Romans 15:30-33

Mr. Henderson's sermon in church yesterday was on Romans 15:30-33:
"³⁰ Now I beg you, brethren, through the Lord Jesus Christ, and through the love of the Spirit, that you strive together with me in prayers to God for me, ³¹ that I may be delivered from those in Judea who do not believe, and that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, ³² that I may come to you with joy by the will of God, and may be refreshed together with you. ³³ Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen."

And one of the points Mr. Henderson made that stuck out to me was that Paul was begging his fellow believers to pray for him, and these were people that he didn't even know.

I don't know that I've ever begged someone to pray for me... I didn't need to beg though, because so far in my life, all I've had to do was ask. =P But I guess maybe Paul was begging because he was communicating through writing instead of in person, and since you can't see the person's responding in letter writing you want to impress your point more emphatically...?

Well, I have decided to beg for prayer for myself. If you've been reading my blog for at least a year then you've probably seen some of my posts where I rant, moan and whine about how confused I am and how I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing with myself. It seems like every time I come up with a plan, I find a flaw, or I get scared, or I change my mind. The number of plans I have adopted for a mere day or two are too numerous to count.

The problem, I think, is that my main goal is to eventually get married. I don't know when that will be (if ever), so I'm trying to find some way of making money so that I can support myself if need be. Since I took piano lessons for 9 years, and devoted a good deal of time and work into becoming a proficient pianist, the most obvious option is something involving piano. I really enjoy teaching... I have a few beginner students that I am teaching out of my home.

So, assuming that I will do something with teaching piano, the next obvious step would normally be going to college for piano pedagogy. My problems with college are that I have no desire to learn all the extra required things (like math, science, psychology or other things that colleges may require for degrees) or to spend 4 years of my life learning all of that when I could be teaching for those 4 years. Nor do I wish to leave my family.

However, I know that I lack the ability to teach students any more advanced than beginners, and I wouldn't want to have such a limitation on myself forever. As of yet, all my students have left me before they got close to intermediate level (and maybe that says something about my teaching skills...) and right now I am restricting my advertising to beginners.

My plan for this year (as I've mentioned recently) is taking up lessons again myself (I stopped for a year) and "apprenticing" with my new piano teacher to learn from her how to teach better. Today was the first day that I did the apprenticing, so I'm not sure how it will continue to work out, but today I taught two early intermediate students without her supervision, and I was hoping that she would be supervising and more of teaching me to teach than just giving me a student and saying, "Okay, go." So I'll see how that goes...

But as to future plans, I have begun reconsidering college. Meredith is a good option because it's so close that I could commute, but I don't want to have to do all the non-piano/music things that Meredith requires for a degree. Campbell (as far as I can tell from their websites) requires less non-music classes for a degree, but is just far enough that I would need to live on campus (but could come home on weekends).

The thing is, I think of teaching piano as a temporary option. I am hoping and praying that God's will is to fulfill my deepest desire of being a wife and mother, and if I teach piano after I get married, it probably won't be much. So if it is God's will for me to get married, should I spend 4 years going to school for piano? What if I end up getting married right out of college and don't use my expensive education for anything besides teaching my own children? But then, what if I never get married and my only support is teaching piano lessons for the rest of my life? Wouldn't it be better to go to college and be a skilled teacher so that I can support myself more easily if I'm a confirmed old maid?

So, to condense all that, my prayer requests are:
For God's continued guidance
For Him to give me wisdom
For me to have joy and contentment no matter where I am
For His will to be worked in my life (hopefully including a husband and family ;) )
And through wherever my life path takes me, that He will shape my character and use me to His glory.

Thank you for praying for me!

~Lizzie