As many of you know, I am a piano teacher. I have been teaching a long time and one of the things I constantly have to remind my students is that they have to slow down to go fast. At this point I have taught hundreds of students of all levels, ages and abilities and I have yet to meet one who does not try to play a piece too fast right away.
I explain the process of muscle memory, how if you play slowly and deliberately, measure by measure, your muscles will “remember” the notes even while your mind is learning them. I tell them this might feel as though it takes more time, however it will actually take less because they will not have to unlearn the mistakes they allow their finger muscles to learn.
I know this is the same for pretty much all of us in other areas of life too though. I am not sure if it is just an American trait or a human one, but I have yet to meet the person who gets excited about going extremely slow through a learning process. Especially the painful ones.
For whatever reason, this is usually how God chooses to teach us or refine us. I know for myself, when I am going through a stretching and growing time, I get impatient and want to just jump to the end. I will question God about how long the experience or trial is going to last. I will come up with all kinds of ways that He could shorten it for me. But when I finally get through the time, I can usually look back and see some of what God was doing, how He was using the painful circumstances to sand off some of my rough edges and bring me closer to Himself. This has not made me any more excited about hard times, but it has increased my faith that God is faithful to bring me through and that He does work all things for our ultimate good.
And, true confession, I also play piano pieces too fast right away!
“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” Romans 12:12
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