Grace-full Accountability…
We open our hearts to one another. Share the hard things. The stuff that we struggle with. The things that leave our souls raw. The things we know are not quite right, but are not sure how to change. Some of the raw places are of our own making and others are wounds caused by the clash of our soul against another. She wonders how? How can I change this? How can this stop being a repeated dissonant chord in her relationship?
Her story reminds me of a similar chord I have longed to stop hearing in my relationships. So I tell her my story of how the dissonant chord was partly of my own making. How changing my reaction to the note he played made the chord harmonious instead. I had a choice to trust God and play the note He called me to play or the note my heart longed to play. My story told of the wrestling in my spirit and working it out the raw painful choosing of His note over mine. Yet choosing His note, changed the melody completely. As I obediently and unwillingly played the note my Father called me to play, his notes began to change too. Suddenly the chaos than ugly tune we were playing through our own raw reactions was transformed by God. As if joined by the Holy trinity itself, the tune began to work, healing and redemption followed. It was how God showed me to stop repeating that dissonant chord.
My story finished, just a story of how God changed me – a hopeless, helpless, rebellious, and sin-diseased woman – and help me make beautiful music in my relationships. She listened to my story, but not sure if my story could work in her story. Uneasy and unready to accept that maybe God was ready to change her that way too. She said thank you and waited. Waited to meditate, pray over, and decide. Is this what God is calling me to do?
Later she called and thanked me. Not because I am some amazing example to follow, but because my story shed light on a way to make the chords in her relationships more harmonious. She was able to see a new way, a new choice that she was unable to see before.
Grace-full accountability. Filled with knowing we all need God’s grace and it is only by His grace any of us are able to choose to play His notes and not our own.
What are your thoughts about this kind of accountability? I would love to hear from you. Grace and Blessings to you all!
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I don’t know if I ever told you this, Miss Angela, but I studied piano for six years (secretly all Asian children can play an instrument, usually the piano or violin). I never thought of accountability in terms of resolving dissonances.
But it makes a lot of sense. If we think of living a Christ-like life as playing a song on the piano. then all of our sins, both small and big, are the dissonant notes. Playing off tempo would be going at the pace we want instead of playing at the pace God has written for us. Following the crescendos and diminuendos and staccatos and legatos show faith in the Composer’s sense of dynamics.
Accountability, then, would be letting someone else hear what we’re playing and trusting them to tell us when it sounds off. This is appropriate for me because I don’t like playing the piano for other people precisely because I hate it when people tell me I’m playing too quickly or the wrong chords. But I guess if I’m going to play it right, I need to let other people hear what I’m playing…
Letting others hear what you play and you in turn listen to what they play it is the sound of grace-full accountability.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts!