I am not a particularly good guitar player. In fact, if you play guitar there is a very good chance you are at least 5 times better than I am. I am good enough to lead worship for teens when there is literally no one else who can, and I am good enough to play at camp, again when there is literally no one else who can. I started playing guitar because I had told Bronwyn years ago I wish I could so one Christmas she bought me one. I think it may have been our second Christmas as a married couple. I never took a lesson and never really had anyone show me too much. I figured out where to put my fingers, made up strum patterns and sang loud enough to hopefully tune out my mistakes. I learned a few songs and improved only slightly but at some point, I set it down and didn’t play it for a long time. I think it was around the time we hiked the Appalachian Trail. And there it set, well actually they sat because I for some reason bought a second one.
Finally, after years of them collecting dust I started working at the YMCA and then became a lay youth pastor at a church. I really wanted us to do worship music, but I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t good enough and they weren’t even strung anymore. Again, Bronwyn heard me and took my guitars and got them restrung. I started playing again but this time I focused on just the songs I wanted to play for worship. And now I am a guitar god! Just kidding, I’m still terrible but I could lead worship songs for youth and teens. And if there is nobody else in the room that is a fraction better than me I will. When I led music for morning devotion at camp seven years old would always tell me what a good guitar player I was, I never heard that much from an eight-year-old. Something happened between seven and eight that makes you way more perceptive.
It takes years to build up the calluses on your hand to make it easier to play. Even when I went years without playing those calluses were still there. However back in February the fire burned my hand pretty good and although I have very little scaring from the injuries, I did pretty much lose all those calluses. They are coming back slowly and I know that I will never be a great, or good, or not almost bad guitar player. However, I can lead worship for youth and teens and honestly that’s all I want to do anyway.
Someone once told me that “how you do anything, is how you do everything”, and I think that’s true. I may not be great but what little talent I do have I give over to God and He does whatever He wants with it. Take what you have and give it to God and see if you don’t experience the same thing.
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