playing guitar

I have a guitar. It’s older than I am, but I’m not sure how much older. All I know is it belonged to my uncle. He died a few months before I was born. I don’t remember exactly how the guitar came to be in my possession except that I think I acquired it sometime after my grandfather died the year I graduated from college. I asked if I could have it. Someone said yes. I didn’t know how to play it when I asked for it but I had friends who could teach me. 

My guitar playing journey has been sporadic at best. I’m no musician, not really. I know how songs are supposed to sound, sometimes, but I can’t really read music and when the conversation turns to key changes and notes I start to panic a little. I’m forever afraid of being called an imposter at anything I try to do. I live with a ridiculous amount of insecurity inside my brain. Most days, I manage to set it aside and live in the confidence of who I am and who I was made to be and who I am becoming but some days the whispers of “not enough” and “who do you think you are?” are loud and debilitating. I nod in agreement. You’re right, I say to the voices in my head, I’m not the girl for this.

It holds me back from so many things.

Sometimes, though, I move ahead anyway. I ignore the voices (they never really go away) and take the next step and the next one until I’m solidly in new territory and scared out of my mind.

This is where I found myself on Sunday morning–with a guitar strapped to my body standing in front of my church’s assembled people playing songs of praise. It was a moment months in the making and the act of carrying it out had my knees knocking and palms sweating. My fingers shook either from the cold of the sanctuary or the anxiety of doing a new thing. Maybe both.

For months, I’ve been practicing and reacquainting myself with chords and strings and strumming. It’s been a half-hearted effort but something I’ve wanted to do as part of my after-40 plan for becoming the best version of myself. I practiced during the summer and finally in the fall sent our worship leader a list of songs I was comfortable playing. When she scheduled me for an actual date, the freaking out began, and I scrambled to watch YouTube videos and find out how to transpose chords to ones I could actually play. I practiced in the comfort of my home imagining how terrible this was all going to go down because I’m such an unaccomplished musician.

I almost backed out.

By the time I arrived to the rehearsal on Sunday morning, an hour before the service was to start, I was resigned to do my best and let it all happen as it would. I kept making excuses for my abilities and all I found in return was encouragement and acceptance. Those who had more talent and abilities were eager to share their knowledge and make room for me in the group.

And it turns out that playing songs together is more fun than playing them alone. But practicing alone helped me prepare for the time together.

The songs sound different when I’m playing alone, and they are richer and fuller when played with others.

Almost as if that’s how it was meant to be.

—

I can’t help but think that this is the way I’m to practice my faith as well.

To recognize my abilities and do what I can do with them, to practice living out what I believe during the days between assemblies, and to join with others in a collaborative practice and learn from those with more experience.

In the assembly, we are to welcome each other and the unique gifts each of us bring to the group. We are to accept each other where we are and help each other learn. We are to join our efforts in concert, celebrating how different our beliefs “sound” when practiced together.

We are richer, fuller, more vibrant when we are all of us doing the thing we were made to do. In the working together there will be stumbling and fumbling. There will be acknowledgement of weakness and areas of lack but also people to stand with us and beside us to fill the gaps we could not fill ourselves.

We are meant to work together for the common good. It is better this way.

I can’t say exactly what it looks like when it comes to spiritual practice, but I know it involves all of us. Some of us need to figure out what our strengths and gifts are. Some of us need to raise our hands and say, “I can do that.” Some of us need to take a trembling step in a new direction and be strengthened by those who’ve been that way before. Some of us need to extend our hands to the ones who feel like they have no business being there and say, “Welcome. You belong here.”

I don’t know what it will look like specifically, but I can imagine the beauty of it. I know how I feel right now at this moment having taken that terrifying step toward something new.

I am encouraged and inspired and confident and full of good thoughts and feelings. (I am looking forward to church again, which is not always something I can say.) Most of all, I am hopeful. That ordinary people who meet together regularly can influence each other in meaningful ways (and that in turn those people can change a little piece of the world around them.)

This is how the good news is showing itself to me today. This is what will carry me through a week that is sure to be full of reasons to doubt (myself and others). This is what will buoy me the next time I need to take a new step.

This is what is saving my life right now.