I recently spent some time (yes, when I should have been studying) re-reading over a lot of the Xanga that I kept my senior year of high school. Doing stuff like that always makes me nostalgic, but this time was more complicated than it usually is. Normally it's like "ohhhhh, I miss these people and all these awesome and hilarious times"...but this time, there were definitely some darker elements mixed in. You see, senior year of high school is when I started having issues with my shoulder. That said, reading entries about how my shoulder really hurt...how I had to drop out of some musical commitments because I didn't want to make things worse...how I was struggling with what to do because I NEEDED to play for my auditions, some competitions, a variety show, the odd recital or two, and even graduation...how even though there was a lot of pain, I never imagined that it would never go away. I can't describe how re-living this experience through reading these posts and remembering how I felt at the time affected me. This all started over four-and-a-half YEARS ago. It seems like another lifetime. On the one hand, it really hurts to remember these times, because I had such optimism and such confidence that of course I was going to be able to play piano for the rest of my life, and of course I was going to pursue organ even further and eventually become a church organist. Now those things seem completely impossible. I mean, yeah, I'll probably play piano occasionally (albeit mostly as needed for private teaching and classroom use, composing, and the like). And sure, I might play organ in churches every so often...a friend's wedding here, a church service there. I might even take a semester of organ lessons at Penn State. But honestly, at this point...that's all I really have hope for in the future. I guess I've known this for a long time, but putting it into writing is really difficult. And reading and remembering what playing used to be to me...just...wow.
So let me take you, my readers, back on a little journey, to a former favorite place of mine known as Practice Room #2 (you see, my high school had 3 practice rooms, and during my senior year, they were basically claimed by three of us seniors...my claim was on the second one). I spent SO many hours in Practice Room #2. To me, it wasn't just a place to play scales and practice repertoire. It was a hangout spot in the mornings before school, with a bunch of us who got there early often gathering around to hang out and play around and sometimes sing popular or Broadway songs. It was a place of long conversations with close, close friends during study halls, with topics ranging from the serious to the utterly hilarious (from word association games to comic strips about Italian leather). It was a place of refuge during the middle of a rough day, where I could come pour my soul out onto that Baldwin's (I think it was a Baldwin) keys, letting my fingers do the thinking as I let drop by drop of my deepest self spill into improvised strains, almost inevitably gravitating towards f minor. I taught my first piano students in that room, embracing with verve the puzzle of figuring out each child's learning style, what motivated them, and how to help them fall in love with music as I once had.
I loved Practice Room #2, and everything that it represented.
And yet...
My senior year of high school, I worshipped music. There, I admitted it. I am an idolater. Music is inherently passionate. In all my conversations on the subject with friends and peers throughout the course of many years, I've realized that it is this very thing which is in some ways so amazing about this pursuit that makes music such a difficult art to wield. On the one hand, there is no command given more times in Scripture than that of worshipping God with music. On the other hand, music, like all other earthly pursuits, has been damaged by the entrance of sin into the world. And so it lures its students to bow at its feet, to view music as an end to itself, rather than a means of worshipping the Creator of music. That said, I worshipped music. That's not to say that it was intentional or conscious. And it's not to say that it was constant. But time and again, my senior year of high school, I found myself turning to music when things were difficult - turning to the created art rather than the Creator. I think if most serious musicians were honest with themselves, they'd realize how difficult a thing this is. I think to some extent all of us struggle with this, but it can be so hard to recognize.
Anyway, to get back on the main subject...my senior year of high school was, I think, the most music-centered year of my life thus far. Now, that's not to say that I spent the most hours of my life on music, or that I took the most music-related classes, or anything like that. It was, however, the year of my life when I was most passionate about music...but it was also the year where music started to be taken away from me. That seems like an odd statement, considering I graduated from Wheaton this past May with a double major in music composition and music history, and considering I'm now pursuing a master's degree in music history and theory. If anything, my life should be more consumed with music now than it was back in high school, where I was juggling AP Euro, AP English Lit, Spanish, Physics, Discrete Math, Apologetics, and Contemporary Issues in Christianity classes. If we're talking about the sheer percentage of time I spent on things, then yes, my life is more music-consumed now than it was then. But as far as my attitude goes...back then, music was one of the most important things in my life. I was falling more and more in love with it every day. I couldn't imagine life without it. And now...well...to be honest, I'm toying with the idea of a career change. That's not to say that music isn't important, and it's not to say that I don't love music. But I think God's been helping me to get past the near obsession that I was falling into senior year. And I think a lot of the way He's done that is through my shoulder injuries.
For those of my readers (all like...one of you who probably actually reads this haha) who don't know, my pain started around the start of the second semester during my senior year of high school. Back then, it was occasional pain, and it was only in my left shoulder. Granted, it could be really bad at times - or at least what I then considered to be bad, which I now know to be pretty mild - but it wasn't there all the time, it was pretty localized, and the concept of it being a lifelong problem was completely foreign to me. When it started, I tried some massage, some acupuncture, some heat patches, etc. Nothing really helped much, but I got through the end of senior year, with all of its many auditions and recitals and competitions and other performances. When I started at Wheaton, I was placed with a teacher who is often really good at helping people with pain issues. I completely re-learned all my technique. I spent hours practicing slow rotations. I started chiropractic treatment. I even saw a performance medicine specialist in Chicago. Again, nothing got rid of the pain. Sophomore year, things were only getting worse and worse. I tried more treatments. Things didn't improve. The pain got so bad that I eventually decided to take a semester off of lessons, during which I barely touched a piano. Junior year, things were much the same. More treatments, no improvements, and another semester taken off of lessons. And senior year was the same story. I finally finished my five-semester requirement for piano lessons, miraculously getting through the final semester barely playing more than an hour or so a week most of the time. During these three years, I tried more chiropractors, physical therapy, active release therapy, massage, acupuncture, cortisone injections, trigger point injections, lidocaine injections, took about 40 vitamins and supplements a day for about three months, got an EMG to check for nerve damage, experimented with multiple kinds of pain medication, got I think 4 or 5 MRI's, had like 4 gallons of blood taken for tests, and on, and on, and on. The sheer amount of time spent looking for a solution and the sheer amount of doctors and specialists and therapists &c. seen are just overwhelming. I saw doctors who have helped the Chicago Bulls, the White Sox, etc., etc. But none of them could help me. I went through a few diagnoses, a few scary moments of people thinking that something super-serious and even life-threatening could be wrong, and then finally someone diagnosed me as having myofascial trigger points, which are basically taut rope-like bands that form on the fascia of the muscles, weakening them, and the other muscles try to help out, and it can be a big domino effect. That's like the reader's digest version, basically. If you want a full definition, check Wikipedia, or maybe try Travell and Simon's multiple tomes on the subject (I actually have read a lot of the pertinent sections of the latter, and don't really recommend them...I'd stick with wikipedia if I were you haha).
So...needless to say, this has been one of the most challenging issues of my life. I have struggled with God on this subject so many times. I have struggled with human relationships in light of this problem so many times. I still struggle with both of those things. Sometimes, it's hard to trust God about this. Sometimes, I get really frustrated with other people for not caring enough or for not remembering my doctor's appointments or for not understanding or for whatever else. I can't even fathom how many tears I've shed over this, whether they're tears of sheer pain, or frustration, or tears to mourn the loss of such a big area of my musical life, or whatever else.
But God is at work, and so He has been since this problem started.
Sometimes I have seen that clearly; other times I haven't been able to see it past the frustration and the pain.
My last blog entry talked briefly about Jesus redeeming the tragedies of life. How true that is of this story! Now, that's not to say that I *feel* this way all the time. There are times when it just hurts so much not to be able to play like I used to. I mean, think about it - how many THOUSANDS hours have I spent practicing in my life? To be honest, a lot of the time, I wonder if all those hours were just a waste, seeing as I probably won't ever be able to play seriously again. But despite all of that...I *know* that Jesus is redeeming and will continue to redeem this tragedy in my life. I know it because of how it's forced me to depend on Him and not music - for how could I continue to idolize something that caused me so much misery? I know it because of how it's forced me to depend on Him and not other people - I have almost never felt more alone than when I was going to some of these really serious, possibly life-altering doctor's appointments in Chicago, and it seemed like NO ONE remembered or cared...to me, each one was a new terror, another chance for the doctors who seemed to hold my future in their hands to fail me yet again...and it seemed like to everyone else, it was of no importance. I felt so utterly alone so many times. Often facing a doctor with a team of assistants by myself, I had to fight back tears as they told me yet again that what we were trying wasn't working, and they didn't know why. And I felt so alone. But God was there. As emotionally tormenting as those times were, and as difficult as things often still are, He drew me close to Him through them.
God also gave me the opportunity to speak into the lives of others struggling with injuries, especially musicians. I pray that He continues to do so, that my testimony might be helpful to others, despite the fact that it doesn't have a "happy ending" yet, and that it might never have one.
At this point, I feel like I don't really worship music anymore. I can't ascribe reasons to why God has placed this thorn in my side. His thoughts are higher than my thoughts, and His ways are higher than my ways. Thank goodness for that. But I can say that God has worked through this in a number of ways, from drawing me closer to Him to making me depend more and more on Him (and less and less on music and people).
Reliving a lot of this through my xanga and journal entries and the like, I realize that if I had known that all of this was going to happen back senior year of high school, it would have broken me. Music was my passion, my future...Practice Room #2 was my sanctuary...it would have crushed me to know that there would be a point in time, only a few years down the road, where I would go MONTHS without so much as TOUCHING a piano. But God sustained me through each heart-rending step of the journey to where I am now. And He will continue to sustain me through whatever is next. As painful as this journey has been, it has been such an incredible growth experience. Even though I certainly wouldn't have chosen this path, I would not be who I am today if I had not had to struggle through this. Another thing my recent perusal of Xanga reminded me of is this verse, that my dear friend Julie wrote to me once: "In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps" (Proverbs 16:9). How true that is, and how wonderful to think that we can worship and follow God, who both determines our steps and redeems our tragedies! Praise the LORD.
