The Church Piano

The day my mom introduced me to the church piano, she got a free babysitter. Living next door to the church had very few perks, but this was one of them. At any time of the day or night, I could go next door and play as loud or weird as I wanted to on a baby grand piano...and no one complained. In fact, I don't remember many times that my mom even sent someone over to bring me back home! It would just be me and the glorious sound of the baby grand in the large space of our auditorium...bliss for a girl seeking acceptance and unable to find it in any other venue.

Tonight I went up to our little church we recently joined and played the piano. It was like stepping back in time as I entered the dark building -- so many memories came flooding back. The echo of the auditorium as I walked down the aisle. The sounds a building makes when no one is there to hear them. The freeness to sit and empty my soul through my fingers. Turning the lights off as I walked out the back, and the blast of cold air when I opened the door. Each one of these things took me back to the place I grew up. Like looking out into the blackness of the auditorium and knowing my dad had snuck upstairs into the overflow and was sitting listening as though it was his own private concert. Hitting the keys in frustration when I couldn't get the timing right or memorize correctly for my recitals. Crying, laying my head down by the sheet music as I wondered how I was going to get out of the mess I made, and how could I do this to my Jesus? Listening to the stillness and asking God questions about life. Playing my heart to my Friend because my words seemed so trite. Stepping out the back door and watching to miss the patch of ice that always forms there. The clear, crisp air would snap me back into reality and I would enter the house and my world again.

I bonded with that building. The hours I spent there, the dilemas I worked through on the piano bench, the elation and misery I experienced there...so much of myself was found and identified in that auditorium sitting on a black piano bench. I was a child. I was a teen. I grew up. And when contemplating where to get married, I knew. My church. Yes, it was the place my dad was pastoring, but that's not the actual reason I chose it. The same walls that I ran to for solace and consolation, I wanted for my wedding day.

Thirty minutes of piano playing went by like nothing tonight. In fact, I was surprised to hear my timer going off because I had only played two songs. But that's what a church piano affords me that nothing else does...a place to be off the clock and alone, and maybe to find what has changed since the last time I opened up to a church piano.