Pearls

I've told you some of my story as it concerns my musical tastes. I'd like to set the record somewhat straight. I didn't want to practice piano lessons and so never really learned to count music until much later. This despite a love of the piano, and even more so because mom taught piano so she would be home when I got home from school. She also infused me with a love of classical pieces, many which she practiced and performed as preludes at her (and then mine) childhood church. I also mentioned that as I got older my tastes began to branch into rock and roll, but I still liked pop, oldies and classical.

Four years of marching and concert band under the late Loy Wagner furthered my insatiable appetite for the classics: Rimsky-Korsakov, Rossini, Tchaikovsky, Wagner were just a few of the composers we played. And a music appreciation class during the Summer introduced me to Barber, Debussy, Dvorak, Mozart, Ravel, and of course More Beethoven than I'd heard before. But there was one genre that my love for now had it's beginnings in my band years and was furthered by my step-father, Bob.

I gained a deep and abiding appreciation for Big Band after listening to many of Bob's old reel-to-reel tapes of Artie Shaw, Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians, the Dorseys, and of course Glenn Miller. In band, it was "Begin the Beguine." with Glenn Miller, it was "Moonlight Serenade," "String of Pearls,"and "Stardust" that leads a host of favorites. But one of my more favorite Big Band leaders, and one not normally remembered for his romantically charged "mood music", is Jackie Gleason, the Great One. One of my favorites is "Melancholy Serenade," the theme to the Jackie Gleason show that I watched every time it was on as a young boy at my grandmother's (also my introduction to Lawrence Welk).

These memories are good for they remind me of simpler times, when it seemed to me I hadn't a care in the world. But life is much more. And I have kind of suggested that unless we suffer (you can substitue "struggle"), and learn to accept that as part of God's bigger story of his redemptive plan, then we really are not living to the fullest. We should understand all these circumstances (trials, tribulations, travails, troubles, torments) as God's work of refinement (burning away the "dross," his use of us as his instruments of grace to those around us needing his redemption, and ultimately to elicit our praise for his love that saved us and his work that keeps us in his hand.

And these present troubles are not the end. Just like the music that I've mentioned here, they are part of a tapestry of your life as a part of the bigger story of God. The effects not only refine you, but leave something of itself behind in your life, kind of like a token that serves to remind you of God's work in you through those circumstances or events. But you should remember, the immediate story may be yours, but you must take note that your story is incomplete unless you include all the others you come in contact with, for as you enter into and build relationships, they influence just as you influence, and they also are part of God's story.

I think of this because I caused someone I care about some discomfort, completely inadvertently. The source of the discomfort is not important, save the fact that I don't want this person to worry or be fearful, least of all for that concern to be about me. The steps I could have taken to at least maybe lessen the impact? I have intended to be as real as I could about all I am feeling, processing, experiencing as a result of my illness. I have not been faithful to that: I have neglected to include further reports of hair loss. I have experienced more loss, and I did take the step of shortening what I had so that the ongoing change would not be so drastic. But I forgot about those who wouldn't have seen me in many, many weeks, especially since the time I had written about my hair loss. In addition to the continuing loss which has slowed, what hair I do have left is thinning and greying more. Yet I am okay with that. Another change that is part of God's big story of redemption.

A fantastic day today, not the least of which was the great breakfast I fixed this morning for my two boys, the "big" Tiger victory over their "fear of the Turtle", but also the strength I had to work on three vehicles today changing the oil and some other minor preventative things similarly necessary. And good fellowship with family and friends, which is so important today.

I pray, and ask again, boldly, that you would make supplication for this family, that doubts would be answered, and faith, wherever it may be lacking would spring up anew, and where repentance is missing, then that Spirit of contriteness would prevail and led to true repentance a new life in Christ, free to trust him who does not ensnare, but rather frees us from the work we depend on for our salvation and the guilt we feel when we fail. These pearls are real.