2010 Reflection

This morning I shared in church a reflection of 2010. Feel free to read if you're interested. It's kind of long.


The other day I was logged into facebook checking the status updates of the day. I noticed that one of my fellow piano teacher friends had written something that caught my eye. “I have to believe that the dissonance in my life will eventually resolve.” This triggered an interesting train of thought. One of the first lessons in the music theory class I teach is about sound waves and the concepts of consonance and dissonance. Before your eyes all start rolling into the back of your head, I'll give you a (very) mini lesson. Sound waves that are soaring through the air in a parallel (remember the word parallel from mathematics?) motion are consonant. They are working together to create tones that are pleasant, harmonious, and satisfying. We call this a resolved sound. When we change the pitches to become dissonant, this means that we are changing the sound waves to bounce into one another. This creates a dissatisfying sound, an uncomfortable sound. A sound that is begging to come to a resolution. This is the foundation of all music – the dissonant sounds seeking the resolution. When I try to connect the theoretical concepts of music to my life, I wonder – do all sounds have to resolve? Is this something that is required?

When I think back over the circumstances of dissonance over the past year, I remember that not long ago I was hardly getting any sleep and how incredibly challenging this was for me! Our second born son did not think that sleep was very necessary, and on the especially bad nights I remember watching the sun come up and I would just weep because I was so exhausted. It's hard to handle life while sleep deprived and I fought this time of my life fervently. I desperately read every single book I could find about babies and sleep patterns. We tried every 'baby sleep method' out there in order to try to reach a point where 45 minutes of sleep at a time wasn't the norm. Eventually I came to the realization that... well... this will end. This was only for a time, and the more I fought and stewed and was frustrated, the worse I felt. Here's an excerpt that I wrote on my blog back in February:

" I am pouring everything I can possibly pour into my children, and still there needs to be more. I make mistakes every day. I claw my way out of sleep deprived despair as often as I can. (Can you tell this sleep thing is really difficult for me?) I am easily frustrated and grumpy and sometimes unreasonable. I greedily long for naptime and a good cup of coffee. However. (And thank goodness there's a however!) I am learning to be more gracious towards myself, my husband and towards my children. I am learning that the strength I ask for is given in unexpected, not magical, ways. I am learning that the body can adapt and physically cope and survive on an inhumane amount of sleep. I am learning that to fight against circumstances just makes a person more tired, but adapting and learning is freeing."

When I stopped fighting, when I stopped allowing myself to feel angry and frustrated and started make a conscious choice to just enjoy this time of life I was in... well, I wasn't any less exhausted. But I was a whole lot happier. Choosing to embrace this difficulty in my life opened a new realm of satisfaction and of resolution. Especially now that we are finally getting more sleep! Yes, this sleepless time has ended, and that dissonance has evolved into sweet, sweet gratitude and relief.

The most recent time of dissonance in my life came about a month and a half ago. We received a buying offer on our house that we have been trying to sell since August. We celebrated this happy turn in our lives with great joy, as our family has outgrown the 980 sq foot bungalow that we have worked so hard on to make a home. As the dates for the final signatures to be placed drew near, we found a new house that was beyond our greatest hopes and with amazement and tremendous excitement, were actually able to buy this house, subject to our house selling, of course. Some of you know this story and know that on the very last day, our buyer walked away. Our disappointment, our frustration and our sadness was actually tangible. We knew it was a gift, it was never ours to hold onto, we knew we had plenty to be thankful for. But this knowledge suddenly became tangible too. My online searches for furniture and design ideas turned into searches for blogs of relief workers in Haiti. My perspective completely shifted as I looked at the brand new teeny homes built for TEN families to live in together. My view of God's faithfulness was deeply humbled when I saw the photos of joy and relief and PRAISE on faces that have lived through hell that I have never even dreamed of. It seems that the dissonance in their lives comes in sound waves of intense magnitude. I wonder if the resolution of gratitude, of relief, and of satisfaction does too?


My mother and I are very close and without her constant support in my life, I don't know where I would be. She absolutely adores my kids and has built an amazing relationship with them. After having my baby, she was there with her cleaning rags and her meals. She would run with them to the park, pushing Owen in the stroller and making up racing games with Lucas as they went along. I would finally get a much needed nap and they would return happy and breathless. My mother is the kind of woman who will constantly sacrifice to serve other people, who continuously pours out her life to help in any way she can. This past August my mother started to experience some strange symptoms of weakness in her body and I watched with fear and horror the transformation from a vibrant, active woman to a pained and weak one. In two weeks she had a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis, a degenerative condition with no cure. Living with this disease is incredibly difficult, but my mother refuses to complain and continues to live her life as normally as possible, clinging to her fervent belief in the sovereignty of God. I have spent many a night lying awake in the wee hours with tears trickling and prayers rising, wishing that we didn't have to face this dissonance. Wondering about the sovereignty of God. Wondering how this is going to turn out. I watch the home videos of my amazing mother chasing my kids around and I am overwhelmed with sadness. In my grief I wonder, is this dissonance going to resolve? Is it okay if it doesn't? Will I learn to find the beauty in it?

If I turn back to music theory (because I know that everyone finds that incredibly fascinating!) I know that music wouldn't be very interesting without dissonance. If everything was satisfying and parallel there would be no motivation or reason to move forward, to play the next chord, to find the next source of resolution. The beauty and glory in music comes from the dissonance. When I was in college I belonged to a choir that often toured throughout Canada, singing our way through churches and having a lot of fun along the way. One of the games we played while driving for hours in a van (just wait, music people are so cool) was called 'Tone Clusters,' where every time we drove through a tunnel or over a bridge we each picked a different note to sing and held that note the entire time. I wish I had a recording of the horrific dissonance that the van held, because interestingly enough, nearly every time those notes wove and wound and changed until we found a resolved and stable chord to sing. It's human nature to seek out the resolution, it was built into us. But the really good musical dissonance - the kind of music that really makes people sit up and take notice – that's the kind that won't take the path of resolution that's expected.

One of the children's books that I read to Lucas is called, “Kai the Opihi Gets the Point.” It's the hawaiian story of an 'opihi, a small shell, that is not like the other shells. The top of his shell is not pointy, but flat. All his friends have advice and words to say about why his shell has not become pointy – I guess it's a small shell's form of never reaching puberty – but nothing that he tries gives any results. Finally his wise old grandmother – I suppose even little shells have grandmother's – asks him what he does when the huge waves of the ocean come crashing toward him. “Well,” says the little opihi. “Of course I run away!”

“The waves are so big and I am so small,
If the waves crashed on me, I'd be nothing at all.”

The wise grandmother lovingly advises him to cling to the rock instead, and Kai the Opihi agrees to give it a try. As the story goes, “He hung on all day/and he hung on all night, And the waves couldn't budge him/despite their might.” In the end, Kai the Opihi gets his point, and the point of this little story, I guess, is a solemn truth that all of us know deep inside ourselves. If we don't face adversity in our lives - if we don't embrace the dissonant - our resolution will not be what it is intended to be. If we keep clinging to our Rock, we can keep hanging on for as long as we keep making the choice to hang on.

I have to say that the past year was a great year. The moments in between the more difficult ones were the kind of moments that breath life into a soul. Every time I get an enthusiastic hug from my boys my life is enriched. When I read something really inspiring, when the people that cross my path are encouraging or when my moments of meditation are revealing, I know again that I am blessed beyond measure. I am grateful for the lessons that I am learning. I can see the consonance and dissonance weaving to create something really beautiful. And I pray that I can choose to keep clinging despite what may come my way.

As you think back over the past year, may you recognize and embrace your times of dissonance. May you continue to cling to our LORD, our rock, who has promised to never leave us.

Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel; so that after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among those who were before him. For he clung to the LORD; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the LORD had commanded Moses.
2 Kings 18:5-6