Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Music for my heart

I have recently taught a couple of lessons in Sunday School about the Psalms.  It is perfect for me to teach - the Psalms are the songs of faith.  Praise, happiness, gratitude, anger, sorrow, remorse, regret.  Prayers from a desperately lost people to the God who saves, loves, protects them.  They are pure.  The emotion is raw.  As a singer of hymns, I love the Bible's hymn book.  When I read them, I hear the melodies that I know have been for them.  Sometimes it is classical music - Handle, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart.  Sometimes it is contemporary.  The type of music doesn't matter - it is the message which resonates for me.

My mother said that I sang before I talked.  She wrote in my baby book that I sang the same little song all day long.  I didn't know words but the melody was always the same.  I wonder what it sounded like.

Before I was 6 years old, at the beginning of my first grade year, she said I came to her in tears one day wanting to know when my piano lessons would start.  She said they would start right now.  And so it began.  Until the end of my sixth grade year, I studied under her tutelage at that piano and forced my little hands to do what only larger hands could do.  I still have little hands and have learned in the last 39 years (that's how long I have been playing the piano) to adapt.  Having your mother as a piano teacher is not easy - she was harder and harsher on me than her other students.

When we moved after my 6th grade year, the formal lessons stopped but I continued playing for myself and for her, playing for children's choirs and church, continuing to learn from her expertise.  Playing is harder now because I am desperately out of practice, but I love the sound I can made from my hands.  My mom and I had a tumultuous relationship, but of the things I inherited from her, I'm glad music was one of those.  It is the center of my soul, the place where God speaks to my heart.  It is where the holy Spirit sends His comfort and joy and peace.

It is where I find rest.