Piano teacher: Psalm 105 reprise

Oh give thanks to JHWH! Call upon His name; Make known His deeds among the peoples! Sing to Him, sing psalms to Him; Talk of all His wondrous works!

That was part of my reading this morning. So let me tell you of some of His wondrous works:

Last week Cal needed to find someone to take some glass out of his foot. And AJ had gotten his toe infected. But we have no local doctors we know or trust. It surprised me that Cal just googled for a nearby podiatrist and called the first one he found. The man turns out to be a Christian and also sympathetic to folks who “self-pay” and took good care of Cal and AJ at a price we could pay.

Grace has been with a piano teacher who, I have just found out, is not a pianist at all, but a woodwind player with piano teaching skills. Her method of teaching generally has been to listen to Grace play through an entire piece and then she sits in awe saying “She’s incredible. She’s incredible.” Though she has succeeded in teaching Grace a few new things, I have been disappointed that she is not harder on Grace.

So Grace and I have been discussing getting a new teacher for her. How to start? As we drove to her last lesson I said we would just have to pray that God would lead us to one. Maybe we’d google. :-) On our way home from the lesson we talked about returning to an old teacher. “Well, at least she interrupted me and told me how to do things better and wrote things in my book.” Grace said. Maybe we’d return to her, but she is so far away.

When I got home (this was Wednesday afternoon) I did google for piano teacher in our zip code. The first listing that came up was of a Romanian woman with mega credentials married to a cello player. They had moved to the States after spending some time in Venezuela. Hmmm. Didn’t John and Jackie Moore spend time there, too?

I sent an inquiry about lessons by email to the teacher immediately, letting her know of a few of Grace’s accomplishments on piano. She returned my email with her phone number and offering a free evaluation lesson to which we went this morning. This teacher is only six minutes from our home if all the lights are green. And we would have been there on time this morning if I hadn’t gotten lost. As we drove over I-75 I shared with Grace my hopes that God would give us a good teacher who would be so close, who would not require Sundays of us, and who would even be a Christian.

She graciously welcomed us, a bleach blonde, round-faced, European woman with heavy accent. After some initial conversation, and I was liking what I was hearing! she invited Grace to play through a piece. In the middle of the second piece she asked permission to do some teaching right then. And my, did she teach! As I watched her facility and passion and grace–grace for others who do it wrong–grace for Grace to learn it right, I got really excited. This is the kind of teacher from whom an aspiring teacher should learn.

She finally closed the book and moved us back from the piano to the couches where we had begun our interview “And now, that is enough or I will keep you all day!” She loves to teach. She loves to play. She loves to live. She loves. As we continued to talk I suspected her Christian commitment, and then learned that she considers Sundays a day of praise and not to be used in lessons or recitals and besides she plays for church. Might she know our friend Ovi?

I didn’t think of that then, but I did ask her a question I’d been saving: Did she happen to know our friends John and Jackie Moore? Oh, yes. She thrust out her hand to welcome our friendship and talked about how wonderful were the years they shared in Venezuela. She described their son Johnny and his fat cheeks.

I’ve been high ever since that interview, sharing God’s goodness to us with our homeschool class and now here with you. I must “make known His deeds among the peoples.” He blesses my weak and faithless heart with love notes like this. And I record it here to read it when I am faithless again. Thank you, Lord, for caring for us so tenderly.