A CHILDHOOD DREAM COMES TRUE

As a child, I was completely fascinated by the piano and organ. I recall going to church with my grandmother and she would always make sure that we sat where I would have a good view of the organist or pianist. I suppose one of my very few goals in life as an early child was to be a church musician.

My passion is the piano. I’ve been playing piano for a little over 21 years. Piano is the only thing in my life that I’ve been so passionate about that I worked so hard in which to achieve success. While my college degree is in voice, it is the piano that has always been my love. Even when I was supposed to be studying the vocal part of my repertoire in college, I would find myself in the practice room trying to learn the accompaniment part rather than the vocal part. Although I’ve been playing for over two decades, I still make mistakes, and have to practice a lot to learn new skills.

Most of what I play in church comes naturally to me and I can get by with little practice, mainly because it’s part of a regular repertoire. Yet, recently I’ve challenged myself to learn some new music—mostly classical music suitable for weddings, parties and the sort. I’ve also found some new arrangements of old hymns that I’ve been working on to use as preludes for church.

My proudest moments in life have been those in which I’ve been accompanying or performing. In college, I accompanied my best friend, Lee, a few times for departmental vocal recitals, certainly proud moments for me. Now, my proud moments come when I am sitting at the piano (or organ, though I am NOT a REAL organist) and looking out over the congregation knowing that the power of my instrument is going to touch someone in the congregation. I have a sense of pride when I have playing a beautiful prelude.

I made it very clear to my first piano teacher that I only wanted to learn to play for church, so he set me up with a series of books for church musicians and allowed me to pick hymns I wanted to learn out of The Baptist Hymnal (1975). That’s how I learned to play. I would literally spend HOURS playing from the hymnal. In some ways, it was the perfect way for me to learn, but in others, I missed a lot of the fundamentals of music that I should have been forced to learn—especially paying attention to rhythms...something that only now am I starting to understand a little better.

Here’s my confession: I can only think of two dreams I had as a child. One was to be a church musician; the other was to be a teacher. While I’ve taught individuals things such as computer applications and even taught a few music fundamental classes at church, being a church musician is the one dream that has truly come true for me. While other kids in my class were taking piano lessons, I begged my parents to let me take lessons. It wasn’t until I was 14 that my grandmother stepped in and decided it was time to put me in piano lessons. I guess my parents thought I wouldn’t succeed at it, so why pay the money? Who can fault them, I was mediocre at everything else in life, why waste their money on piano lessons for a kid that was probably going to get bored with it anyway? I like to think I proved them wrong. My parents never had to tell me to practice—they actually had to tell me to STOP. I would practice non-stop for hours. The piano has long been my source of peace, joy, and comfort. As I’ve written before, one of the happiest moments of my life was the day that Parker and I went to the local piano store to pick out my baby grand. I traded in the piano I had learned on—given to me by my grandmother—for the grand. Tears filled my eyes as we drove away, knowing that I had just fulfilled a dream of my grandmother’s…for me to have a baby grand. I imagine that if she is able from her heavenly home, she probably checks in on me from time to time as I sit down at that beautiful instrument and play. I hope that each time I sit down at the instrument that I honor her memory, for without her insistence that I learn, I think perhaps neither of my childhood dreams would have been realized.