It’s Thursday evening. The kids are in bed. My husband’s at church worship practice. I have the evening to myself. What do I do?
I grab something to drink, the remote and my guitar. I plop down on the couch and turn on reruns of something. I pick up the guitar- no pick for now- and I strum:
Am7…G…Am7…G…Am7…G
When I started guitar 3 months ago I knew it would be difficult. I assumed getting the chords to sound clear would be hard. (It is.) I assumed strum patterns would take practice. (It’s not so bad.) I assumed keeping an even tempo would take years of practice. (Stupid metronome.) But I didn’t realize how hard it would be to get my fingers from one chord to the next! It is so frustrating to sit down with a song I can play mostly well only to have to slow it down to half time just to get one transition.
Ever-encouraging Joey reminded me that some people have plenty of trouble getting from G to D and back again, but I nailed that. I felt pretty good until I imagined him telling a future student that another someone in the past couldn’t get from an Am7 to G to save her life!
The rerun is over and I look down to my guitar to realize that I have maybe gotten a bit faster! I pull out this week’s song “Your Grace Is Enough” just to try plugging my new-found dexterity into the song.
Woot! Not bad! At least not nearly as bad as before!
I glory in my success for a few moments and then dig in to the next song, “From the Inside Out.” C…G….Em7…D…C….Em7….D…… Am? WHAT?! Drat!
I go to bed.
The next night I sit down with a glass of water, a remote, and my guitar. I send up a little prayer for endurance and I start over:
D…Am…D…Am…D…Am…