by Ameliyah Coover
When I was about 10 or 11, I thought I wanted to learn to play the flute. My parents obliged, bought me a flute, and arranged for me to begin taking lessons. I took lessons for just a couple of years, but from the start did not exercise the diligence that would be needful to learn how to play beautifully. I didn’t do any more than show up for my lesson at the appointed time, which happened to be a group lesson, and just fumble through the lesson, only pretending to blow when I didn’t know how to finger the note, which was more often than not. For some reason that I know not, I continued with this senselessness for a couple of years and only gave up when I was one day put on the spot and asked to play something solo. I was exposed. I was humiliated. I quit.
The flute stayed in it’s case for the remainder of my childhood. When I got married, my husband was intrigued by the knowledge that I could play the flute when he saw that I had one and heard that I had taken lessons for a couple of years. By this time, I had the sense to admit that despite the lessons, I could not play the instrument unless you count playing one scale (I still don’t know what that scale is called) and playing a simple tune in that scale only with no flats, sharps, or anything else. That’s bare bones flute playing for you!
My husband, however insisted that I MUST be able to play the flute, that I just needed to get it out and practice and it would come “back to me”. If only I had ever let it come to me in the first place then perhaps that would have been possible. But the facts were that I had NEVER applied myself to learning to play the flute. I loved nothing more than the idea of playing the flute and it never went an inch beyond that girlish whim. The truth was, too, that now that I had reached adulthood, I had no desire whatsoever to play the flute, at least not if it meant taking any more time and effort than I took the first time.
So despite his gentle encouragement, the flute remained in its case except for a few brief times I took it out and played that scale and a no brainer melody. But through the years, he would often say, “You need to do something with your flute.” One time I told him that I couldn’t play it anyway even if I wanted to because the years had done something to it and it would no longer even play the one scale I knew. As little as I knew about the flute, I was actually right about that because my sweet husband rushed my little wind instrument to the repair shop and had the frame straightened and all of the worn out pads replaced. When I got it back, sure enough, it played as good as it did when I was 11. Sadly though, I still didn’t want to play it and for the most part, I didn’t. My husband would still, from time to time, say, “You need to do something with your flute.”
Meanwhile, Yahweh had blessed us with three beautiful children, a boy followed by two girls. And they had quickly grown up before our eyes. Now just so you don’t think that I applied the same lack of diligence and vision to everything in my life, I went on to be a stay at home wife and Mommy, and we were dedicated to educating our own children. I was committed! I was vibrant! I was busy, too busy (I reasoned) to play that flute!
But a miracle happened one day. I gave my flute away to one of my musically talented daughters. I had FINALLY done something with my flute, which by this time was ofcourse no longer my flute at all. But do you know what? Lydiyah could play that flute better in a few days than I had in a few years and she did it with no lessons! Then we bought another flute for our other musically talented daughter and sure enough, within a few days she, too, had far surpassed me....you guessed it, with no lessons. Today, Rivqah has actually applied herself more to her flute than any of the three of us whereas Lydiyah is more of a pianist than a flutist. But the point of all of this is that, in an unexpected way, I had finally, after all of those years, DONE something with the flute! HalleluYAH!!!
Now why have I just shared that long winded story? No, it wasn’t to teach the value of learning a musical instrument =) I shared this story as a parable of sorts. Yahweh has given us, as mothers, a very beautiful role, a special blessing for most of us, called motherhood, which usually comes alongside the sister blessing called being a wife. The “easy” part is saying our vows and having the babies. That’s right....labor and delivery with all of it’s agony is a piece of pie compared to the awesome responsibilities that await us to train up our precious charges to love and serve the same Yahweh that we do for all of their days. Unlike my flute, children won’t just lay there and wait for years until somebody gets around to lifting them up. From the time the first baby is on the way, from that limited vantage point, life seems to be an ever stretching expanse before us, but that is really the devil’s lie. Because, in reality, our whole life is but a “dot” on a blank page. Our lives are fleeting. The reality is that we will seemingly blink our eyes but a few times and that precious baby will be a young person the same age as we were 20 years ago. The years will have vanished, never to be for us again. That brief little bit of time is a precious gift that Yahweh has given us and our children. The question is, what are we going to DO with it? Unlike the lifeless flute, doing something with and for Yahweh’s heritage is not an option, not if we love them enough to desire for them to be, in fact, Yahweh’s heritage. It’s not something we can afford to drag our feet on. We cannot afford to wait around several years and decide to let it up to someone else to make music with them (the world’s schools) like I did with finally letting my daughters make music with my flute. The flute story had a happy ending. If we do that with our precious children, they will most likely be lost forever playing BAD music, if you can even call it “music”, and the ending will be heartbreaking and utterly sad.
Satan has many tacky excuses and lies to feed us. We won’t go there. The truth is, regardless of our circumstances, income, talents, abilities, etc. as mothers we ARE the blessed ones Yahweh has chosen to nurture and protect our children, family, and homes. There IS a way to do what Yahweh has commanded us to do, and He will bless our efforts to DO what we can.....and Yahweh will fill in the gaps. Don’t think for a moment that the public system has no gaps because it has not just “gaps”, but huge gaping HOLES that are usually irreparable, or at best will leave permanent lifetime ugly scars. So, like I said, let’s choose to not go there. And if, in fact, we HAVE been there ourselves, may we love our children enough to not allow them to suffer the things that we had to. There is a better way, and in the process of time, the good fruits will make that reality undeniable.
So.....being a joyous wife and mother of children.....an awesome privilege and responsibility set before us.....and we only have a very little bit of time to do it right.....what are we going to DO with it, and when?
I want to share something with you that I read and found to be quite poignant. For months on end, I had it written on our big old time chalkboard. “Somebody asked an old gentleman, ‘When does the education of a child commence?’ He replied, ‘Twenty years before his birth by educating his mother.’ ” Think about that for a moment. I am sharing this from a 42 year old mother/grandmother’s perspective. But it starts even before that with the training of our daughters while we are still blessed to have them at home with us. If we expect them to embrace THEIR roles of being Yahweh fearing wives and mothers of righteous seed, we must instill in them the skills and preparation that are so necessary so that when their time comes, they will be ready, willing, and able to carry on this legacy. May Yahweh have mercy (and He does!) and spare our daughters the wasted time spent pursuing worldly education in order to attain worldly employment..... lest when it is their turn to be a wife and mother, they will have lost interest and zeal for being helpmeets, mothers, and keepers at home. Rather, may He grant us the heavenly wisdom to lovingly desire their presence alongside us as long as we are so blessed and to, while they are still with us, train them for the most wonderful and awesome occupation which they could ever hope to have. We owe it to them to prepare them. We owe it to their future husbands and their children so that THEIR families will not be left down, but rather so that our daughters will be amongst those wise women who diligently build their houses up.
My hope and prayer for you, if you get nothing else out of this is that you will be inspired to knock yourself out for Yahweh and allow Him to use YOU as His beautiful instrument of blessing and praise to make beautiful music for him through the role He has given you. Don’t tarry though because today is the day of salvation. As quickly as 20 years zooms past, we’re not even guaranteed that. Two years ago, we had to say goodbye to our little boy when he was only 20 months (not years) old. We miss Zephaniyah (We called him “Niyah” for short) terribly, and due to tragic circumstances, we will always wonder if anything could have been done differently so that he would still be with us today. But do I have regrets about wasted time or about not enough time spent with him or about not training him or really showing him how much I loved him or about not telling him about Yahweh and Yahshua or about him not SEEING Yahweh and Yahshua through our lives, example, and testimony? Must I forever live with the regret of not knowing that he indeed had Yahweh’s song in his heart? No, not one regret. That’s what I wish for you.....not one regret.