adapted from post originally written July 29, 2016

A Master’s student who taught the creative writing class I took in college told me that I wasn’t allowed to write based off of real life stories that were unbelievable.

“These things just don’t happen,” she insisted. “No one will ever believe you.”

She detested my writing and loved passing down writing edicts.

But, since this blog is not fiction, I guess this one time I am allowed to write out unbelievable happenings that are entirely true. Because, when God is involved, the unbelievable are believed.

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When I was nine my parents let me choose lessons in gymnastics, ballet or piano. I chose piano. I always loved the instrument, and after hearing an advanced student play, I wanted to be proficient. I wanted to pick up sheet music and be able to play the tune. About eight years later I reached that point, and along the way I learned to fiercely love this instrument. It became to me like writing always had: an outlet. I could sit down and play for hours until my fingers ached and feel at home.

I played daily until I left for college. I had intermittent access to pianos, but nothing like the access I had had before. When I did find a piano, I would sit and play for hours, but this didn’t happen often.

When I graduated from college and moved back to Oregon, I didn’t have a working piano to play and had fewer and fewer opportunities. Often, I only played once a year at Christmas. Then marriage came and kids, and the years added up. Pianos have never been in the budget. I began to hurt with longing and sadness when I saw pianos. I ached to sit down and play, but most were, for one reason or another, inaccessible. Having a piano of my own became a silent prayer and dream. It had been so long since I played that most people I know now (including my two daughters) had no idea I knew how to play, let alone that I adored to play.

I occasionally looked on Craigslist, but nothing ever really showed up that was affordable and playable. Most of the inexpensive pianos were more furniture than an instrument.

Then, just a few weeks ago, a long time family friend walked up to my mom and asked if I would want her piano. I’m not sure how she remembered I played or why it was me that she thought of in the first place. It was a piano her mother had bought her, and she decided it was time to pass it on to someone who would play it.

I sat down with my journal last week after scheduling the piano movers and wrote. Tears misted my eyes as I realized something: God never forgot me. He never forgot that deep down desire I had for a piano, the one that I had shoved to the side and deemed impossible. All along He remembered my dream to once again play the instrument that makes my soul sing.

Today, the piano movers came. And as one last little nod to me and this miracle, as I was dusting the back, I reached down and pulled out a lost Scrabble letter: an M, my first initial.

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When I wrote this and posted it on my facebook page eighteen months ago, I left out a large chunk of what this piano meant to me. Receiving this piano coincided with the desire to write again, and I was too afraid to tell anyone.

Writing is my impossible, impractical dream. It’s even more impractical than receiving a piano with my initial tucked inside. But, receiving that piano reminded me of one truth:

No matter where I’m at, or how little, impractical or impossible my dream may seem, God still remembers it, and He still remembers me.

I am finally reaching a point where I can timidly say that writing is the dream that God has given me. And, because God has given me that dream, it is completely possible.

“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” Matthew 26:26