Christmas in October

I love my weekly violin lessons so very much! My teacher, Patrick, is a talented young man in his early twenties. After having had other teachers who were very scary, scattered, or not too great, it is wonderful to have Patrick as my teacher. True, I was probably destined to love him from the start owing to his first name, but it is really his incredible talent that continues to astound me.

With one of my former teachers, I used to dread my lessons. I was so nervous and afraid that my hands would literally shake during my lessons. My teacher would scold me:

"You're so stressed out! You're never going to be a good violinist unless you learn to relax. Calm down!"

Strangely, having a grown up scold me did nothing positive toward the end of decreasing my stress level and only made my hands shake more!

I actually quit taking lessons at one point a year ago, giving up on a long held dream to learn to play the violin/fiddle. I know that a forty three year old woman is never going to learn to play well, but I seriously love my instrument and am content to be able to play several easy songs. Those others teachers made my lessons feel more like work, and I lost the motivation to play because I wasn't having any fun.

With Patrick, my weekly lessons feel a bit like a cross between a warm, musical hug and a personal coaching session. We typically start off by chatting about whatever gig he played the weekend before. He's a young man, soon to be a college graduate. He plays all over town in many different venues, but lately frequently as a headliner. I've heard him play jazz, fiddle, mariachi, salsa and rock. It's fun to hear about how his career is blossoming.

Then we play - he will usually have me play through the piece I'm working on once or twice, and then he plays along with me. This is when the real fun begins! He's so good that when I play with him I find myself smiling - I still sound pretty terrible, but somehow I imagine I sound better when I'm playing with Patrick.

Lately we've been working almost exclusively on fiddle tunes. Last week, however, I told Patrick that I'd love to learn some Christmas songs. My dream is to spend December evenings in my music room with my boys, jamming to some wonderful Christmas standards. Today, we got started with Silent Night. It felt a little funny to be playing that in October, but if we do a song a week I should have a small repertoire built up going into Advent. Patrick's violin version of Silent Night is so lovely that it almost brought me to tears. Perhaps that's one of the reasons that I love my lessons so much - I have a private weekly concert with a very talented musician who is truly passionate about his art. The joy of it is that he's also passionate about sharing it with others - he is never condescending or pompous, despite the fact that he would deserve to have that type of attitude.

My time with Patrick always flies by and I find myself anxious to rush home and practice. The lesson today made me stop and think about how freely and positively Patrick shares his talents. True, he is paid for giving me lessons. But part of what makes him such a good teacher is that he is so positive and never intimidating.

In this respect, he's a lot like my good friend and knitting teacher Cindy, who loves nothing more than teaching people to knit. Yesterday, a new friend joined us for our weekly knitting group and Cindy spent a good portion of our time together teaching this new knitter how to do a simple garter stitch. She's a patient and nurturing teacher, which is why the people she teaches get hooked on knitting so quickly. My time with Cindy yesterday and with Patrick today made me wonder about how I share my own talents. Do I exude the joy they do when I'm engaged in an activity I love? Do I openly and lovingly share my talents with others? Would someone feel comfortable coming to me to learn something new?

Learning new things is part of what makes life so wonderful - I'm particularly blessed to have great teachers in my life. Today, I'm grateful for lessons well learned and for the blessing of friends who teach me how to be a little better every day by their loving examples of using God's gifts to the fullest.