FRIDAY

Psalm 30:11-12

• When in your life, or in another’s life, have you seen God work to change sorrow or pain into happiness or joy? What things are you able to give God thanks for today?

Practicing the violin was always the pinnacle of my childhood grief. Five days a week, my mom would wrestle me into the family room and pull out my music books. “You have to practice,” she’d warn me. “Thirty minutes a day. That’s how you get better.”

Oh, I hated practicing the violin. I would throw temper tantrums so dramatic that they’d make Congress sessions look like a Girl Scout meeting by comparison. I’d be innovative in my excuses: from claiming a debilitating illness to having an intense phobia that the FBI was looking for me, and I needed to hide as soon as possible. When the creativity failed (shockingly, my mother didn’t believe my FBI story), I’d fall back on a classic: a good, old-fashioned cry. Wailing, screaming, sobbing, I’d plead to be spared from oppressive violin practice. My mom, the saint that she is, did her best to salvage a few minutes of precious practice time in between the temper tantrums.

Years later, and I got to be pretty good at the violin. I stopped playing when I entered high school, but it gave me a valuable musical base that I’ve added to over the years. But when I think back to the miserable years of forced violin practice, I remember the patience of my mother. It wasn’t that she was never frustrated, upset, or angry—all valid responses to my petulance. It was that she showed up again and again when it would’ve been profoundly easier to let me give up. My mother never gave up on me because she saw my musical potential.