With God's Help

When I was 17, I read a book called Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Harris. I remember being skeptical at first. Chuck Norris wrote the foreword, so when I was his name on the front cover I immediately thought, "Is this a joke?" It wasn't, though. In fact, that book helped change my life. I learned of other teens who are fed up with low expectations and mediocre achievements, just like I was, and still am. It inspired me to challenge myself to really try and make a difference where I am with what I have.
       
I am a proud member of the Rebelution, which is the movement the Harris brothers started.  We Rebelutionaries are always asking each other, "What's your hard thing right now?" Mine is a class called Musicianship. Now, for all those non-music majors out there, let me explain. Musicianship is a class which trains the inner ear. Remember that part in The Sound of Music where Maria starts teaching the children how to sing? She uses something called solfege, which assigns a syllable for every note in a diatonic scale: do, re, me, fa, sol, la, ti, do. Musicianship is about learning to sight read a piece with those syllables.

For singing days, we come into class and take out our sight singing books. If it's my turn to sing for a grade, I am assigned a melody and then I decide what key I will sing it in. My professor gives me the first note of that scale, nothing more. Then I warm up by singing through the scale on syllables, after which I cue myself to begin singing. The singing part is hard because if I do not set my tempo correctly, I will go too fast and botch up my intonation (in other words, I'll go flat and it will all sound bad).
     
 Sight singing is only half of Musicianship, though. The other half is devoted to dictation. This also employs syllables, but it is the opposite of sight singing. With sight singing, I look at notes on a page and translate them into syllables and sound. With dictation, I listen to a melody and then try to write it down. It's a lot like spelling, except a lot more difficult. Dictation days in Musicianship require me to sit down and write a melody after hearing it only four times. This is without a doubt one of the hardest parts of my week.
     
 I have had to do hard things in my life. I have had to let go of my silly fears and trust God, forgive a a friend who hurt me, and work through the pain of homesickness and despair. Yet, all those hard things really pale in comparison to the struggle Musicianship has been, and continues to be for me. I told God, "I know when I signed up for this that it was going to be hard, but does it have to be this hard? What if I fail?" That "what if" question has often defeated me in the past. When I said it to God, though, a new thought followed. It was, "What if you succeed?" Everything went quiet inside of me. Those four words ran through my mind over and over again. New thoughts followed them. They were, "Even if I don't succeed, I am going to do my best anyway," and "What if everything I am experiencing will not only make me a better student, but also a better person?" and "If this is an opportunity for change, shouldn't I be snatching it up?"

I still have a lot of work ahead of me in Musicianship. In fact, I will be working on it right after I finish this blog, and tomorrow, and the day after that, and during the many weeks to come. Still, I believe that this is my opportunity to grow. This is my hard thing right now, and with God's help I am not going to give up on it.