Jump or Dive

Well, I have an analogy.

My college boyfriend, David Jefferies, took a diving class.  The takeoffs for jumping from the diving board and diving from the diving board are apparently the same.  They would play a game to emphasize this to the students, to help them learn the takeoff, called "Jump or Dive."  You start the take off and then as your feet leave the board, Coach yells out whether you're going to be jumping or diving.  This results in some pretty hilarious in-air scrambling until the students gain confidence in the takeoff, knowing they could do either move up until the last second.  It also leads to some belly flops and other awkward landings when they don't do it right.  The main point is, very last second decisions can result in successful dives, successful  jumps, or complete failures that help you learn to do better next time.

So I'm the organist in our ward.  I'm pretty qualified for this calling, having had piano lessons from age 5, 7 years of marching band in High School and College, Group Organ Class, Registration Class, and Private Lessons at BYU, plus working as a Pipe Organ Builder for 2 1/2 years after college. Plus I've been the organist in several wards before this.  The only thing is, that my skills at the keyboard are not top notch.  I'm no concert pianist.  I'm no concert organist.  I can practice all week and have the songs perfect 90% of the time and then totally flub the songs the other 10% of the time.  It's just how it is right now.

After the Sacrament hymn is over, the organist has to glance over and determine how much more music is needed while the rest of the bread is broken up.  Sometimes the song lasts long enough that the bread's all broken by the time we're done singing.  More often, the organist has to make a decision to play either the whole song again, the last line again, or the introduction again, to fill the time until the bread's ready.  I made this decision on Sunday, but it was like I was in Diving Class on the first day of "Jump or Dive."  Several factors combined for a Total Flub result.  I decided to do the whole song (a long one), then flubbed it, after playing it perfectly for three big long verses, and then lacked the confidence to continue when the bread was all broken, resulting in what I consider to be a cry-able musical tragedy.  I couldn't recover the flub, so as I felt the belly-flop coming, I decided just to let it happen and stopped on a major chord.  DONE.  Totally Awkward Landing.

The good thing about me, is that I already did all the crying I'm going to do over musical flubs in front of a couple hundred people.  I did what I did.  I made the call and it wasn't the right one.  Oh. Well.  Sometimes you get a successful dive, sometimes you get a successful jump, and sometimes you completely fail, right into a belly flop.  I did that...and I'm still an awesome person!  It can only help me learn to do better next time.