I told the Lovely Lady that I probably would never write again.

“I think the well’s run dry.  I’ve been struggling to find something to write about and there is no more.  Nothing.”

She laughed and went back to her reading.  She knows me.

I’ve been here before.

Still. . .

As I sat, head in hands, a thought hit me.  I should search on my phone.  Occasionally I write notes there to be ready for times such as these.

I would check there.

Nothing.  Well, nothing I had saved recently.

I went back further; way back to the year of Covid.  You remember.  No school.  Working from home.  No toilet paper.

I saved two thoughts on the same day in March of 2020, the month the lockdown started in the USA.

They make no sense—there on the screen without any context.  Like raw dough lying on a table before it is shaped into what it is to become, it’s difficult to visualize a purpose.

“Walking isn’t as easy as it looks.”

“Stingy with the rotten notes, but generous to a fault with the beautiful, sonorous ones.”

I have no memory of writing either sentence.  In an attempt to remember the reason for the words, I cast my mind back a few years.

I remember those long walks.  There wasn’t much else to do, so I walked.  Often by myself—sometimes with her.  Every day.  Miles, one foot in front of the other.

Easy.  Walking was easy.

Well, maybe the other one, then.  Rotten notes.  Beautiful and sonorous ones.  Stingy and generous.

Oh yes!  I remember hours of playing my horn.  The French horn, that ill wind that nobody blows good.

There were lots of rotten notes.  Not so many beautiful, sonorous ones.

Somehow, as I looked at the words on the little screen before me, the two statements began to coalesce, two separate thoughts becoming one theme.

Maybe walking isn’t all that easy.  I don’t remember learning to do it.  I have watched many babies who are in the process, though.

No; it’s not as easy as it looks.  Not nearly.  Babies fall, over and over.  They get up to try again.  Sometimes after falling, they stay where they are, crying. Parents and grandparents lift them up, comforting them as well as coaxing them to try again.

It’s hard work, this walking thing!  And somehow, although there are a few years in between when we don’t worry about our walking ability, many aging humans will experience times when the difficulty of staying upright hits hard again (pun not intended).

A friend wrote today of a fall induced by a necessary medication.  She is in pain now.

Walking isn’t as easy as it looks.

But then, not much we do is.  Practice and experience lend themselves to a certain level of skill.

I spoke about the music notes, remembering my own difficulty.  During that same time period, a famous cellist named Yo-Yo Ma began, in his own isolation, to offer video recordings of himself playing solos on his beautiful instrument.  Just him.  And his cello.

Now, there’s a man who is stingy with rotten notes—who is generous with the beautiful, sonorous ones.  What lovely recordings he produced for the world during those difficult days!

Effortlessly, he would draw the bow across the strings, evoking a tonality with no hint of discord.  Without difficulty, his fingers found the exact placement for each note to sound precisely on pitch.  Every single note.

He made it seem so easy.

Inspired by his example, I played my horn at home, albeit generous with the sour notes and giving freely of bobbled attacks. In fairness, there were some beautiful, sonorous notes to be heard.  Just not as often as I could have wished.

It is not only walking that’s not as easy as it appears.  Skilled production of anything worthwhile takes practice—diligent application of ourselves to the thing we want to accomplish.

We know that.  With every new thing, we know that.

Coloring inside the lines was once impossible for most of us.  Holding a pencil to write our letters—nearly unthinkable.

The list is unending. Riding a bicycle. Learning to whistle.  Combing our own hair. Baking a cake.  Those don’t even begin to scratch the surface.

And yet, knowing nothing comes easily, we still look enviously at others in their areas of expertise and wonder why we can’t do what they make appear so elementary.

We become discouraged when we fall short, seldom remembering that practice and repetition are what made them better at it.

And we forget that we are not performers, showing off for an adoring public, but servants of a Loving Creator who knows us and our frailties.

He knows us.
He knew us before we were born.
He knows how many hairs are on our heads.
He has counted the tears we’ve shed while on our journey.

We walk for Him.
We play our music for Him.
We complete our tasks at work for Him.
We love our neighbor for Him.

None of it is as easy as it looks.

But the music is sweet. It is stingy on the clinkers.  It is generous beyond belief in its beauty and fullness.

And, as we journey here, there are others who walk alongside us and help us to stay upright.

Not easy, but rewarding beyond any compensation this world could ever offer.

There may be more to write about, after all.

But, don’t tell that to the Lovely Lady.

 

Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord and not for people. (Colossians 3:23, NASB)