Musician (Heidi –pianist)       

   

  It is around 5:30AM. The house is dark and quiet, everyone is sound asleep, everyone that is except Heidi. She is up and already in front of her prayer chair where she comes before the Lord to make intercession on behalf of her family, the church, the nations and any particular prayer needs that she has been made aware of for that day. She is back at her familiar post doing battle for souls just as she has nearly every day for more than 20 years. She prays, reads her Bible and plays worship music to for Jesus until the rest of the family starts to get up and go about their day-to-day activities.

 

   Heidi is a small person and very quiet most of the time but I have always been a little bit afraid of her so I wouldn't DARE call her 'mousy'. Her husband Mike and I have been friends for many years and have done some pretty wild and crazy things. Whenever we would leave the house together, she would always give me what I call ‘the look’. To me 'the look' means, bring my husband back alive or I will personally call fire down from heaven and you will be annihilated, vaporized, pulverized and reduced to a tiny grease spot in the middle of the driveway and then I’ll run over you on the way to church! She never actually said these things but ‘the look’ made words unnecessary, and so, Mike has never been safer than with me. (Besides it was he that instigated all the trouble and not me! honest!)

 

   Proverbs 31:28 speaks of a virtuous woman being identified by two interesting things. First, it says that, “Her Children shall arise up and call her blessed.” The second is that her husband shall praise her. I have known Heidi’s kids since they were babies and I can honestly say I have never heard kids speak as highly of their mother as hers do. They are very aware of what it means to have someone get up in the early morning every day to pray for them. They also know what it means to have someone care about them enough to be the last one asleep at night because she is praying for a child who is struggling.

 

   One of her daughters recently said to me, “I think she could have been a psychologist or counselor or something. She hears about what we are going through and always has the perfect answers. I think she gets all of her wisdom in prayer. One day I was feeling depressed and she told me that I need to think of my heart as a train. The various sections or cars of the train make up one single thing. She said our heart is like the train made up of the will, the mind- and the emotions. She said that we should keep the emotions in the rear of the train for it to work right. Sometimes we need to employ our will and force our emotions to the back of the train and concentrate on believing God’s word about our lives and not believe what we feel at the moment. That advice has changed me so much and helped me over many difficult moments in my life.” How many teenagers and young adults do you hear who spontaneously speak such words about their parents?! We can command kids to obey but true heartfelt respect, honor and admiration must be truly cultivated and earned.

 

   Her husband indeed calls her blessed and has told me on several occasions how he feels undeserving and unworthy of her strength and love. He truly sees her as the spiritual backbone and glue of the family in a very real way. His job as an airline pilot makes it necessary for him to be gone a lot. This has made it necessary for her to have to shoulder a big load at times. Mike and all five of their kids think of Heidi in the absolute highest regard. (See Mike’s bio under airline pilot in this section)

 

   I bring out these more hidden things before talking about what she is most known for and the way most people see her because as is often the case, it is the hidden things of the heart that give the visible parts of our lives their true meaning. When people see Heidi in church playing music, it would be very easy to simply see a person who is talented and skillful as a musician but they may miss that what comes out at the tips of her fingers, is in reality an overflow of a heart full of worship and praise for her Lord and savior, Jesus.

 

   She began piano lessons at about 9 years old and continued formal training until she was 21and has continued lessons at various times even until now. At first, she had dreams of being a concert pianist but over time she stopped thinking about such things and devoted her attention to playing ‘out’ what she wanted to express from what was ‘within’ her heart.

 

   At about age 16, she came to a place that she consideres to be a crossroad in her life. She had received the Lord as her personal savior at an evangelistic crusade when she was about 9 years old but had come to a place where she was not really serving the Lord with her whole heart. She felt neither totally in or totally out. In her own words she was ‘straddling the fence’. One night she was alone in her room and she felt that she needed to make up her mind and pick one of the two roads before her- either serve the Lord or go the way of the world. It is like the words of Elijah to the Children of Israel in 1Kings 18:21, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, then, follow Him. If Baal be God then follow him.” In other words, make up your mind one-way or the other. Fortunately, she picked the way of the Lord. (How about YOU as you read this? Are YOU wavering between two opinions? The time has come for you to choose. Please choose the way of eternal life!)

 

   From that time she committed herself whole-heartedly to the task of getting to know God and walking in His ways. When asked what message she wants to communicate to others through her life, her answer is, “I want people to know that following Jesus is not a bunch of Dos and Don’ts. It is about really knowing the Lord and that this relationship is worth pursuing. I want people to know Jesus as a person and not merely an idea or concept. The Dos and Don’ts take care of themselves as we simply live to please Him. We also learn how deeply He loves us and longs for our good as well.”

 

   One of Heidi’s favorite Bible passages is found in Isaiah 41:9-10. “You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called from the chiefs of men and said, “You are my servant, I have chosen you and have not cast you away. Fear not, for I am with you, yes, I will help you; yes, I will hold you up with my own right hand.”

 

   Anyone who has ever seriously studied music theory and the science behind it will know that it is an absolutely bottomless pit in terms of intricacy and complexity. On one hand music is simple and can be simply enjoyed, yet at the same time it is more than can possibly be mastered in several life times. Heidi has forgotten more than most people will ever learn about music and what can be accomplished on the 88 keys of her piano, but she still takes piano lessons to this day because there is always more to learn. She is studying the concepts of Jazz music these days and learning new improvisation techniques. She says that she still feels frustrated at times because she wants to be able to more freely express through her music the things she feels the Lord is putting in her heart.

 

 It is unimaginable how a person can have even a cursory knowledge of the physics, the complex patterns, and consistent and dynamic mathematical structures just below the surface of what we call music and not believe in God! Heidi has seen that music is in scripture from cover to cover for a very good reason. There are few things available to the sensory limitations of mankind that are as capable of revealing so much about our maker and savior as his wonderful gift to us which we call, music. Heidi loves and studies music because in so doing, she discovers more and more about the Lord who designed and made the physical realities that make music possible. She also learns more of how God, who is spirit, can reveal and express his heart through his physical creation. She is still learning of music’s amazing ability to affect our moods, our emotions, and our deepest spiritual core and serve as a bridge across the boundary of the natural and the spiritual.

 

   As you can see, music is much more to Heidi than notes on a page. It is merely a portal through which she can get a glimpse of the Lord Himself. She then takes that little glimpse and communicates it beyond the limitations of mere words into music that the Lord Himself literally inhabits and thus enables the congregation to somehow ‘see’ and experience that glimpse as well.

 

   There are many talented piano players in the world. There are piano players who know more about music than even Heidi does. But the thing that Heidi brings to church on Sunday morning has little to do with her knowledge or cords and scales. It has much more to do with a meeting- an appointment that she has faithfully kept at 5:30AM over the past 20 years. She plays beautiful worship music in church because she has allowed Him to make HER and instrument of worship.