Music Lessons

I picked out a tune on my grandparents’ old Wurlitzer when I was quite small, plucking the keys to make a melody I recognized. I could hear harmonies before I knew what they were, so my parents signed me up for music lessons when I was seven. I learned basics with one teacher, then switched to another teacher who taught me from age ten to sixteen. That teacher taught me to both love and despise my weekly appointments with her. I loved the ability she pulled from my fingertips but hated her methods.

She was about eighty years old, a lifelong pianist for the Methodist church near her house. Widowed and remarried, she lived in an ancient, white bungalow with a wide wraparound porch and an enviable swing. And the swing was where you sat to wait for your turn at the piano inside—rain or shine, in the blaze of summer or dead of winter. The rules were rigid, and a sick feeling roiled in my stomach every week. I knew she would study my hands as they fumbled through Chopin or Bach, reflecting how little I’d practiced.

With an ever-present pencil, she left stern little remarks in my notebook and all throughout the margins of my sheet music—

“Pay attention!”
“SLOW DOWN.”
“Heed the time signature.”
“Memorize with your brain, not your hands.”

And on it went, little bits of instruction sometimes underlined thrice and circled to get my disinterested attention.

The problem wasn’t so much with my hard-nosed teacher. Though she left much to be desired when it came to inspiring me to want to learn the piano (unless you count pure, unadulterated fear), she wasn’t wrong about my practice habits—or lack thereof. The problem is that I wanted to be an accomplished pianist without putting in the work to become one. Gifted with some natural ability, I thought that I could lean hard on that and slide through instruction without heeding any, well—instruction. Pride, it was. And let’s be honest, a good dose of laziness.

I begged my parents often to let me quit. But when faced with the prospect of actually quitting (after my mom had received one too many calls from my teacher about my lack of practice), I couldn’t go through with it because in the end I did want to play the piano. I stuck with those music lessons for years, learning a week at a time that if I wanted to get to the end, I had to deal with the means.

Twenty years after I finally quit, I became the teacher. In the afternoons, my house resonated with the painful sounds of children learning to play on my aging Wurlitzer. For the past six years I’ve taught music lessons hundreds of times, and I’m never too far from the strict lady in the bungalow with the porch swing. I understand her rigidity for we quit things far too soon.

We live in a culture that feeds our desire for instant gratification. If something is worth doing, it must be easily done. We put in little effort but expect large returns. Think about the way we utilize our phones. In two taps and a swipe, I can order books, clothes, food, household items—anything I can think of, and chances are I’ll hold it in my hands in less than 48 hours. In a single tap on a screen that fits in my pocket, I can find the answer to virtually any question I have. The accumulation of knowledge, entertainment, and possessions is nearly instantaneous these days. We are always connected to what we want. Thus, when it comes to things like knowing people, learning a skill, or understanding a concept, we believe the results should be immediate.

But the most important things in life—relationships, knowledge of God and His purposes, use of our gifts—they can’t be cultivated, activated, or ordered in a moment. They take investments of time, work, and sacrifice. They require that we practice patience.

I think of all those old, painful music lessons when I’m struggling through Bible study, when I’d rather slip in and out of church without being known, when I’m praying for something hard. Our life in Christ was miraculously won in a moment of salvation—we were made new “the hour [we] first believed[1].” But the sanctification part is worked out over years and years of investments. Deposits of time, study, prayer, fellowship. Over and over, we open up our Bibles, wrestle with the text, with our sin, with how to love the people inside the church and out, with our circumstances, with sharing the gospel—all the most important parts of our life in Christ.

If we want growth and maturity, we must fight the desire for instant versions of those gifts. For truly, they are gifts that God gives as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling—for it is God who works in us to will and to work for His good pleasure (Phil. 2:12-13). God has given us everything we need for life and godliness, but we are tasked with the “working out” part as He works in us. The desire to be like Jesus is from Him, the equipping is given through Him, and the work is done in obedience to Him. If we want to grow in godliness as believers in Christ, then the everyday work of perseverance must characterize our lives.

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Today I play a baby grand, a Kawaii with a black lacquer finish and perfectly weighted keys. My husband bought it for me two years ago when my Wurlitzer gave up the ghost and refused to hold its tune. Years of combining both desire and hard work has resulted in my love for both playing and composing music. But, I’ve never arrived. There is always more to learn, more to practice, more chords for my fingers to fumble through before embracing with confidence. I can trip and stumble through a new piece of music, fight with a chord progression that doesn’t want to be pinned down, and shut the piano lid with frustration.

But unlike the bungalow and the porch swing and the sternly penciled comments, there isn’t a hard-nosed teacher on the other side of my life in Christ. There is a gracious Father who has included me in His story and given me a song to sing. Learning it is hard, but it is joy.

 

The desire to be like Jesus is from Him, the equipping is given through Him, and the work is done in obedience to Him. Share on X

[1] John Newton. “Amazing Grace”

Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash