Here’s My Heart

I was asked to play violin for our Stake Conference adult meeting last night. Side note…My 7-year-old just asked if we’d be having steak there and got excited and then disappointed when I explained to her what it actually is! — A Stake Conference is a biannual area church meeting where we hear from local members and an area leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Anyway, I was asked to play and it was incredibly special for me. My accompanist, Libby, and I chose an arrangement of “Come Thou Fount” that I have played so many times it is written on my heart. Libby is a dear friend here who has taught me some of the most important things of life (love, prayer, humility) through her genuine example and love for me. This was the last time I will get to play with her and I was so emotional through our practicing and the performance.

This is my favorite arrangement of “Come Thou Fount”

The Albuquerque Mission President was the speaker right after I had played and he shared a story about a violinist that I will never forget. In the late 1800s, the violinist, Benjamin Landart, grew up on a farm with seven siblings and fell in love with the violin. His mother had to hide it away so that he would finished the farm chores before getting lost in practicing for hours. Next to their land, the violin itself was the most valuable possession they owned. Benjamin became so skilled that he received an invitation to audition for the territorial orchestra, which was a great honor. For him, this was a dream come true. He prepared for several weeks with many prayers and a lot of practicing to prepare. When the conductor heard Benjamin play, he told him that he was “the most accomplished violinist he had heard west of Denver.” Benjamin was asked to move to Denver for rehearsals and was promised earnings that would be enough to cover his own living expenses and more for his family. This was big!

Just one week after making his audition, Benjamin’s bishop invited him to his office and asked if he would accept a mission call. This would mean foregoing the orchestra and giving two years to serve others and share the gospel of Jesus Christ. Benjamin felt that giving up his chance to play in the orchestra was almost more than he could bare, but he also know what his decision would be. His family had no money to finance his mission and knew he would need to sell his violin.

Tim days later, on March 23, 1893, Benjamin wrote in his journal: “I awoke this morning and took my violin from its case. All day long I played the music I love. In the evening when the light grew dim and I could see to play no longer, I placed the instrument in its case. It will be enough. Tomorrow I leave [for my mission].

Over four decades later, in 1938, Benjamin recorded in his journal: “The greatest decision I ever made in my life was to give up something I dearly loved to the God I loved even more. He has never forgotten me for it.”

I love this story. Yes, because it’s a violin story, but I especially love Benjamin’s perspective in the moment and decades later. He felt the weight of his sacrifice for something better so deeply. I remembered when I left to serve as a missionary in Belgium, I had asked if I could bring my violin with me to the mission and was denied. I cried. It was such a part of me. Then, when I arrived in Brussels to my first area, there was a professional violinist in the neighborhood and I shared with her my love for it. She immediately offered to let me borrow her second violin for the time I was there in Belgium. I was so grateful and now, 20 years later, I am even more grateful because I know loaning out an instrument to a stranger is not an easy thing. We played Shostakovich together and I am sad now that I don’t remember her name. I am so grateful for her generosity and that God connected us. He knew I needed it.

I started my masters degree in violin performance about 10 years later. Every time we move (often in the military!) I have to carry my precious violin with me out of my hands too long through the moving process. It’s a part of me, and yet I’ve had to set it aside many times throughout my adulthood so far. Motherhood and marriage have required different things from me in different seasons, which has meant less and less practicing, and less performing with symphonies and being gone nights and weekends. But at each period of ebb and flow, I always sensed that God was in the details and that it would be ok. I was choosing Him.

My mom is a big Mary Englebreit fan and I remember this picture framed in the house I grew up in. Loved it then, love it still.

One of the best lines from the piece I played on my violin at this conference says, “Here’s my heart, O take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above.” That’s the choice I am trying to make every day with what I choose to focus on and how I spend my time. I’m trying to do what He would have me do, and like Benjamin, I know that “He has never forgotten me for it.”

Sometimes we are asked to give up things we love because there is something better. Actually, I think that is the daily lesson, right? Learning to love God. Showing that love to our neighbors. Again, and again, and again.

These are my Sunday thoughts to close out my difficult week, and begin a new week that I know will also be heavy with appointments and tasks for our move. Writing them down helps me to internalize and remember them, and I hope there’s someone this lifts and helps too.

Happy Easter Week, friends!

Love,

Dayna