I Really Take Music for Granted Sometimes

I was sitting in my living room playing guitar and singing praise songs when a thought hit me. “I have been taking this time and this ability for granted.”  When I play guitar, I usually don’t spend time reflecting on the hours I spent in my dorm room trying to figure out how to bend my fingers in ways they had never been bent before, trying to get that muscle memory ingrained in my hands.  I don’t reflect on the calluses that built up on my fingertips from repeated tab and chord practice when I played so long that it hurt a lot to continue pressing against the frets.

I don’t often think back about the time I spent in the practice rooms at college working on becoming proficient at playing chords on the piano.  Not only learning how to play them in a non “carnival” music like way (still working on that), but to also sing at the same time while playing the chords for the praise team I was on. 

And when I sing, I often don’t think back on the hours of time I spent in choir and in voice lessons in college working on my voice.  How after my 1 hour voice lessons, I would be as tired as I would be if I had ran 2 miles around the school.  How, like an athlete, I repeatedly warmed up my voice and ate a diet that would complement my voice while repeated eating vitamin C tablets and drinking my weight in water and throat coat tea to help restore my voice when it was sick and tired. 

It has all become muscle memory.  My face automatically lifting when I sing high and flip to the next register.  The placement my mouth should have when I sing the word “you.” The breathing from my diaphragm when I go for long breathing passages.  And while I would say that I am not an expert at piano and guitar AT ALL, there has been some work put in in the past to get where I am today.   

When people see me play and sing, they don’t see the hours of my past practicing.  They just see the end result.  I have had people come up to me and say, “It just comes so easily to you.”  While I don’t know if I learned guitar and piano basics faster than anyone, a lot of people were not there in the practice rooms and there in my dorm room.  It took time and effort.

I am very thankful for my parents for the instruments that have helped me acquire.  When I was a kid, my parents put me in piano lessons with my siblings.  Even though I was only in lessons for a couple of years, I was able to pick up the basics.  This helped me so much with theory, chord structure and note names.  It also helped me to start writing my own songs.  Even today when I have to transpose keys, I sometimes write an octave worth of a keyboard on the paper and it helps me visualize where the notes need to go.  My parents also let me do percussion in band.  This helped me so much develop a sense of rhythm and how to read different notes.  Finally, my parents helped me get my first guitar.  After my request for a drum set had gotten repeatedly rejected, I turned my sights into getting a guitar.  I remember one winter day before I was going to head back to college from break, my parents said, “Anne, we were thinking that we would look at guitars today, just to see.”  I was completely taken back, by this request, but we went to Guitar Center.  THAT DAY, a gently used guitar had been dropped off and was available for a really good price.  My parents let me get it, and soon I had a new instrument to try and learn.

Playing music for me has always been a joy and at one point I thought it would be a career.  Now, it is a hobby and a tool that God has given me to help others worship.  Being able to be actively involved in worship is something that is not a burden or stressful.  It is when I am singing praises to God that I feel the most free.  

How thankful I am that God gave me this gift.  He gave me the perseverance while I was learning the instruments I play so I could serve him with my voice and gift.  I get to be involved actively in worship at least twice a week, with an additional time every month for our faculty worship.  And while my main job doesn't actually involve music, maybe one day I will have one that will.  Either way, I am very thankful that God has kept this with me. 

What I lose sight of some time however, is the time when I play that it is just God and me in the room.  I think I need more of that time.  When I communicate my thanks to God by using his gift, and we have a close time of communion.  I think I need more of that in my life.  I know I need more of that in my life.  I need to thank him more for the journey and not just take the end result for granted.  I suggest you do the same.  Think of the gifts that God has blessed you with that you do without even thinking.  Reflect on the time you spent working on this skill to where you got it today and thank God for it.

That’s all I got.