WEEKEND REFLECTION:

Friday evening we went to a piano recital at the "Presbyterian Harvard of the Midwest" or so several sem profs called it. One of my parishioners, a HS teen, is a musically gifted and talented young man. The program was varied from Bach to Chopin to Bartok to Debussy and MacDowell. The Chopin pieces were flawless, including the encore piece. Each piece unique and different in style. He was quite poised and wore a tux with tails and his fingers danced on the concert grand Steinway. It was a most enjoyable recital and an evening well spent and to support this young man.
I told him that playing the hymns for Sunday must seem so prosaic!!!! However, playing for congregational singing and accompanying a choir is much different than performance playing. He is versatile enough to handle them all. What a blessing this teen is to his parents, to our church, to the world.
It made me wonder what LH's and my children would have been like. We are both musical, although not of the caliber of the aforementioned teen. Would our child have had some musical talent, done well on the SAT and ACT, been an avid reader, or surprised us by being good sports? There are times, that I wonder about the children we could never have and the chasm opens inside with an unfilled longing that is almost unbearable. I will leave this world, this life, never knowing who our children would've been. I would like to have known them. I'll just bet I would've liked them in addition to loving them as a parent. But I will never, ever know.