Timing is Everything

My thought material for this blog is threefold. I'll explain, but start by stating that timing has suddenly come under my microscope and, therefore, analysis, in three different areas:

1 - Learning to play the piano requires an understanding of timing. I'm now the proud teacher of three (count them - 1, 2, and 3!) adorable piano students. Every Tuesday evening we play piano together, and I spend a lot of time counting, "1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4..." over and over again. It's awesome! But also a bit tricky when we have to work on timing issues. You can play notes all you want, but if they aren't played in a proper sequence, with the proper cadence, it's all for naught.

2 - While I'm a teacher of music, I'm also a student - specifically on the instrument of guitar. I've been playing since last October, taking lessons from my friend Nate, and we're moving firmly into strum-pattern land these days. Mostly because I'm terrible at it! But I think I'm getting better... Maybe it's the piano lessons that are helping? I'm not sure, but Nate's assignment for me last week was to develop three different strum patterns using 1/8th notes, in 4/4 time, and to be prepared to play a simple chord sequence of E-A-B-A. For the first time, it seemed to really just click for me, which was cool!

3 - The other two ideas about timing really simply reflect a much larger scope of timing, which I won't elaborate on too much, but suffice it to say that God has recently been blowing me away with his timing of things! It's actually been such a wonderful, amazing, good thing. I feel that much of the past 2 years in my life has been learning to wait for God's timing - to surrender my desires and wishes to him, and to simply let him do what he wants, resting in his wisdom. It's been a struggle. I've fought it off often - unable to truly rest. But the last few months have, through a variety of kind of crazy events, led me to a place of NEEDING to rest in him - no other option really presented itself! But this week has certainly seen the development of God's timing from the "Oh, so THAT'S why God did that then!" perspective. Hindsight, after all, is always 20/20 they say, and looking back at the clock always helps you see the consistent pattern of the passage of time, regardless of how long this second that you're living in feels, or how long the previous seconds felt like they were.

Like with a good piece of music, played well, God knows just EXACTLY when to introduce new elements and new understandings into our lives. And like an ill-played note or missed strum, I've seen how when I try to take things on my own, without waiting for the time required to pass and the proper moment to arrive, things get a bit befuddled. But when we - when you and I - take things exactly in the moment God planned and intended, it's like making beautiful music.

And music is, in essence, an expression of time and contrast.

So, what is the point?

I've been reading a book by Henri Nouwen that I am purposefully (although, perhaps ALMOST on a dare...?) trying to read through slowly. My friend Gabe loaned it to me, and he's a little OCD about the state of his books, so I've thoroughly resisted from writing in the book... itself. However, the book is currently littered with sticky notes recording my thoughts and comments through Part 1. Then I realized that I was putting more work into reading the book than thought (possibly?), and I stopped taking notes, because I sort of just wanted to see what it would be like to read a book that made me think that I did NOT take notes in.

Honestly, it's been difficult.

I think taking notes is a lazy form of thinking for me - because it means I get to blab whatever thought I have at that moment onto the page and then I don't have to think it any more. I wonder if it might be more beneficial - albeit more work - to let the thoughts simmer before I articulate them in any fashion.

So I haven't written anything down throughout Part 2 and Part 3 of the book. But I'm now on my third read of those parts, because I feel like I'm needing to re-read in order to absorb the lesson.

As I was pondering this hiatus from my normal book reading actions, I was thinking about some of the other ways I've been purposeful about changing lately.

One of the primary ways is in my thinking (perhaps influenced a bit by Nouwen?? Very possible). I was having a text conversation with my friend Adam the other day and he was asking if I'm going to do the Peace Corps. I said I didn't know. He commented that it was really my call at this point. I told him I was praying and waiting. He asked if I was any closer to the answer.

That was a good question. And after I thought about it, I thought I'd had a revelation of a good answer.

I wonder, maybe getting an answer to my prayer for direction isn't really the point. Maybe it never was the point. Maybe I will never know if I should or should not join the Peace Corps. Maybe the whole point is, instead, to simply wait. Maybe there is something great to be learned within the waiting. Maybe, rather than the answer being the point of waiting, waiting is the point of waiting. Huh. Maybe God designs seasons of waiting so that I'll walk by faith in my trust. Maybe it's to help me understand this strange idea of holding hope and courage with a lack of answers and therefore a complete dependency on God.

OK, honestly, I have to admit I like the waiting. I know that sounds weird, and if you ask again in a few days, the answer might have changed... but right now, tonight, in this season, I'm thoroughly enjoying waiting and just living daily in the knowledge that, like, God knows what he's doing, man! He knows what's best for me, he knows what I desire, but he also knows what I need! And there's something fantastic about recognizing the holding pattern, and your position in it, and then coming to actually delight IN that holding pattern. Because then it - meaning life - truly cannot get any better within the scope of my estimation, because even though I might have hopes for the future, I'm recognizing that this, now, today is the present, and the present is all I really have to work with at any given point in my life anyhow!

So rather than waste today on anxiety or hope for tomorrow, maybe the point is to learn to live without anxiety today. And every day.

Maybe I'm just off my rocker due to ... I don't know, not recording my thoughts in the page margins or something, but I wonder if I'm on to something on a personal, self/God-discovery sort of bent with this realization.

And that's my point.

March 5th Reading

I have a daily devotional book that I absolutely love. Last year, about this time, I was meeting to have coffee with my friend Bethany. Bethany is awesome. She works at the awesomest coffee shop on earth right now, but that isn't what makes her awesome (we were meeting at that awesome coffee shop, ZoJo's, which now is selling their coffee beans through Wholefoods - oh yes, which is fantastic! But I'm digressing. Sorry).

No, what makes Bethany awesome is her heart. It's beating (that's always good to have in friends, I have to admit). And sometimes I think it beats pure love. Or, at least, there's a hefty dose of it in there.

Anyhow, Bethany was ordering her coffee or using the restroom or something, and she'd left a battered book on the table that we were sitting at. Being a book-loving kind of person, I glanced at it and saw that it was titled, "Streams in the Desert: 366 Daily Devotional Readings." I'd actually been looking for a new devotional book, and I love the desert, so I picked it up and started thumbing through it. I looked at the January 29th posting (my birthday - I always look at that in daily devotional readings), and the September 30th posting (a "death day" of sorts in my life - I like to see what's been written for that day too), and I thumbed through March, because it was the month of March and I wanted to see what had been some of the readings for the month.

The verse quoting for January 29th is this: "God is in the midst of her, she will not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns." (Psalm 46:5) I'd just recently had my birthday, on which I had been up early having a pre-dawn Jesus date at Starbucks where I'd encountered two guys that I felt God was leading me to pray for, so I did, and it had been a cool birthday altogether, which was further reinforced by this little scripture quotation with the feminine pronoun (did you notice!? And the reference to morning? I love the morning.).

The first few lines from September 30th were also impacting: "Our almighty God is like a parent who delights in leading the tender children in His care to the very edge of a precipice and then shoving them off the cliff into nothing but air. He does this so they may learn that they already possess an as-yet-unrealized power of flight that can forever add to the pleasure and comfort in their lives. Yet, if in their attempt to fly, they are exposed to some extraordinary peril, He is prepared to swoop beneath them and carry them skyward on His mighty wings... When God places a burden upon you, He places His arms underneath you." This seemed to resound with some of the sacrifices and acts of obedience - frightening and terrifying and hurtful as they may be - that marks my September 30ths of the past.

By the time I read both of these entries I was thinking, "Hm, I think I'll have to look this book up on Amazon."

And then I read the entry for March 5th, which completely sold me on it! I have often come back to this entry - particularly the poem - as an encouragement. I've also given this book away to several people, and pointed them toward this entry and its poem, or turned to it (I usually have it in my purse now) to share with people when meeting them for coffee. This morning I had planned to read today's entry but ran out of time because I was visiting with the friends I had stayed the night with. It wasn't until this afternoon that I got home and opened up the book that I realized what today was - March 5th. I'm retyping it here, just in case someone else needs to read this and be encouraged:

March 5th:

"We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first." (Hebrews 3:14)

Often the last step is the winning step. In Pilgrim's Progress the greatest number of dangers were lurking in the area closest to the gates of the Celestial City. It was in that region the Doubting Castle stood. An it was there the enchanted grounds lure the tired traveler to fatal slumber. It is when heaven's heights are in full view that the gates of hell are the most persistent and full of deadly peril. "Let us not become wearing in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up" (Gal 6:9). "Run in such a way as to get the prize" (1 Cor 9:24)

In the bitter waves of woe

Beaten and tossed about

By the sullen winds that blow

From the desolate shores of doubt,

Where the anchors that faith has cast

Are ragging in the gale,

I am quietly holding fast

To the things that cannot fail.

And fierce though the fiends may fight,

And long though the angels hide,

I know that truth and right

Have the universe on their side;

And that somewhere beyond the stars

Is a love that is better than fate.

When the night unlocks her bars

I will see Him - and I will wait.

-Washington Gladden

The greatest challenge in receiving great things from God is holding on for the last half hour.