Right in the middle

It was one of those days. I sat listening to four of my five children play the piano for their piano teacher, Ms. Barbi. As each of my children played through their lessons, I felt myself becoming more and more irritated. With each missed note, my frustration grew. We were playing staccato when we should be legato. Our eighth notes were quarter notes. Our fingers weren't curved and we needed haircuts. 

The more I listened to my kids plunk on the piano, the more I realized how lacking we were. The simple request our sweet Barbi asked is that we practice five times a week. How hard is that? We homeschool. Our piano is in our home. In fact, we have two pianos. One would think it would be a natural and easy relationship. Yet, this week we were sorely lacking.

After each child finished their lesson, I looked up at them and forced a smile, hoping to mask my dark and miry thoughts. Barbi didn't let on. She is always amazingly positive and lovingly corrective. In our eleven years of weekly lessons, she has never raised her voice or hinted a smidgen of resentment. She never ripped their piano music into shreds and told my children to quit. I had watched her weekly through the years…Patient. Loving. Affirming. Kind. Always pushing for excellence. Raising the bar. She believes in her students and they believe in her. They go to the moon and back for her each week. And she smiles a lot (not forced like mine). Barbie is everything you would want in a teacher: a true gift to her students and their parents. 

As I sat there, I made mental notes to set up an appointment with Barbi.

Here was my agenda for Barbi:

#1. Would Barbi be my personal mentor to help me be a more patient person?

#2. Or better yet, would Barbi finish raising my five children? I know she would make them practice the piano each week and for sure, get them haircuts.

As I packed up my delinquents to leave, instead of my well thought-out agenda, I blurted out with tears "Should we just quit?” (I have great self-control and waited until the kids had left the room…).

Barbi simply replied, "You're right in the middle of it all.”

"What...?" she obviously didn't understand that “I had just quit!"

"You're right in the middle of it...” she again repeated. "You can't see the end yet because you're still in the middle. All you can see is today, you need to look at the end.”
I was personally hoping for a little more of a counseling session. I needed another 3 hours to confess all of my faults and failures...I had just started my list and I had not yet asked her to take over as my children's mother to help me with those missed practices. 

Yet, as I left, her wise counsel began to make its way into my despairing soul: “Keep the end in mind.”

I was consumed with the work of raising a family. I couldn't see past the wrong notes and the outgrown haircuts. I was looking at the things that weren't perfect. And believe me, there was plenty.

My focus was misplaced. It was about achievement and perfection. Perfect children. Perfect humans. Perfect weeks with perfect piano practices. Here was my struggle and the source of my frustration, I was looking at all that we were not instead at what we had and where we were going.

I started the car and something halted me as I glanced in the rearview mirror. It was my son. My cute, shaggy-haired 8 year-old boy. I could see pride in his eyes over the music that his eight year-old fingers had just created. He had pleased his Ms. Barbi and his heart was full. I looked at my seventeen year-old boy in the passenger seat next to me and realized that there was no boy left in him. His jaw was squared, yet his heart tender. In the past twelve years, Barbie had imparted in him a love for music that for him translated into more than hours of practicing Grieg and Tchaikovsky, yet now also included his lovingly pounding out worship songs that filled the rooms of our home. He was a worshipper of His Lord and the piano had unlocked that passion. 

I glanced at my fourteen year old who was quickly leaving boyhood and was just beginning to see the possibilities before him. His hands were discovering that with steady discipline combined with the rigor of Classical study a joy which comes from attaining goals that seemed beyond reach. 

And sitting next to him was my eleven year-old, who’s diligent hands were consistently faithful to follow through - -I don't know if he actually had missed many practices...he is the rare one in the bunch who actually practiced without being asked. The expression and the heart of a musician was awakening in him and rarely could he walk by a piano and not sit down to play it.

And squeezed between her brothers was my little five-year old girl who loves all things beautiful and lovely. She had not yet begun her official music lessons, but her life was music and song. What a gift she had been handed! In the short five years of her life, her world was filled with music that echoed daily in the walls of our home created by the hands of her older brothers. She daily drank of the fruit of their labor and passion and she would never know a world without music and the love from which it came.

Yes, I needed to be reminded to look at the end. 

I wish everyone had or could brush shoulders with a music teacher like Barbi Cottingham …her passion and love surpasses the lessons of eighth notes and inversions.

That day, I realized that I also was one of Barbi’s students.