Hard work

I have an amazing God.

An amazing living God, who died for me and was raised again, who interacts with me in my life, and listens to my every thought and dream and whisper. A God who knows who I really am, and shaping me into who He created me to be. A God who gives dreams, and then faithfully walks alongside me while He fulfills those dreams.

He never leaves me. He never lets me cry for long - He always comes. He always comes and saves me.

Sometimes I can't see what He's doing or where He's taking me. Sometimes it's terrifying, and I think I don't have what it takes to go on. Sometimes I get frustrated with myself and want to just stop existing. Just poof into a cloud and quit. I give up.

But I'm realizing now that I can't expect life to just go smoothly all the time. It just isn't like that. You'd think that after 21 years of being in this fallen world, I'd have realized that by now. Sometimes I think that "being in God's will" means everything goes hunky dory, but the reality is that doing what you're supposed to be doing will always involve struggle. And just 'cause it doesn't go perfect the first time doesn't mean that you don't have what it takes.

I have a piano student - she's six years old. And today our lesson was kind of a break through. I've been teaching her for almost eight months and every single lesson I've been trying to get her to play three notes in a satisfactory manner: C, D, and E. Until today she could never do it properly. She could bird-peck them with one finger, or play them all blurred together at once, but she couldn't play them one after another with three different fingers, for eight months. It got really discouraging after a while, and she got discouraged, and she'd hate piano lessons sometimes. I would hate it sometimes. She said she just didn't like piano. And every time I said, "now time for some piano," she'd groan and ask if we could do something else.

But today, she did it. She paid attention and she learned how to properly play C, D, and E with correct fingering and technique. I was so happy that I made her do it over and over again, and I told her how proud I was of her. But as soon as she got it, she said, "this is hard work!" And it is. Learning a new skill is a lot of hard work. Getting good at anything is a lot of hard work.

I used to be really frustrated and complain about my student because she would only try once, and then give up for the rest of the lesson. But how much of a hypocrite am I, that I get mad at her for that, and yet in my own life I can so easily get discouraged from what I'm meant to do? In the past two weeks I've had both recitals and juries for piano and voice. I'm in my third year as a music major, and I still get incredibly nervous and even nauseous when I have to perform. And I always seem to mess something up in performances, like my breathing or my my high notes, or I'll forget my words (and make up something that sounds German), or my hands will be shaking at the piano so much that I miss the keys. Sometimes I let my little glitches crush me. Instead of realizing that learning is about falling down and getting back up again. And again and again.

The truth is, I've only been taking voice lessons for four years, and piano lessons for five years. And right now I'm in grade 8 piano and ARCT in voice. I came into first year at Redeemer with nothing but grade 2 piano, one year of voice lessons, and some self-taught theory from a book. Yet somehow I passed the theory entrance exam, did two more piano grades that year, and aced my voice jury. I have no idea how it happened. But now I'm here, in the middle of my dreams, and I need to realize that it's not going to be easy, but it can happen.

You can't let a bad day, or a little glitch scare you off. I kind of learned that from taking Calculus last year. I had a tutor, and was acing the assignments with her help, but I almost failed the first midterm, partly because I was so nervous for it and couldn't sleep the night before. I got something like 51%, and was devastated. When I told my tutor about it, we went over it, she shrugged, and said, "Maybe you just had a bad day. Don't worry about it." Despite that midterm, I somehow managed to come out of that class with an A.