Full Circle

pI had a weird amount of difficulty titling this post. (Two posts in one week! Can you even?)

This story starts a long time ago. It starts, in fact, before I was born, when a seriously melancholic young man bought a guitar and played all the good solid folk-rock from the 60s and 70s--Gordon Lightfoot and Leonard Cohen and Peter, Paul & Mary--until he had a conversion and played Praise & Worship music. Then he got married, and had a little girl who loved music and loved guitars, and he played "Puff the Magic Dragon" to her as a bedtime song for many many moons.

The story continues: the little girl grew up, messing around on flute, quitting piano because she thought her teacher was a gorgon (she had terrifying eyebrows and used to slam my fingers on the correct keys: no joke), fumbling around on the gee-tar and dreaming of whistling gypsy minstrels and Irish rovers and falling in love with Dvorak. (Rabbit trail: my first attempt at college was a state school. I somehow ended up on what was known as the "whore floor" where I didn't exactly fit in so well. But while they were all blasting their bootie music, I cranked up the New World Symphony. They all were stopping by my room: "What is that?! It's amazing!" **Beauty for the WIN!**) And then this past summer I ran into some peoples who reminded me of all that, of all that intense burning desire to have music part of my family and home and life.

In the many preparations for this baby's uncertain timing, my dad sent me a random email: Do you want my steel string guitar? Well, gee golly, let me thinkaminuteYES. Yes, please!

in all her 70s beauteous glory--so love!

So he brought it down, and it brought tears to my eyes: my daddy's guitar, to me.

See, the thing is, life so often does not turn out the way we want (how's that for inane cliche?). Dreams *poof* blow away, melting with ephemeral morning mists. But if we don't cling to what we want with that death-grip of no trust--oh ye of little faith!--then God has a way of gathering our vanished hopes, shaking them out into something new, real, solid, attainable, something far more tangible than wishes hopes dreams. It takes a lot of trust to let go of what we want, even if we want something good, beautiful, noble. So often we want it in the wrong way, or at the wrong time.

Sarah's actual piano; so thankful

Playing at Gypsies, indeed. But in my home, my real solid home, I have received many gifts. As any real musician will tell you (and as some have told me to my face), I am a total hack: Jack-of-Some-Trades, at best. I used to be decent on my flute, but that was auld lang syne. Now I plinker away on Sarah's piano and wrassle with my hate-to-be-still boys to practice their violin. (We're still on Twinkles. It's awesome.) And my talents may be feeble, they may not measure up to your standards, Mr RealMusician, but they are mine, and I can give them to the people that God has given to me.

(like this one. i'm so over the moon.)