It has been a month since I sat down to write.  Oh, I’ve written short notes, and maybe a nugget or two of truth that have come to mind, but the act of writing has been well-nigh impossible (as the red-headed lady who raised me would have said) of late.

So tonight, I sit here in front of my monitor waiting.  Just waiting.  I have words inside me—I know I do.  Why, just this week, I shouted words at the neighbor’s contractor in frustration.  I apologized, too—a necessary evil when one shouts at a stranger.

I even talked with friends at our annual Christmas music party two nights ago.  I didn’t shout at them.  Still, I did use words.

But the words seem a precious commodity as I wait for them to flow now.  Too precious to spend.  Still, one can but try, I suppose.

Bogged down in the stuff of this earth, with inspiration in short supply, it’s easy to become disheartened.  Of late, I’ve turned to the piano I mentioned in a recent post.

But part of the stuff of earth is physical limitation, and, my age creeping up on me, the fingers don’t always want to pull their weight in the piano playing process.  I have a touch of osteoarthritis in my fingers, and nowadays it hurts a bit to play for longer than five or ten minutes at a time. 

I’ve been somewhat vocal in my complaints to the Lovely Lady.  Perhaps more than somewhat.

The other day, she handed me two books of hymn arrangements that I’ve seen before.  They are arrangements her late mother published over 35 years ago, several years before her death.

A much-loved piano teacher in our little town, Viola was stricken with crippling rheumatoid arthritis when she was forty years old.  Her fingers were drawn over painfully, at acute angles to the rest of her hands.  Piano playing was torture for the dear lady.

Still, she continued playing until a week or two before she died at eighty-four years of age.  For nearly forty-five years she suffered, mostly in silence, asking for help when she needed it, but almost never complaining about her lot.

I know better than to think there was a latent message in my Lovely Lady’s gift of those books to me, but I got the message, nonetheless.  My malady is minuscule in comparison to my late mother-in-law’s burden.

I got the message; I also am enjoying the gift.  In her disability, my mother-in-law determined to continue playing music worth listening to, but knew she would need music that fit her crippled hands better than that available in the marketplace. 

She wrote her own arrangements that wouldn’t require her fingers to stretch out to the octaves most music is written with.  Filling in with movement, instead of rich chords, the arpeggios supply the notes necessary to fill the air with beauty and strength.

I don’t suppose I need to hammer the point home.  Many have already done so.

“I was sad that I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet…”

I like the Lovely Lady’s method of making the point better (even if she didn’t intend to make a point, which she avers she did not).

Help is better than a sermon most of the time.  Perhaps, all of the time.  My pastor may have a differing opinion.

The situation reminds me that our lives have been full of people who have taught us—by who they are and how they act—how to be the hands and feet of God here in this place.  None of us has grown to any point in our lives without a few (or more likely, many) people like that.

Parents, teachers, companions, pastors, friends, even strangers on the street, show us how to walk—how to live.  And, we have the opportunity to share that with the generations after us.

I’ve said many times, I hope to be such a person and not the type of man who is more easily used as a cautionary tale instead.  You know—like for yelling at strangers.  

The letter-writing apostle suggested that people could use him as an example of how to live.  He told his protege, Timothy, that his grandmother and mother had been such people, as well; people who lived and demonstrated clearly what they believed, passing it on to their children.

I want to be known for that—not for complaining about the little inconveniences and minor hurts.

I’m going to keep working at the piano.  It may never hurt less.  I don’t know.  But, I’m certain the sound filling the air will be more beautiful than the words of complaint could ever be.

I think Viola Whitmore might even have been pleased to hear it. 

After she corrected my counting and fingering, of course.

 

 

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” (Sir Isaac Newton, in 1675)

“In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.” (Matthew 5:16, NLT)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2025. All Rights Reserved.

 

I don’t often ask for responses from readers, but it strikes me that there are many of you who have someone who has inspired you along the way.  Perhaps, they still do.  Feel free to drop a note telling us about them.