Playing with Perfect Imperfection

I have been playing piano more lately, especially after The Hymn Society conference a few weeks ago. Mostly I play arrangements of hymns, some of them quite easy and others really quite out of the realm of possibility for me to play even recognizedly, at least for now. One does get better with practice however.

A memory that keeps floating through my mind here lately is from when we lived in the Pennsylvania apartment from the summer of 2006 to the summer of 2008. Philip found a used piano for me to play on while the kids and I were living there. When I was married to him and afterward as well, I had a habit of finding an arrangement I thought I would enjoy playing, starting to play it, realized how many wrong notes I was hitting and that there were others in the house who had to hear it and I quit. I almost always quit, in the middle of a piece. That is, until one night at the apartment, my then 16 year old son Caleb yelled from his room as I quit a hymn arrangement yet again, "STOP QUITTING, MOM! You sound really fine! KEEP PLAYING!" Honest, he said that. He did not think it wrong that I was hitting sour, ugly notes and he wasn't bothered by my intermediate playing of an advanced arrangement. What he WAS really bugged by was that I would give up and wouldn't try to finish it once it felt too hard, or I was afraid I was offending his and his sister's ears. It was and is harder on his ears and eyes when he hears or sees me give into the difficulty of a situation or piano piece.

So, honestly, since that time, I try to remember to play it all the way through, mostly anyway, even though sometimes it feels like I am torturing the piano and torturing the music and that God eternal winces when a sharp is missed or my glissando sounds more like the cat on the keys.

Completing the piece does bring a since of satisfaction and I try to ALWAYS get the LAST note right. I really hope that you have someone around who endures the discord and applauds the effort. Know that there is One who does, and when you don't feel worthy to keep trying because you are making so much a mess of it, and if you make mess of it again, God is still listening, and enduring, and encouraging, and beckoning you to fear not and to still your soul. And know that the Creator of All Beauty is truly glorified by the love in your heart for the Song you keep trying to play.