things, things that make you wonder. I think that even more than the candy is why they enjoy this day. But of course it's easier to hear of those things that go bump in the night while the light of day is still burning. When you're alone in bed through the window is only the waxing moon and tree branches that look like reaching arms, you don't do much wondering. You just think it's real.

Say what you want about the innocence of Halloween—of the fantasy and fun—but at it's core, this is a day of fear. It is a day in which the young and the young in spirit no longer avoid their dreads and anxieties, they face them. It is the only day of the year when it's socially acceptable to both be afraid and believe in the supernatural.

It's the former rather than the latter that will keep me up tonight long after the porch light is off and I've managed to convince the kids there is nothing lurking beneath their beds. It's why I'll be watching everything from zombies to ghosts to vampires. Because sometimes I need that certain something to blow off a little steam. To get it all out. To tell myself that it's okay I'm afraid.

Not supposed to feel that sort of thing. I've never been the type of guy to get all gushy with my feelings. I'm old school—John Wayne rather than…well, most any male movie star today. That means I swallow my frustrations, I bury my pain, and I hide my doubts. Whatever ulcers or chest pains result I chalk up to that great excuse of That's Just The Way Life Is.

But of course sometimes I can't swallow every bit of frustration. Some of that pain pokes through. Some of my doubts are found. Nobody's perfect. But rare is the occasion when I will show fear. Ask anyone who knows me. They'll vouch for that statement.

Want to know something that's sad and funny at the same time? If you'd up my doubts, my pains, and my frustrations, they wouldn't even come close to my fears.

I'm afraid a lot.

I know how the world is. I know there are ghosts out there. I see them every day, people who have been mislaid in the nether regions of the past and present, so haunted by what they've done that what they do seems meaningless.

And I know there are zombies, people who have traded dreams for convenience and have taken adversity as God's refusal, who have surrendered purpose for pleasure.

And I know there are monsters. Many monsters. Evil, soulless monsters devoid of honor and love and compassion, and who would gladly harm me or my family simply because of the color of our skin or the country of our birth or the God to whom we pray.

Ours is a haunted world, one in which the ghouls and beasts are not hemmed in by night or silver bullets, but have free reign.

Tell me it's wrong to be afraid. I dare you.

So for tonight at least, for better or worse, I will sit and watch stories of the unreal that I may deal with very real feelings. And tomorrow, also for better or worse, I will put on my brave face and greet the world again.

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Picking your poison

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I was fifteen when I took my first dip of snuff behind the dugout of the high school baseball field. It was during the bottom of the third inning, I remember that. And I remember I was due up second and the other team's pitcher could hum a fastball. He would nod a yes to the catcher and begin a windup so slow it would almost put you to sleep, and then there was a blur from his arm and the ball was on you. It was on you and you knew if you blinked, you'd miss it. I hadn't missed it the first time, I'd grounded out to third. That was pure luck—truth was, I never saw the ball. I swung at air and just happened to connect.

So my buddy said, "Try a dip. It'll relax you." And me, being fifteen and therefore almost completely a man, said yes. Because where I come from, men dip snuff.

I won't say the habit started because I hit a double into the gap my next time at the plate. And honestly, sunflower seeds seemed to relax me more than Skoal. But I had another one after the game on the ride home—the same buddy who got me dipping also got me listening to Whitesnake and Motley Crue, but that habit, thankfully, has since been broken. I took two more the next day during practice. Then we stopped by the 7-11 on the way home and I bought my own can.

You couldn't buy tobacco unless you were sixteen by then, but the guy behind the counter seemed more concerned with the sad state of his life than whether I was old enough to dip.

And that's how it's been for pretty much the last twenty-four years. Every couple days I'm back down at that very same 7-11 to sustain my habit. The only difference is that now there's a lady behind the counter.

I come from a long line of tobacco users. Dad's been chewing tobacco since he was eight years old. Not kidding. I'm not saying it was inevitable that I start too, but I think it's in my blood. Much like some are born with hankering for whiskey. I will say my Skoal has seen me through my fair share of trouble. Somehow, someway, things are just better handled with a dip in your mouth. I don't expect you to understand how that is, but it's the truth.

It took two kids to make me realize how much of a hold tobacco had on my life. You want to be a role model for your children. You want them to understand that while you're not perfect, you're always trying to be better. And it was hard for me to tell them to trust in God to see them through when I was really trusting in tobacco to see me through—"Trust in," I'd say, then I'd spit and finish, "God."

When your kids ask you why you do the things you do and why those things are so important even if they could kill you one day, you start to think. You start to think long and hard.

So I quit. Did it last week. Six days of nightmares and shakes, ten bags of sunflower seeds, twelve packs of gum, and seventy-nine toothpicks later, I'm still here. Barely, but here. It's scary. I don't mind saying that.

But here's what I've learned by talking to people about this—we're all imprisoned by something. Whether it's tobacco or alcohol or shopping, food or work or regret, we all stand in some short of shadow. And while that shadow is comfortable and familiar, while it even offers some sort of strength, we're not meant to dwell in darkness. We were all made for the light.

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Killing Henry

Image by Christian Ostrosky. Used with permission. Sourced via Flickr

We buried Henry last week. It's probably safe to say that deep down my family didn't want to; despite the fact he never spoke and was never seen, we enjoyed having him around. But there are some things in life you just need to let die.

Henry first appeared over the summer. I was washing the truck, got sidetracked, and ended up leaving the hose running all night. My son found the mess the next morning and wondered aloud whose fault that was.

"Henry did it," I told him.

"Who's Henry?"

"Oh, you know Henry. He messes up a lot of stuff around here."

It wasn't the first time my son walked away from me shaking his head.

To read the rest of the story, head on over to The High Calling Blog where I'm guest posting today.

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Basements

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A family down the road loves Halloween almost as much as I do. Mother, father, and son—Mikey is his name. Mikey's seven.

Mikey already has his costume picked out—it's Jack Sparrow this year—and already has his pumpkin carved. All that's left are the decorations. Mikey's folks get a kick out of decorating for Halloween.

But as with most things in life, all this excitement and elation is sprinkled with dread. Decorating for Halloween, you see, means having to get the decorations out. Not a problem usually, but in Mikey's case it's a big one. Because all the decorations are in his basement.

All of that old and mostly forgotten stuff down there gives Mikey the willies. It's scary down there, he's told me. Dark and stinky, too. It's where the spiders and mice and ghosts live. Also the furnace, which he believes may well be the gateway to hell. When you're a kid, nothing is scarier than the furnace.

At night before bed, Mikey doesn't worry about the front or back doors being locked, he worries about the basement door. He's seen the movies (though he won't fess up to me which movies he's talking about) and knows what can happen. He's not afraid of someone coming in, he's afraid of something coming up. But there's a problem. The lock is on the inside of the door, not the outside. The builder's mistake, on that his father never gotten around to fixing. Which means the spiders and mice and ghosts can keep everything in, but Mikey can't keep them out.

So when the first week of October rolls around, he's both elated and scared to death. His father expects Mikey to go down there with him. He has to help unpack it all, too. And lay it all out right there on the basement floor. "You never know what's going to be in there," he told me. "Spiders love to crawl in those boxes. Zombies, too. I seen em."

This fear, this dread, is Mikey's alone. He hasn't told his parents about the basement, and how he worries about the lock on the basement door before he goes to bed, and how he prays that eventually his dad will change the lock around to the other side so he could get in but they couldn't get out. It'd make him seem like a kid. And when you're a kid, the last thing you want is to act like one.

Me, I understand all of this. The kid part, but especially the basement stuff. I might not have a basement in my house, but I do have one inside of me. Deep down, seldom seen. It's the place where all the junk is kept, the fears and worries and failures. The sins I've committed and the regrets I have.

It's a mess, my basement. Junky and moldy and dark. I suspect things crawl around down there, too. And there are ghosts. Plenty of ghosts.

I'm not alone here. Flip through your Bible and you'll find plenty of people with junky basements. Moses had one, what with that murder charge and all. David too, with the whole Bathsheba in the bathtub incident. Peter when he denied Christ after saying he never would. And let's not forget Paul, who had the blood of hundreds and maybe thousands of Christians on his hands. They found out, like we do, that living with junk in the basement is tough and scary.

They also found out that God can clean those basements up. He can get rid of the junk, scrub everything down, and chase away all the nasties. Problem is, He won't do it alone. We have to open the door to let Him in. Because like the Mikey's house down the road, there are locks on our basement doors, and they all lock from the inside.

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Shining your light

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I recently spent a Friday afternoon with a group of high school English students. They were stuck, their teacher said. Could you help? Since the teacher happened to be a longtime friend and I didn't have much else to do, I said yes. Absolutely.

But it was more than simply helping out a friend and having something to do. Much more. The problem her students were having was the problem isn't the sole property of the formative years. I didn't have anyone around back then to tell me how to fix it. It isn't often that life affords you the chance to right some cosmic wrong. When it does, you can't pass it up.

Their problem was a basic one, simple yet foundational.

They had nothing to write about.

To a person, they were stereotypical teenagers. Clumsy and loud, with a strange combination of fear and arrogance. The one thing that set them apart from the rest was a common love of writing, whether it was expressed or not. But a love of writing isn't enough. You have to do something with it. You have to have material. And they had none. Zero. Nada.

Or so they thought.

I can't say that I managed to convince all of them otherwise in the three or so hours I was there. But I did some, I think. And I did a few most assuredly. Considering the fact that it's darn near impossible to get a teenager to change his or her mind about anything, I'd call that a victory.

But then I started thinking about the fact that thinking there isn't anything interesting about your life isn't just for teenagers. Not just for writers, either. We all fool ourselves into thinking there isn't anything that separates us from everyone else. So I thought I'd give the same little pep talk to you today that I gave them a couple weeks ago. Just in case.

It's amazing how the rules of good writing are also the rules of good living. The two go hand in hand, I think. Good writing is cutting out all the excess, whittling down what you want to say until what you need to say is left. Same with living. Whittle it down. Find the basics. Keep it simple. Makes for not just a better story, but a better life, too.

I wasn't visiting that class to talk about the basics of a good story, though. I was there to talk about the basics of getting ideas. Not surprisingly, that just so happened to be my own rule number one to good writing. And good living.

Rule Number One:

You are extraordinary.

Don't let anyone fool you with that. Some will try, of course. Some will try very hard. They'll say you're good or nice or very polite or even special, but not extraordinary. And maybe you'll even tell yourself that. Don't. That's a lie, and maybe the biggest. Believe it, and nothing will really happen. Don't believe it, and everything will.

It's not just you that's extraordinary, either. Your life is, too. What you're feeling, what you're doing, what you're thinking. Your dreams and your fears, your hopes and worries. Extraordinary, and in a very special way. On the one hand, those things are unique to you. Your thoughts about them are your own, and how you approach each of them is determined by everything from your DNA to your experience and your beliefs.

But on the other hand, those dreams and fears and hopes and worries are for the most part shared by every other person who's ever walked in this world. There is an invisible line that runs through the heart of every person, connecting you not only to your family and your friends, but to the stranger down the road. As different as we may appear to be on the outside, we're all the same on the inside.

You are common, yes. But only in the way Da Vinci and Einstein and Twain were common. They were extraordinary in what they did with their commonness. You can be the same.

Think of this world as a house with many rooms. Some are big and wide and hold many people. Others are small and cramped and hold just a few. But all of those rooms are dark inside.

When you're born, God gives you a light and places you in one of those rooms. It might be a big room with many people. Maybe it's a smaller room with a few people.

It doesn't matter what kind of room you're in. Doesn't matter who's there and who isn't.

All that matters is that you shine your light.

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Resolving to choose: Either/Or

My uncle picked this tomahawk up last summer and gave it to my daughter, a budding Indiana Jones. And when I said he picked it up, I mean it literally. He found it in a cornfield between the South River and the Hershey plant, about six miles from my home.

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.

This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Resolution, hosted by my friend Peter Pollock. To read more stories on this topic, please visit him at PeterPollock.com

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Paper Angels

[image error]Mom saw an angel once. She was a little girl, ten or eleven, sleeping in bed one night. What woke her was the light from the hallway—a white ball that hung suspended in the air and danced into her room. You would think such a thing would be frightening, but she said there was nothing scary about it. In fact, she'll tell you that in the fifty-some-odd years since, she never felt so peaceful. An angel, she'll tell you. No doubt about it.

My uncle saw one, too. Same house, same time of night, different year. This time it wasn't a white ball, it was a body and a face and a brilliance he said almost blinded him. Again, no fear. Just an awe that left him silenced and humble.

Take those stories as you will. Some of you read those words and nodded—no doubt about it, you said. Some of you likely rolled your eyes and chalked that up to the imagination of a child. Me, I'm somewhere in the middle. I don't know if I believe those stories per se, but I do believe in the possibility.

There are other stories. My wife says her grandmother visited her one night. It was late, something woke her, and she saw an old woman smiling at her. She'd never met her grandmother—half a continent divided them—but my wife knew who was smiling at her.

Her grandmother had died earlier that night. My wife wasn't told until the next day.

I will admit a kind of jealousy upon hearing such stories. There are some among us who have witnessed the thin veil hanging between this world and the next come undone—lifted up, for whatever reason, to allow a glimpse into the Mystery. Aside from a few instances, that thin veil has held in my own life. I can only dream and imagine and wait.

Angels have been with us since the beginning. Despite whatever differences the religions of this world have, they seem to be a common thread. This comforts me. What comforts me, too, is that we all have our own angel. Put two people in a room, and there are really four.

The Hebrew word is malach. It means messenger. To the ancient Hebrews, anything that brings a lesson, anything that helps in some way, could be considered an angel. This comforts me, too.

Angels point the way. They guide, they help, they tell us what God wants us to know. And if we were ever blessed with the opportunity, they would show us just how special and wonderful our lives truly were.

And that, in a nutshell, is what happens to Andy Sommerville.

Paper Angels, my second novel, will be out November 9. It is the story of one ordinary man with an extraordinary ability—Andy can see his angel, calls him The Old Man. But far from seeing The Old Man as a blessing, Andy has found him a curse. He believes his angel has kept him from a better, more fulfilling life than the one he has—a life that has come to be defined by a wooden box filled with twelve trinkets The Old Man has told him to keep over the years. "You'll need them," The Old Man says, "when the time comes."

That time comes one dark night when Andy is involved in a brutal attack that leaves him badly burned and the boy he's come to see as a son murdered. Stripped of all he held dear, The Old Man abandons Andy in his hospital bed. Now all Andy has left is his wooden box and a hospital counselor named Elizabeth, who will help him discover the shocking truth of his life.

I do hope you'll consider picking up a copy of your own. If you're interested, you can stop by Amazon HERE or ask for it at your local bookstore. Paper Angels is a love letter of sorts, written so that others may ponder the angels in Andy's life and then ponder the angels that fill their own. Because I may have my doubts when someone shares a story of that veil between worlds coming undone, but I do not doubt it is possible. And I do not doubt that just as there is an angel looking over my shoulder as I scribble this post, there is also one looking over yours as you read it.

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