a jazz improv life

Improvisation... the ability to trust your intuition with a foundation of skill and information
The retreat leader was a tall, elegant jazz musician who had traveled the world with his music. Illness forced a change in his life plans. My friend the minister had not planned to become a minister. He wanted to teach in a seminary but denominational change and job opportunities pushed him to Plan B. Unlike these two people, I never had a plan. My life seemed to be a series of happenings, each one leading to another one.
At age twelve, I walked the aisle (Baptist speak for making a public faith announcement) one Sunday morning to dedicate my life to full time Christian service. I was convinced God had called me to something special, set apart, a vocation as my Catholic friends would say. In later years my daddy told me how scared he was I would end up a missionary far away from home. He never let me know his fear and watched as my life unfolded no farther away than Texas. Actually, Texas is pretty far away in mind and spirit from South Georgia, but I digress. All through high school and most of college I kept that feeling of hopeful expectation of a call realized. Then life happened. I met Tim at a student mission work camp in Cherokee, we married, he was killed in Viet Nam. I went to seminary, met Michael, married, had children. We lived in Texas, Kentucky (three different times), South Carolina and North Carolina. Michael has been an associate minister, a pastor, a seminary professor and a pastoral counselor. I have been a wife, mother, piano teacher, day care provider, fund raiser for a private school, psychiatric social worker and now teacher in an adult continuing education program. Except for the social work jobs, these jobs were all part time. Now in my sixties, I think I am beginning to find my vocation, my call, my sense of what I can do that is special. I can write and I can teach.
The funny thing about this discovery... Years ago daddy and I would argue as he drove me to class in the morning about my determination to become a social worker. He wanted me to be a teacher. Our compromise was a minor in music so I would always have something to "fall back on." Daddy had respected my piano teacher, Mrs. Drew, and thought I would make a wonderful teacher of music. Now I am a teacher, not of music but creativity. I love teaching folks who think they haven’t an artistic bone in their body... seeing them come alive with the joy of making something special from little or nothing. I love teaching children at church. Their questions never cease to amaze me and their open, honest questions keep me in a child frame of mind.
My life has been one improvisational moment after another and I used to wonder why I couldn’t settle down and grow up and do what all the other grown ups were doing... go to work and pay bills on time and have a career and build a retirement account and be a responsible person. I loved being a wife and mother, two professions that have no fringe benefits or insurance plans. I wouldn’t trade the time spent with our children as they grew up for all the tea in China. Nor do I regret being able to follow Michael as he moved to different places in his career. My "lack" of a career or more formal calling allowed me to live the moments of my life as I was needed. A soccer mom, a Brownie and Cub Scout mom, a pastor’s wife who could entertain and play the piano and give a good Training Union part and sew her own clothes, a room mother, a field trip mom, a seminary professor’s wife who loved the students that ended up a part of our family and are now stretched from China to New York to North Carolina, a daughter who could take her children home to my parent’s farm every summer for two weeks of farm fun... I have had an improvisational life.
Now when I look back, I see the grace notes scattered throughout the jazz composition of my life, the riffs, the melody expressed in different rythmns and keys. And, I am grateful. I see that my calling was simple... to be... to be who I am... to become who I was gifted to be... to be for others... to be for myself... to be for God. Much like Paul, I have wandered through my life, setting up my tent in the places I found myself, and waited for God to show up. God has shown up in Texas and Kentucky and South Carolina and North Carolina and is here now in my life on Sabbath Rest Farm. I am thankful for all the different ways I have been able to work and grow and laugh and love and weep and rage in my life. But most of all, I am keenly aware of the gifts I have been given... a loving family, children, a steadfast husband, a soul connection to this small piece of earth, people of faith who are my family, life its own self.
Thanks be to God for improvisational living and the grace that accompanies us as we pilgrims in a weary land head towards home at the close of day. Like Junie B.headed to the barn at night, let me run with joyful abandon and graceful gait through the life that awaits me still. May I never lose the ability to set up my tent, waiting on God, wherever my life leads me, whatever awaits in my future. I am most grateful, dear God, for your showing up in my meandering life. I love you still. Peggy