365 Project Day 273: Becoming an Instrument

Canon 5D Mark ll, 100 2.8 macro, 2.8 aperture, 1/60 shutter, 400 ISO

They have been together longer than we have, he and his Takamine. I had no idea what it would mean to be married to a musician, although I fell headlong in love with one. I didn’t know she was coming on the honeymoon. I  began to call her the other woman. He spent as much time with her as he did me, it seemed. I never dreamed I would be jealous of a guitar, but  I was, just a little. We still joke about my steep learning curve those first few days of marriage. I never before understood the importance of playing a guitar riff , (or even what one was) over and over again to get it right. I still remember the one he was working on at the time. I have it memorized for life. Yes, that first week together was interesting.

As time moved on, I began to love her too. That guitar was part of him, of who he was called to be. Therefore, it was part of me too, of us together.

Then I began to pray some prayers that only God can plant into a young bride’s spirit. I have never told him I prayed this way.

I prayed that God would make me an instrument tailor-made for my husband. I instinctively knew there were parts of me that could only be strummed to life by the one God gave to me. I didn’t know what these prayers really meant, but I prayed them. They were vulnerable prayers, and not the kinds of words that seem politically correct today. Nevertheless, I believed them as I whispered them at night under the stars. I wanted to serve him, to be held in his hands like that old guitar, given over to love and beauty. Surrendered. More easily said, and prayed, than done.

I prayed also that as God worked these things in me with Chris, He would work them in my relationship with Him. I knew I could not experience the intangible and escape the tangible. The spiritual must connect with the physical. My relationship with God would only be as authentic as the relationship with the one sleeping next to me.

As the years have passed, I believe God is faithfully answering my prayers. We are always in process, but I know I would not be who I am today if not for my relationship with Chris. And, as I have surrendered places in me to him, God has taken over those same places in my heart.

We still have that faithful Takamine. She is waiting in the chair by his bedside. Thank God he no longer plays the famous “honeymoon riff”. He has written songs for me and all our children on that guitar, including For the Love of Katie.  Thinking we will keep her around forever.

Ephesians 5:21 ~ “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love,

Where there is injury, pardon,

Where there is doubt, faith,

Where there is despair, hope,

Where there is sadness, joy.

O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much

seek to be consoled, as to console,

not so much to be understood as to understand,

not so much to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

it is in dying that we awake to eternal life.  ~ St Francis of Assisi