right in the middle

It was one of those days. again. Or maybe it was one of those months.... or years. Or maybe it was just my life. I sat listening to four of my five children play the piano for their sweet piano teacher, Ms. Barbie. As each of my children played through their lessons, I felt myself getting more and more irriatated. With each missed note, I felt my frustration grow. We were playing staccato when we should be legato. Our eight notes were quarter notes. Our finger weren't curved and we needed haircuts.

We are a very average family. No special talents except burping and making great big messes. Sure we're gifted in our own special ways...we are very loud people, we have an aversion to naps and we don't like canned spinach. Pure talent.

The more I listened to my kids plunk on the piano, the more I realized how lacking we are were. The simple request our sweet Ms. Barbie ask is that we practice five times a week. How hard is that? We have seven days in each week. We homeschool. We are home. Our piano is at our home. We live and sleep in our home and did I mention we homeschool? So, it should be a natural and easy relationship. Somewhere in in each of the 24 hours that make up the day each of my four children could find a 30 minute window to PRACTICE. How hard is that?

After each child finished their lesson, I looked up at them and forced a smile and sank back into a deeper depression. We were sorely lacking. And besides that we needed hair cuts. Ms. Barbie didn't let on. She is amazingly positive and lovingly corrective. In our eleven years of weekly lessons, she has never raised her voice or hinted at a smidgen of resentment. She's never ripped their piano music into shreds and told them to take up yodeling. She's amazing. Ms. Barbie would be my idol (if I had idols). I want to be like her. Patient. Loving. Affirming. Kind. Always pushing for excellence. She smiles a lot (not forced like mine) and she's bubbly. She's such a weekly example to watch her tenderness and joy each week. I don't know how she does it. It's a gift. Pure talent.

As I sat there, I made a mental notes to set up a counseling appointment with Ms. Barbie and this would be my agenda:
1. to ask her how she stays so patient and would she be my personal mentor to help me be more patient, loving, affirming and kind
2. to ask her to finish raising my five children because they deserved her more than me...and besides that she would make sure they practiced the piano each week and I know that she would make sure they got haircuts

This was a great idea and it made perfect sense to me. So as I packing up my delinquents to leave, instead of my well thought-out agenda, I blurted out with a tears in my eye " I'm a failure and can't get it right and should I just quit"? ( just so you know...I have great self-control and waited until the kids had left the room).

Ms. Barbie simply replied, " You're right in the middle of it all".

"What...?" I replied, she obviously didn't hear the desperation in my voice. Nor, did she understand what I had said..."I should just quit!".

"You're right in the middle of it..." she again repeated. "You can't see the end yet because you're still in the middle. All you can see is today, you need to look at the end".

I was personally hoping for a little more of a counseling session. I needed at least another 3 hours with her to confess all of my faults and failures...I had just started my list and I had not yet asked her to take over as my children's mother to help me out with all of those missed practices. I had never heard her burp, maybe she could fix that area as well.

As I left, I took to heart this older friend's advice: Look at the end.

I was consumed with all the work of raising a family. I couldn't see pass the missed practices and the wrong notes and the outgrown caesar cuts. I was looking at the things that weren't perfect. And believe me, if I tried I could fill a college-rule sheet of paper front and back. And the longer I thought the longer the list grew.

My focus was misplaced. It was on achievement and perfection. Oh...the dream to have it all. Perfect children. Perfect humans. Perfect weeks with perfect piano practices. That was my struggle and the source of my frustration, I was looking at all that we weren't instead at looking at what we had and where we were going.

I started the car and glanced in the rearview mirror to back up and I saw something that stopped me. It was my child. My adorable cute, shaggy haired child. I could see in his eyes the pride of music that his eight year-old fingers had just created. I could see the joy on his face that he had pleased his Ms. Barbie. He eyes also revealed the expectancy that soon those same hands would be found digging in our backyard to grab what living critters he could find to stuff in his pockets. I looked at my seventeen year-old boy in the passenger seat next to me and realized again that there was no boy left in him. His jaw was squared and he was a music lover who's hands spent hours at the keyboard lovingly pounding out worship songs that filled the rooms of our home. I glanced at my fourteen year old who was quickly leaving boyhood and was just beginning to see the possibilities before him. He hands were discovering the joy of making music to worship as he played the keyboard and strummed his guitar. My eleven year-old's diligent hands were consistently faithful to follow through. And I don't know if he actually had missed many practices...he is a rare one in the bunch who actually does what he's told the first time. And then there was my little five year old girl who loves all things beautiful and lovely. She has not yet begun her official music lessons, but her life is music and song. And I so love the fact that in her short five years of life her world has been filled with the music played by her big brothers.

Yes, I needed to be reminded to look at the end.

And today, I was right in the middle and that's where I wanted to be.

And, now, off to get haircuts.