Yesterday morning I was playing the piano in the interim between our pre-prayer time and Sunday school.  Toward the end of my 15 minutes of playing, Carroll W stopped to talk to me, and he commented that I seemed to be able to keep playing without seeming to be conscious of what I was doing.  It’s true, I admitted.  I can sort of put it on auto-pilot and just play.  Carroll said something about that seeming unfathomable to him, and I told him I felt the same way!

When I was a little girl I could tell that my mom could just sit at the piano and play, with music or without.  I thought that would be so amazing to be able to do that myself.  When I first began taking lessons (age 8), I quickly discovered how far I was from being able to do that.  I ended up stopping lessons after two years—no nearer to playing with the ease my mother has. 

When I started lessons again after college, I still longed for that flow, and my teacher, Carey Schram, helped me get a little closer by teaching me to play with chord charts.  Something clicked in my head after just my second lesson with Carey.  I still didn’t have the easy flow down, but the mathematics of the piano suddenly began to make sense to me.  For the first time I began to see everything I was playing in terms of chords and intervals, rather than just a random series of notes.  The keyboard looked different.  It was a revelation.

It still took some time before I could play with even a hint of my mother’s style, but these days, I can comfortably sit down at the piano and just play, if I feel like it.  I am not an accomplished pianist in many ways.  I could name a half dozen people in my own church who play better than I do, but I love that I can play and worship and pray and compose, without having to struggle to figure out where my fingers will go between every transition.  God is good!