Home, 2000
I wasn’t good at guitar and being “good” wasn’t the point. None of us were—except the bass player. I’d picked up the instrument a year earlier to fit in, to belong somewhere. I was eighteen years old. Wednesday nights at church, standing in trust little stage, my friends and I jammed. G–C–D–C: almost every song the same. Simple on purpose; forgiving by design.
I went on stage, and I played with my friends, and I had fun. For a while, at least.
Then he stepped in. Some self-appointed guy in his thirties who decided he was our new band leader. Tall, skinny, caught up in how he looked on stage—microphone stand in one hand, steel-string guitar in the other, spotlights cutting through the dark like the word of God. He said the Lord wanted to transform our little Wednesday service. He wanted trendier songs, a real band, something that could draw a crowd.
“God needs this band to be powerful.” he said. “So, until you can play any chord in any key … plus all twelve scales in major and minor on command, I just can’t see how I could let you back in the band. You know … for Him.”
Then, casually, “Oh, and you need to be able to do it by next month. That’s when we’re going live.”
He laid out a couple other criteria too like memorize all the new songs and play the scales backwards and read a book and, it didn’t matter; his tasks were supposed to be impossible. They weren’t.
Something in me hears rejection as a challenge to try harder, a call to prove myself. So I showed up and I practiced. I learned the scales, the songs, and the chords, even if I didn’t understand them. I couldn’t improvise, I couldn’t hear what I was playing—but I could do exactly what he asked. In my naivety, I thought that was the point.
On the night of his deadline, I plugged in my guitar and waited, prepared to show him that I belonged.
“What are you doing here?” he said—fake bewilderment masking genuine annoyance. “You need to get off the stage.”
Then he nodded to a friend of his, someone I’d never seen before at the practices. The stranger was older than me, with long hair and tattoos, the look of someone in a band. “This here is the backup guitarist; I’ll be playing lead.”
“But I can play,” I said. Then I ran out of the room.
I called him later that night, not to argue—just to clear it up. There had to be a misunderstanding. If I explained it clearly enough, he would understand, he would hold up his promise—he would let me back in. He had to.
“I don’t understand what happened” I began. “I learned everything you wanted me to. I did …”
“What ‘I’ wanted?” he cut in. “Me? This isn’t about ‘me’ at all. This is what God wants, and if you can’t see that, maybe you need to reassess your relationship with Him. Why don’t you pray for some perspective.”
Then he hung up.
~
Years later, I smashed my guitar against a tree. I’d never played it since that night, and it still reminded me of him. I photographed the event as if to bring closure, though the mark stayed in the bark for years.