Alone Time

Yesterday I found myself with some unplanned alone time.  A meeting had been cancelled, the older boys were at school and even the little guy was at preschool.  I weighed my options which included laundry, cleaning, washing sheets, baking or taxes.  A good, responsible wife and mother would have chosen at least one of these options.  I've recently decided to give myself a break, though, on this whole responsible and good stuff.  So I decided to sit and play the piano and completely ignore all the things I "should" be doing.

This is still such a new thing for me, this being able to sit and play when I feel like it.  I found some of my old books from my piano lessons days and started playing through them.  They were mostly Sonatas and Sonatinas that I practiced so often as a child, my fingers seemed to fall right into place, remembering what to do.  It was during one of these formerly well-known Sonatinas that I became overwhelmed with emotion.  It was not a particularly meaningful song to me, it didn't bring back memories or anything, so I can't explain why I suddenly found myself in tears.  It's hard to explain and I realize it sounds so sappy, but something about playing felt so right, like I was doing something I was made to do.  And in my logical mind, this doesn't make any sense.  Nobody heard me, nobody was blessed by my playing, I'm not writing original songs or playing and singing "worship" songs.  Yet I felt so strongly that I was truly glorifying God while playing a Sonatina I had mastered when I was 9, totally alone.

When I was 9 I played the music my teacher assigned to me.  And I was a good little piano student, practicing often (too often, if you ask my younger siblings).  I liked the music, it was fun to play over and over until I could play without even looking at the music.  But I had no appreciation for the music, it was just notes on a page that I could make come alive on the piano.  I think now, though, I finally have an appreciation for the music.  Now I recognize the talent, the God-given gifts that it took to compose these songs.  And whether they were written with the intent of glorifying God or not, to me they do exactly that.  What a privilege it is to take part in that!

A Piano Story

If you’ve read my last few posts, you know that I’ve been on somewhat of a journey trying to not only discover the artistic gifts God has given me, but how I can allow Him to use those gifts for His purpose.   So many cool things have happened through this journey, but I think today’s story is the coolest. 

First, some history.  I come from a long line of piano players on both sides of my family.  It was almost a given that I would play, also.  I started taking lessons at 5.  I finally decided I wanted to do other things with my time around 14.  I loved playing piano as a child, it was a stress reliever, I was confident in my ability to play and I could easily get lost in the music.  In high school I accompanied the choir and continued to play for enjoyment at home.  Then I went to college.  I was not a music major, but I took a couple music classes that made me doubt any musical ability I thought I had.  I pretty much rejected music and moved forward in other things I thought I had real talent in.  I did not even touch a piano for the next 10 years of my life, I did not sing.  I had somehow been convinced that any musical talent I possessed was not good enough and that God would certainly not want to use them.  When we bought our first home, my mom gave me her piano which had been my grandpa’s.  I was excited to play it, but found the lack of time I had and the amount I had forgotten very frustrating.  The piano was hardly touched.  Then we moved and moved again.  The piano remains in that house, far away from me. 

Last year when I did a study on Spiritual Rhythms I recognized playing piano as a desire of my heart.   I told my husband and he brought me back to reality.  There just wasn’t a way to get my piano here or a place to put it.  So I let it go.  The Creative Call confirmed my desire to play piano.  The writer encouraged us to think back to when we were little and what activities fulfilled us.  The answer for me was simple:  piano.  But I immediately began to push those thoughts away and fill with doubt that it would be possible for me to have a piano to play in our current housing situation or that I would even have any ability left to play.  Then God said, “You haven’t asked me”.  Huh.  Why didn’t I think of that?  So I asked Him.  And then I shared with other people my request.  I was immediately presented with options for different pianos and keyboards, but for various reasons they just wouldn’t work.  My husband and I went to a music store to look for something else and I looked longingly at all the different pianos in the store.  I came upon the digital pianos and knew immediately this was an option that would work.  But they were way out of budget.  Ugh.

6 weeks later, I received an email with a flyer attached.  Somebody in our small community was moving and had a digital piano she needed to sell.  For about a quarter of the cost of a new one.  The best part?  I received Christmas money this past year that covers the cost of the piano.  My piano came home yesterday thanks to the muscles of a few good men.  I’m in love.  I can hardly contain my excitement.  My kids are excited to take lessons, and they’re old enough to leave me alone to play.  What a blessing this is for my family!!  But I haven’t been brave enough to sit down and really play it, yet.  Those doubts sit just under the surface, lurking.

I often count my blessings and thank God for all the ways He shows His love to me, to my family, etc.  These are usually fairly generic, though, and it’s sometimes easy to believe He loves us all in the same way.  And then something like this comes along and He shows me how His love for me is so very intimate, that He cares about the things I care about, that He wants to bless me in ways that speak straight to my heart.  How could I do anything but turn those blessings around and offer them right back to Him?  I was reading back through my journal from the past few months and found this prayer:  Lord, I confess that I doubted my gifts were good enough to be used by You.  I gave up and put them aside instead of trusting You.  Please forgive me.  I lay all my doubts and fears and guilt about this at your feet.  I trust You with my gifts and believe that You can and will use them to glorify You, even if I don’t think I’m good enough.”  This continues to be my prayer, feel free to keep me accountable to this if you hear negativity coming out of my mouth in this area!

Artist. Or Not.

I mentioned a while back that I was embarking on a journey to discover what my calling is as an artist.  It’s really important that you understand I have never, EVER viewed myself as an artist.  I learned early on that I was not capable of drawing anything other than a stick figure and my natural interests just never led me in the way of other artistic endeavors.  I thought art was drawing, painting, pottery, basically things you created with your hands and your artistic eye.  I spent many years learning and playing the piano, but I played strictly what the sheet music told me to play so I didn’t even think that was artistic.  I wrote essays and speeches very successfully in school, but failed miserably at writing creative fiction.  It never occurred to me that writing anything other than creative fiction was artistic in any way.  In the years that followed, I labeled myself very concretely as an un-artistic person and I lived in that, I was totally ok with it. 

And yet I found myself a few months ago in a small room packed with a whole bunch of women, many whom I know to be amazing artists, all of us wanting to learn who we are as artists and how to use the talents God has given us.  I can’t really explain why I even went to this first meeting.  I mean, why in the world would an un-artistic person want to learn how to be artistic?  It’s something you have or you don’t, right?  And I thought I had proven I did not have it!  But something about the description piqued my interest and I took the plunge.  It’s been an interesting journey to say the least. 

We’re 7 chapters into the book and I’m just now beginning to think I might, just might, have some artistic abilities that God would possibly want to use.  I wish I could tell you I’ve approached this with a positive attitude, but my lack of self-confidence in this area has really made the whole journey hard.  It’s like I know God can use whatever I give Him, He’s awesome like that, but I have myself convinced that what I have to offer is nowhere good enough.  I’m constantly fighting against what I know to be true.  One week I’m feeling secure in that I am God’s artist, that what I have to offer doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be offered.  Another week I feel like God might as well skip right over me and use somebody who really has valuable artistic abilities.  I’ve even had a bit of a pity party over this.

But God’s recently given me some insights that have turned my attitude around.  I’ve always thought that an artist has the ability to see beyond what is to what it can be, that an artist can see beauty in the broken, discarded things of this world and have the ability to turn them into something beautiful.  God has shown me that while I don’t have that kind of vision or talent when it comes to objects, colors, or blank canvases, I do have that vision when it comes to people.  And while I certainly can’t create people, I can allow God to use my words and actions to help hurt, broken and seemingly discarded people become who He desires for them to be.  Whether that’s through my story told in person or in my writing, through helping lead a room full of people in worship, or simply through sharing music with my children in our home, God can see my heart and use whatever I’m willing to give Him, talented, marketable or not, to make beautiful things.  So while I may never identify myself as an artist, I can definitely call myself His artist.  

Fight

This one feels especially personal.  Part of me hesitates to put it out there, but I have a feeling that I’m just not the only one dealing with this stuff.  My stuff may not be particularly helpful or insightful to most people, but if there’s somebody else out there dealing with the same stuff, I can at least prove you’re not the only one.  Camaraderie goes a long way.  So, here goes:

I am a non-confrontational person.  I avoid it at all costs.  I just don’t like it.  Thankfully, I’m very hard to offend.  God has blessed me with a natural ability to see beyond other people’s words and actions that could be considered offensive and wonder what’s going on behind the scenes that might cause them to react that way.  I am understanding and sensitive to others.  Unfortunately, that means I’m also extremely gullible.  I can be convinced of just about anything J  Because of this, I don’t usually have occasion for confrontation…

EXCEPT when it comes to my husband.  I don’t know what it is, but all that stuff goes out the window when it comes to him.  I become opinionated and not afraid to share it.  I take anything even remotely uncomfortable and exaggerate it.  I become ultra-sensitive and very easily offended.  With him, I want to fight.  I want to be heard and I’ll use whatever means necessary to get what I need from him.  And our fighting is ugly.  Not physical, but ugly with words.  We’re mean and selfish and we both say things we know will hurt.  I know better, I really do.  I’ve tried so hard to let things go and be the quiet, submissive wife I know I should be.  Why is it so hard? 

I read this verse in my devotions recently that really convicted me.  The Lord will fight for you, you have only to be silent. Exodus 14:14  I started to think about why I fight with my husband and what I’m hoping to gain from it.  It occurred to me that somehow I’ve convinced myself that I have to stick up for myself or I’ll become his doormat.  I guess it’s this societal pressure to be a strong woman who can hold my own, that would never let a man keep me down.  It doesn’t help that I have a very strong-willed, highly opinionated man who can easily walk all over a quiet, non-confrontational woman like me without even realizing he’s doing it.  You have to understand, my husband is not an oppressive man who has any desire to make me a doormat.  In fact, I think he believes in me more than I do, so I don’t know why I’m convinced I need to fight for myself.  Fighting is getting me nowhere.  It doesn’t make me strong, it makes my marriage weak.  It doesn’t make me equal with him, it just widens the gap between us. 

So I’m doing my best not to fight.  I have to trust that if there’s something my husband needs to be convicted of, I’m probably not the one who’s going to convince him of it!  I have to trust that if something I’m feeling the need to fight about is truly worth the fight, God can handle it.  Without my help!  We don’t fight all the time, in fact I think we have a pretty good marriage, but it happens enough to drive a wedge between us and it needs to stop.  I don’t believe it’s going to stop because all our problems are suddenly solved, I believe it’s going to stop when I start keeping my mouth shut.  I can share my opinions, I can help make decisions for our family, I can even participate in discussions when the need arises, but I need to be very conscious of asking myself if what I’m going to say is likely to cause a fight.  If so, then it’s not worth saying.   Instead of fighting in my marriage I’m going to fight for my marriage, one “keep your mouth shut, Nicole” at a time.

Lessons from Preschool

As I mentioned in my last post, part of our Christmas break included going to the funeral of my husband’s grandma.  While it was certainly sad to celebrate Christmas without her, the time with family we don’t get to see often was an unexpected blessing.  We held a sort of reception after the funeral service to be able to spend time with family and celebrate this amazing woman’s life.  After most of the people had left, I witnessed my husband’s aunt very patiently allowing my 3 year old to use serving tongs to help her put together a plate of leftovers.  This is a task I would have sent him away for so I could do it myself.  It’s a task that could be messy, could be wasteful, and would certainly take three times as long for him to do as it would if I just took care of it myself.  As a mom, that’s how I look at things.  I have so many things on my plate at any one time and I’m always in get it done mode.  My husband’s aunt is a preschool teacher, though.  She loves to see children use their motor skills to complete a task.  She loves to see them figure things out for themselves.  She loves to see the sense of accomplishment they feel when that task is completed.  I love these things, too, but don’t often have the time or patience to allow them to happen. 

As I was recalling this moment later the thought hit me that God is like a preschool teacher!  He is all about the process, all about us learning, all about blessing us with a sense of accomplishment when we come through to the other side of the process.  He’s so patient even when we want to be SO independent and think we can do everything “my my myself” as my 3 year old would say.  He’s patient with our tantrums, our selfishness, and our lack of focus.  And through it all he’s kind and loving and sees our potential.  He’s like the best preschool teacher ever!

I was reminded recently in a staff meeting as we were discussing the need to make up a shortfall of funds in our orphan care ministry, that the end result is so easy for God.  He can make that money appear in any number of ways in an instant.  He can heal our sickness, provide housing, get us a job, or heal our marriage all in the blink of an eye.  But He’s not like that multi-tasking, frazzled, just get it done mom.  He’s much more like the preschool teacher who knows there is so much value in trying, in using our brains and bodies, in working through something that doesn’t come easy, in taking the time to learn and grow through the task.  He sees the potential in us, He knows the end result and He wants us to get there by relying on Him for guidance and working through it with Him.  Just like a preschool teacher wouldn’t tell her students what to do and then leave them to their own devices to figure out how to do it, God’s right by our side, showing us the way, calming us down when we get frustrated, and comforting us when it doesn’t go the way we think it should.  I just love knowing that nothing is too big for Him, but He loves me too much to just give me everything I want or even need.  He loves me so much that He wants to make me better, stronger, more humble, more compassionate and understanding, and more like Him.  That’s worth the process.

A Not so Merry Christmas

Ahh, Christmas.  A time that normally comes with such joy and celebration, a time I look forward to every year.  This year feels a bit different, though.  It's been a rough year.  Between the two of us, my husband and I have lost three close family members to death this year, first my grandmother, then his father, and then his maternal grandmother just passed away on Sunday.  Yes, this Christmas feels a bit different.  We know our loved ones are celebrating this Christmas with Jesus, there is no sorrow there.  But instead of recalling fond memories and looking forward to spending time with these loved ones, we are recalling the memories and feeling a bit sad that things will be so very different this year.  It's hard to move on, make new traditions, new memories without the loved ones we are so accustomed to being with, especially during the Christmas season.  It's hard to look forward to visiting family knowing that time will include a funeral, knowing there will be people missing from our already small circle of gift-opening and sharing.  There will be tears, lots of them.  Not something I look forward to, but a very real part of life.

And yet.  I love that phrase, don't you?  And yet, the reason we celebrate Christmas has not changed.  There is reason for joy and celebration, even if we are a bit sad, even if our earthly circumstances seem to override the joy of the season.  We've put this expectation on Christmas that everything should be happy, perfect and joyful.  Easy to see why so many people sink into depression during the holidays.  Because we live in a sinful world full of death, sadness, rejection, hunger, etc. etc. etc. If we expect the holidays to be joyful and all our circumstances perfect at Christmas, we are bound to be disappointed.  But if we expect Christmas to be joyful because Christ has come, then it will be.  I can celebrate in spite of my sadness because Christ has come.  I can celebrate in spite of my sadness because I know the ending of the story.  All that sin and sadness that sucks the joy out of our lives has been forgiven.  I have been forgiven and redeemed by that same little baby who's birth we celebrate at Christmas.  So, yes, I can be sad and this Christmas will most definitely be different, but I choose to celebrate.  I choose to revel in my Savior's coming and worship Him all the more.

Mountains

This morning my bible study encouraged me to write about what inspires me.  Of course, music was at the top of my list.  I'll write another post about that sometime.  But, today, I'm inspired by mountains.  Maybe because I have to drive over them this afternoon by myself.  There's a certain beauty and awe in the mountains, but also a healthy fear, at least for me!

I grew up in the mountains, I saw their beauty every day but I was a selfish child who only thought of them in terms of what fun they could provide me.  I went skiing, sledding and snowmobiling in the mountains and I LOVED them.  As a teenager, I began to think of them as nausea-inducing as I rode in a bus over them for countless sporting events, they really just got in the way of where I was going and what I was doing.  When I went to college, though, that's when a healthy fear of the mountains developed.  Two large, windy, fairly dangerous mountain passes stood between my home town and college.  And I drove a tiny little Honda Civic.  Great gas mileage, a bit scary for an 18-year-old driving a mountain pass.  But I did it, many, many times.  I slowly began to appreciate the mountains' beauty and especially loved when I finally made it home, right on the outskirts of town when "my" mountains came into view.  Ahhh, home.

As an adult, back when I had two small children, I would drive these same mountain passes with them in the backseat to get home for visits.  I would always time things just right so they would (hopefully) sleep over the mountains.  I'd put my favorite worship CD in and sing away while driving the familiar road.  I can't tell you the number of times I was brought to tears on this drive by the beauty I would see and something about praising God while driving through what has to be one of the most beautiful parts of His creation.  I had several of these "mountain top" experiences.  It was a difficult time for me and God always spoke so clearly to me through His creation during this time.

So yes, mountains are an inspiration to me.  There was a time when we had to leave Colorado and moved to Flagstaff, Arizona.  I was not happy about this move, it had been a rough time in my life, my marriage, etc. leading up to this point and I really didn't want to follow my husband.  But I did.  I did not like Flagstaff, something about it never quite "jived" with me.  I never felt like I quite fit in there.  BUT, I realized very quickly that God put me in a place that, although it felt nothing like home, it looked quite a lot like home.  I was living in the mountains, with a mountain right out my kitchen window to look at.  I recognized that, even in my anger and resentment in being there, God was giving me a little personal blessing to get me through.  Soon after we moved there, He also gave me a friend.  The good friend I had been needing for so long.  I didn't know it at the time, but God was preparing me for an even more difficult time in my life.  Now I can look back and see it.  I love it when that happens :-)

Like I mentioned, God was preparing me for a very difficult time in my life.  I won't go into that here, but I want to give you a bit of back info.  My husband's career was based in colleges/universities.  The small town I grew up in did not, nor would it ever have, a college or university.  I knew when I married him that I would never get to live in my home town.  Well, through this rough stuff we went through in Flagstaff, God took us back to my home town.  We expected to be there a couple weeks on the way to something bigger and better and it's now turned into 3 years with no intention to leave anytime in the near future.  It was rough, I'm not gonna lie and I wasn't sure I'd make it through with any sanity left, but God is so gracious.  He knew exactly what I needed and blessed me with it.  I get to live with my family, with my mountains, in a community that I "fit" into.  Maybe it seems dumb to make mountains such a big part of my story, but I love when I can look back and see how God has used His creation to bless me, inspire me, and breathe life into me.  Yep, the mountains inspire me.