daring to ask

Last semester, my piano professor frequently said to me, “Amy, you need to be more patient with yourself.”

I was caught in a cycle of discouragement, frustration, and negligence with piano. I was discouraged by the sloth-like pace at which I was progressing, and therefore had a hard time getting myself into the practice room. And when I finally did practice, I would become so frustrated with myself for making mistakes, then trying to correct them, but seemingly not making any fruitful progress. And this frustration was only increased by the fact that I knew my painfully slow progress was a result of me not practicing. But as discouragement did a number on me, I often went two or three days without getting to the keys. And so went the cycle: discouragement, therefore not practicing; not practicing, therefore frustration and more discouragement….
And my professor would tell me that I need to be patient with myself and with practicing.
But even in this digressive cycle, I still wanted to get better, and I still wanted to play. But I wanted to work on a passage once, fix it, and never have to work on it again. Why do I have to play two measures of a Bach two-part invention twenty times before I can actually get through it (almost) flawlessly? And then I would still have to go back to the piece the next day, and do that same passage twenty more times!

In a word: impatience.

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My visit home has been immensely refreshing. I have had the time and space I often crave to pour into reading, writing, reflecting, and prayer (though I really never do enough of that last one). And amid this reflective study, one particular word has perpetually inserted itself in my pools of thought:

P A T I E N C E.

I have discovered, somewhat begrudgingly, that I greatly lack in this priceless virtue. If I examine the progression of my thoughts turning into ideas, and my ideas turning into actions, in light of patience, I find an embarrassing shortage. Instead, I would say that the majority of my decisions are made impulsively and hastily.

And so, I have come to a resolution for 2016.
And that is patience.
I am not expecting to execute this active virtue with expert precision and flawless performance right off the hop. Just as patience is required to learn a piece of music, to grow in patience will require patience (see the irony?). It will also require grace, diligence, and prayer. There will be stumbles and failures. Just like those darn two measures of a Bach invention, I will have to “practice” being patient, likely more than twenty times.
But Jesus says, “Ask….seek….knock…If you [know] how to give good gifts…how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”
So my thinking is: if God is able to do “exceedingly abundantly above what [I] ask or think”, surely then He is able to teach me patience.

2016 Challenge: Dare to ask God to do things in you that seem out of reach for you. {Nothing} is impossible with Him.

At the end of the year we turn with eagerness to all that God has for the future, and yet anxiety is apt to arise when we remember our yesterdays…
But God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual growth for our future…
But let us go out with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us…
Leave the broken, irreversible past in His hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him.

~ Oswald Chambers ~

Matthew 7:7 & 11; Ephesians 3:20, Mark 10:27