A man of Taff love

Timm Taff professes and practices caring for teenagers around the Basin

Timm Taff has never met Little Suzy.

He has helped countless teenagers deal with problems just like hers, yet the two have never met, and never will.

Taff is the area director of Christian youth group Young Life, a man who tries hard to live his life the right way.

Suzy is, well, Suzy. She's 15, or maybe older, and for two hours Taff did his best to make Suzy live life the hard way.

Every twenty minutes or so during this interview, Taff would say, "Little Suzy had an abortion," or "Little Suzy had to raise herself."

The reason for this is, sometimes things are hard to explain to the dozens of teenagers from the Columbia Basin who attend Young Life, an association which Taff said tries to help teens grow in their faith.

These matters include topics such as teen pregnancy or teens dealing with the world while parents deal with their bosses. So sometimes Taff needs a little help from invisible places to bring his point across.

Hence the quiet, unseen company of Suzy, a second cousin to Randall Stephens from the movie"The Shawshank Redemption," the invisible partner that allows Tim Robbins to escape to Mexico.

A God-fearing, devoted married father of four, with a 17-year career as a youth pastor in California, Oregon and now central Washington, it looks at first sight as though Taff is in little or no need of redemption. This may be true, although he will be the first to tell you he did not spend the first half of his almost 44 years the same way he has spent the second.

Calling his behavior "rebellious" during those first 22 years, Taff confesses to have had an epiphany around that age, which led him on to the path he follows to this day.

"My parents were very much into the 'don't drink, don't-smoke, don't-watch-this, don't-say-that." he said. "I realized that I can walk away from that theater, I can turn the TV off."

Above all, he realized that he could test himself to see who he really was, and that being spiritually rich was not about checking off a list of avoided items throughout his life.

These days though, with rebellion replaced by a stable family life, it is not a search of his own righteousness what makes Taff get up from his bed in his Othello home every morning, but instead, it is the thought of youngsters who may be in need of a little redemption, or who think of themselves as being beyond it.

In other words, Taff worries about the real-life Suzys of the world, and their male counterparts. Kids to whom matters like abortion, drugs, crime, alcohol and peer pressure are real, everyday threats. He also worries about plenty of good kids that get a bad rap.

There are also a great deal of teens trying to figure out how to survive life. Searching for the reasons and solutions for that is one of the great passions of Taff's life.

Among the reasons, Taff puts under the microscope the relationship between kids and absentee parents.

"Parents are trying to provide things for them," Taff said, noting that what kids would like is to share in the wealth of experience.

If the parents are not willing or able to do this, they will turn to other teens, who are trying to figure out life, as well, and who have just as much experience at it as Suzy does. Zero.

Taff proudly calls himself a role model, and is not shy about pointing out another weak spot in the lives of teens today. That is, the unwillingness of adults to do the dirty work for teens and "tell it like it is.

"They need people around them to live life honestly," he said of today's teens. "People who tell them 'sometimes it (stinks) to be an adult, but these are the choices we have to make.'"

He uses his own life as an example of the hurdles awaiting these teens. Being single, being married, marriage with adoptive kids, marriage with biological kids, all part of what he calls a challenging and changing life, for which he honestly says, he does not have all the answers.

Perhaps surprisingly for a man of faith, he does not believe spewing Bible quotes is the answer, either.

"If Little Suzy is thinking about having an abortion, she is not going to give a hoot if I hit her over the head with a Bible," he said. "She won't care about the Bible until I show that I care about her."

Saying to teens that if you follow God, everything will be great, Taff said, is a lie. Sometimes teens do have issues that need to change. Going about those changes is where sometimes religious people miss the chance to make a true difference, going straight to the scolding.

"Little Suzy knows she made a mistake," he said. "She does not need to hear it again and again."

Such tactics, he said, miss the point on what Jesus did for humankind.

"Jesus was unfair," he said. "He loved us all no matter what; gave us what we did not deserve. If he had been fair, if he had given us what he deserved, we would all have been screwed."

That kind of all-out understanding is what is missing from thousands of young lives today, he said, and that is what Taff is trying to make sure his Young Life ministry has plenty of.

"If all you do is say you love them, and don't live it, it does not work," he said. "You gotta live it."

And living it he is, standing up for teens everywhere, and for his four pre-teens at home, before whom he says he will place nothing, not even his ministry.

"I can't take care of God's ministry and hope he will take care of mine," he said. "If I don't practice what I teach, my whole ministry is invalidated."