Complications

by Kathy Douglass

I was sitting in my living room with my little piano student a few weeks back. We were in the middle of our lesson, reviewing the quarter note and the half note, calling out the names of the white keys and brushing up on our fingering. I scribbled a few notes in her assignment book while she twirled on the antique piano stool a friend had picked up for me at a yard sale.

We were just about to turn the page and begin our next piece when she looked up at me with her big blue eyes and asked, “Kathy, what are the black keys for?” We hadn’t gotten to the black keys yet. I’m a new teacher, she’s a new student, so we’re taking this nice and slow. I thought for a moment, and not wanting to confuse her or jump ahead too far, offered the simplest answer I could muster in my gentlest, beginning-piano-teacher voice. She slowly looked down at the keyboard, and then looked back up at me as her eyes widened and said… “whoa, this is gonna get complicated.”

Oh sweetie, you have no idea.

I’m new at this teaching thing, but I think we all understand intuitively that the response can be as important as the question. When my little gal said “whoa…”, it mattered to me, in that moment, how I respond. I didn’t want to look back at those big-blue eyes and say “oh, no, it’s not complicated at all.” I’ve been playing the piano since I was 6 years old, and I know different. I wanted to tell her the truth. There are some complications. There are key signatures and dotted-quarter notes, rests and dynamics, chords and flats, sharps and accidentals, half-steps, clefs and tempos, fermatas and, last time I checked, about 88 keys.

A few lessons into this, I knew it was way too early to mention too much of that, but I also wanted to honor her question. She’s eager, she’s curious, she’s giving herself a chance to become a pianist. So I simply said, “you’re right, kiddo. There are some things that will be complicated, but we’re just going to take this one lesson at a time, I will help you, and then, someday, you will be able to put together all you’ve learned and play whatever you like.” I said that with confidence, because once I was a little girl just learning how to play the piano, too. I worked, with lots of guidance and help, through some of the “complications”, and now, I can play. I told her the truth. She smiled, seemed satisfied, and twirled around one last time.

Her “whoa” really struck me. We’ve all heard children land squarely on the truth – “out of the mouths of babes”. And I’ve thought, since that evening, that if I can sit at my piano next to a spunky little girl and offer her assurance about what she doesn’t yet understand, what she hasn’t yet experienced, I can surely sit next to my Father and allow Him to teach and encourage and assure me. Lean in and listen for Him to tell me the truth. After all, He knows what He is doing with my “becoming”.

We come to God over and again with our questions, and sometimes we respond with what sounds like a “whoa”… “this is too hard, this hurts too much, where are we going, it’s too late, are you there?”

The Psalmist writes that “God desires truth in our innermost beings…” (Psalm 51:6). As His children, we were designed to desire the truth as well. Even if it’s complicated. Jesus wasn’t big on sugar-coating. He warned of sorrows and aches, brokenness, loss… complications. And yet… He also spoke the truths his Father wanted us to hear, so that we could believe, so that we could trust and follow – the truths of his Father’s presence, his Father’s intent and desire. He offered us a look into the heart of God; a heart as revealed through the prophet Jeremiah: “For I know the plans I have for you”, declares the Lord. “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to bring you a future and a hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

I chose the curriculum my little student and I are using because it’s interactive and fun, it’s full of color and whimsy. I also chose it because every lesson includes a student-teacher duet. Even if we’ve just taken the tiniest musical step forward, we get to hear, at the end of our lesson, how it sounds. It’s a favorite moment. I put my hands right next to hers on the keyboard, I guide and encourage and help her. We end our duets with a cheery “wahoo!” or a high-five or a great big “we did it!” She brings what she is learning; I bring what I know, and it is music.

Anne Lamott, a favorite writer of mine, said once: “how is it that you can play one note, and then another, and then your heart just breaks wide open?” I keep that in mind as I teach. My little student will experience that one day. I know she will. Despite the complications.

We’re not alone in our questions; we’re not alone in our quests. God is with us, His strong and tender hands covering our own, guiding, encouraging, drawing out of us what He first sang into our souls before the foundations of the world were laid. Songs of joy, songs of peace, songs of hope, songs of life.