Choices. Life has so many choices. We, as mere humans, have decisions, fears, that we get called to face. Our reaction to these situations. . . that is what matters the most.

I, too, have been thrown into the bellowing pit of decision-making. Like most of the stories similar to this that you will hear, mine too was about facing my biggest fear.

Just a short year ago, no one in my entire church knew that I could play the piano. No one. Not a single person knew of my skills after eight long years of practicing. Of course, why would they know? I didn’t have the courage, or the self-esteem, to tell anybody.

And it wasn’t me who revealed the shocking news of my talent, it was my dad. He was and still is friends with the Adult Choir leader at my church and one day they just happened to be talking about the choir. My dad sure was happy to gloat about me playing the piano. He takes pride in my ability, just like any other father would.

Coincidental enough, the choir leader was actually looking for someone to help her with accompanying the choir on the piano. She was thrilled when she heard I could play, and immediately asked me if I wanted to help her. I remember the guilt rushing to my head. I’m not the kind of person who says no to people. I always wanted to make everyone happy and I still am that way today.

Anyways, but I as I was thinking about it, I came across the matter that I have never tried accompanying before, I strongly dislike playing in front of people (I used to have a fear of it), and also my fear of failure was haunting me as I was trying to make my decision.

Now I’m a good girl. I couldn’t let her down without feeling guilty so I said yes, without really knowing what I was getting myself into. She gave me the first piece I would be playing right then and there.

I practiced that song. . . and practiced. . . and practiced. I practiced until my fingers were sore and stiff to the point where bending them was a challenge. It wasn’t a very difficult song to learn but I’d say that it was more advanced than what I was ready for but just like any other song, once you have it down you’re good to go. . . or so I thought. I was given three whole weeks to learn the song.

Finally it came. The day I was dreading, the day I could have waited an eternity for rather than face it head on. It felt like those three weeks had all crammed into two days, but before I knew it, it was time for me to go to my first choir practice.

As I was riding in the car to church, my legs were shaking, my hands were sweating, my heart was racing. I knew I was ready, on my standards that is. But what if that’s not enough to meet the standards of the choir? How ready is ready? All these thoughts were running wild in my head as I entered the church.

I walked into the choir room. All eyes were on my almost immediately. A sudden silence filled the atmosphere as I was standing awkwardly in the doorway.

“Everyone, this is Carly. She is our new accompanist,” the choir leader announced. I gave the slightest smile as she introduced me to everyone and then I sat down, in the very back.

In no time at all, it was my turn to play my song. I sat down at the grand piano, my fingers still covered in sweat, and waited for her to give me the signal to begin playing.

Once ready, she counted me off, I took a deep breath and began playing. The intro was a piece of cake to me after practicing it so many times. Suddenly, though, it wasn’t just me playing. The choir had joined in, their harmonious voices filling the room. I wasn’t prepared to play while they were singing and their voices distracted me.

I began constantly losing where I was in the music. When I lost my spot I would literally have to stop playing, figure out where the choir was and rejoin them. It happened several times. I stopped, the choir kept going. It was a nightmare. I don’t think I was the only one who was shocked when we made it to the end and we were together.

Relief flooded through my body when realization hit me that I was done playing. I grabbed my music and stood up as calmly and as nonchalantly as I could, trying to hide my shaky knees. I walked casually back to my seat in the back of the room and sat down, releasing my legs from the discomfort of holding still when they are trying to have a panic attack. Luckily, I don’t think anyone noticed how frightened I was.

I felt like a failure. The way I had just played was as if I had only taken piano lessons for two year rather than eight years. My face turned red with embarrassment as I thought of the horrible job I had just done.

Of course, everything got better from then on. I kept practicing my song and the choir practices got easier and easier. While I played, I kept my sole focus on the music, which solved the problem of not losing my spot in the music.

Just when I thought I was in the clear one week at practice, the choir leader made an announcement.

“Ok everyone, next week we will be performing Carly’s piece on stage for the entire church.” What I hadn’t realized was that my biggest challenge was yet to come. Playing in front of the entire church.

I knew that without confidence in myself, there was no possible way I could play on Sunday. I spent that week encouraging myself. Giving myself little compliments, lifting myself up. I could feel the nervousness easing inside of me, subsiding to the corner of my head but it was still there. I could still feel it.

Sunday came and I played. During the service I played confidently with the choir. My plan was to fake it. Fake the confidence, fake the act and the triumph. So that is what I did. And it worked. The performance went great.

The amount of compliments I got after the service was unbelievable. So was the amount of shocked faces of people who had no idea that I could play the piano. In the end, I was proud of myself that day. Proud that I had just overcome one of my biggest fears.

Now I accompany the choir in many songs. I am able to play all of the songs confidently. In fact, I would consider myself to be good at accompanying.

The day I played that first song for the church was also the day my youth group leader found out that I could play the piano. He was looking for someone to join the worship team and play the keyboard. Switching from piano to keyboard was a whole other challenge, one I’m not going to tell you about today.

I am very involved musically at my church now. I never that I would become so involved but I’m so thankful that I have. The experience I’ve had was life changing.