This morning, I sat down at the piano and pulled out one of my harder books. Lately, I have been playing simpler pieces to the point of confidence to play at church. That’s a huge step for me, because I had stopped taking piano lessons in elementary school, struggled with performance anxiety, presented myself as if I were a performer on stage for decades, and in only the last few years have chosen to live my life messy, vulnerably, and authentically for the Lord, without a desire or perspective performance.
Over the last few years, the piano has been for me a source of joy, of peace, of healing, of growth, and of overcoming. Music connects me to my Father in heaven, and as I worship him through it, pour out tears, ponder life, or even celebrate through it, I thank him for the seed of music that he placed inside me before I was born. Maybe you also were given that strong sense that music is a seed that was planted inside of you, or you can define the seed inside you as something else that lights up your entire being, like water, or mountains, or animals?
I love making music and listening to it, but now that I have become free in Christ, music feels different somehow. Now when I sing or play piano, I am trying not to think about what I look like or sound like to others, but rather, I am aiming to please God, asking him what he thinks about it or looking to him for his response.
Our inner child still clamors for acknowledgement and praise for what we’re doing, but because of our intense love for Jesus that grows as we spend time learning about him and with him, the one we care about impressing is only the Lord (well, that’s where we try to get to, anyway). Is there anything that you do that you know so well that you forget that God is the only member of the audience that truly matters? If so, maybe that’s your next lesson to learn, and Holy Spirit can guide you and teach you.
Learning to master an instrument is a journey of learning, but when we focus on learning in order to perform, all the joy is sapped out of it. Learning anything is like that, which you’ve probably noticed if you’ve ever white-knuckled through something with the goal of performing well enough on the tests to pass the class. “Learning” Organic Chemistry, for me was like that, and although I passed the class, I’m pretty sure that very little that I was supposed to learn was ever anything that I retained, much less allowed it to transform my life and mind.
Life and faith are journeys of learning too, but the faster we shift our focus to love learning just for the sake of learning rather than holding tightly to a performance mindset, the faster we get to a life filled with JOY and PEACE. Few things sap the joy out of life faster than having a mindset that we need to perform, appear as perfect, and impress others.
I have often said that life is a test, which was a concept that motivated me during the seasons in my life when I had to climb out of the deep hole I had found myself in. I tackled healing with a zest of learning as if I needed to be a mountain climber able to scale the steep walls of the mountains of my life, and I studied faith, life skills, psychology, self-help, and tried to become adept at tools for healing as diligently as if there was a test that I was preparing for. Healing from trauma, grief, and unhealthy mindsets takes time and devotion, and it can feel like a job all in itself, but the more that you invest in learning the process, the faster you will see success as you scale the mountains in your own life.
In that season of my life, I eventually passed every test, and most of them weren’t easy. Chances are that you have passed many difficult tests too, and some of yours might have even been harder than mine. Regardless of how hard each test is to learn new tools in order to pass, in life we all are handed different versions with different questions that require different levels of understanding. We all need acknowledgement and praise for passing those tests in life, so I want to pause here to tell you that your Heavenly Father is so proud of you for how much work you put in to pass the tests that you’ve been handed. At first, it probably felt like you would never learn what you needed to know, but YOU DID IT!
Maybe you recently had a test that you didn’t do so good in. Don’t worry, because you’ll get another shot at it, so keep learning and you’ll be prepared to pass it next time. Maybe your brain is telling you, like mine did about Organic Chemistry, that you passed the test and will never need to know that stuff again. When your thoughts tell you that you “just need to pass the test,” something incredible happens… your brain automatically dumps it when it believes that it will never be needed.
My brain dumped Organic Chemistry, so if I had to pass a test with those skills again, I’d have to go back to the beginning and learn it all over again. Relearning it might come a little easier, or it might not, but I would have to relearn the information with the goal of understanding rather than just to pass the test. So, with the tests you’ve faced or about to face in life, you probably don’t want to have to relearn it over and over again from the beginning. It’s up to each of us to realize that this journey of life is not actually about passing the tests, IT’S ABOUT WHAT WE LEARN.
LIFE IS A SERIES OF TESTS, BUT ONLY BECAUSE OF THE LEARNING THAT HAPPENS IN BETWEEN.
Since my words took us on a journey of learning far away from music and talking about key signatures, I want to bring you back to where this started. I was sitting at the keyboard of my piano and had pulled out one of my harder books to play. Today I struggled to remember the three sharps in the key signature more today than I would have a month ago, because I was out of the practice of learning these skills. In preparing to perform at church, I had gotten into a groove of playing music that was easy, and although it brought me joy and gave me peace, I wasn’t deliberately pushing myself to learn.
I had forgotten that even tests which we have once passed require a focus on continuing to learn, otherwise our skills get rusty. It can feel discouraging to come back to something that we had once mastered just to discover that we need to back up and relearn some things, but that’s the way we were designed. That’s life!
Learning is a lifelong process, so the sooner we understand that in order to love life, we must love learning. If you’ve read this far, you either already love learning like I do, or you’re reading this because someone recommended it to you. They love you enough to want you to realize the importance of learning in order that you might effect change in some area of your life, and since you’re alive, you have the ability to learn new things!
If you’re reading with the goal of learning and growing, a good beginning question to ask yourself is, “What ‘key signature’ am I in now”? In order to play melodically, you need to know when to approach the notes differently than head-on. Whatever situation you’re facing right now, the issue might not be the notes that you’re playing, but instead, maybe it’s your approach. Step back and take notice of what you know to be true about the situation before you choose your approach, remembering when you need to insert a “flat” or a “sharp” rather than hitting the note head-on.
Lastly, when you’re working on a harder piece of music (or are facing a new and challenging life situation), watch closely for key changes and be ready to adjust your approach to the notes quickly. There may be a test at the end of this challenge that you’re facing or this mountain that you’re climbing, but how you perform on the test is less important than you’re willingness to keep learning and growing as you go.
You have an audience of One, and his encouragement and love will push you much farther than you ever thought you could go and lift you higher than you ever thought you deserved, because through the gift of Jesus and your choice to follow him, the power of God in you will be your strength to overcome every obstacle. Never stop learning.
Music is powerful, and I’d like to recommend that you close your eyes and listen to this song for the next few minutes. It’s “Falling Upward” by Fearless Soul.
(Originally posted on Facebook on 6/3/2026)