My daughter is learning how to play piano. As I watch her trying to translate what she sees on the page into movement in her fingers, it’s taking me back to my own days of piano lessons.

When I was learning to play the piano, I raced through the music. I was a little bit of a mad woman, playing loud and fast and according to my own beat. I was always good at sightreading, the ability to read and play the correct notes. I could tear my way through a song pretty well, but I was never good at slowing down. And I was awful at timing. I hated stopping to figure out a tricky rhythm, clapping it out against the tick-tick of the metronome or my own tapping foot. Timing drove me mad. Most of the time I ignored it because I simply did not have the patience for it. I just kind of forced the music and used the term “artistic license” pretty liberally (to the chagrin of my piano teachers).

I so often want what I want, when and how I want it. I want my life to play out exactly as I request. I force things. I push onward, instead of patiently waiting. When things don’t go as I planned, I’m upset about the resulting cacophony. I’m disappointed, frustrated, angry with God. I am also afraid. If this doesn’t work out, what then? If God doesn’t give me this, how will I make it through?

But life is so much more than my plans and ideas and desires, the notes I pick on out the keys, the way I think the song should sound. Life is about timing, and most of that belongs to God. He answers our prayers in the way and the time that he knows is best.

He knows best because he is God. I need to trust Him. He sees me.  He knows me, my desires, my dreams. He knows my strengths, my purpose. God also knows my limits, the length of my vision, the borders of my knowledge. He knows what tempts me, he knows my fears. He knows how I’ve made a mess of things. He knows what is best for me and my faith. He picks up my finagled notes, and he sets them to his timing. The result is music, the song that he is crafting out of my life.

I learning to appreciate timing more than I used to, the value of following the Master’s tempo, instead of my own. I know that trusting his timing results in a much more beautiful song.

Lord, sometimes I’m so afraid when things don’t work out the way I had planned. I’m sorry for not trusting you with my life. Please forgive me and help me trust your timing. Thank you, Lord, for the music that you make out of all my noise. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.