Friendship reveals the depth of trust that belongs to God

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

The piano sat in the living room for 33 years. A baby grand, it took up a lot of space. It was old, it didn't hold a tune, it needed to be refinished, but I loved it - not just for the notes that filled the house whenever it was played, but for its history.

It was my in-laws' piano before it was mine. My sister-in-law played and my father-in-law sang and strummed a ukulele, and friends would come by to visit or to have dinner and inevitably end up around the piano. For years, it made music for parties that seemed to run one right into the next.

I signed up for lessons when the piano became mine. And every day I practiced until I could play the themes from "Love Story" and "The Sting" without a mistake. Funny how my fingers don't remember a single note of those songs.

My kids played - the older two for fun, no lessons involved, the youngest semiseriously. But when they went away to college, the music stopped. After that, it was just at Christmas that the piano got tuned and dusted off so someone could sit and plunk out "Jingle Bells." But all the other days, the piano sat silent and forgotten, like a big, old stuffed animal that is still loved but relegated to a closet.

A few months ago, my husband and I decided it was time to give the piano away. Our only requisite was that the person who got the piano had to love it and use it and let it make music again. Because that's what a piano should do, not end its life being an oversized table for family photographs.

It's funny how things work out. A friend, Mark Cronin, appeared at our door and suddenly he was in our living room, saying his sister had always wanted a baby grand and that she would love this one and he'd call a mover right now and could he help us redecorate the room once the piano was gone?

Last summer, he redid our front yard. He removed some things, planted others and now - swear to God - it looks like something out of Better Homes and Gardens. I didn't have a doubt that he could work the same magic with the living room.

So I went to New York while he went to consignment stores. "Don't you want to see what I'm getting?" he asked before I left, and I said, "No, I trust you." A few days later, I came home and walked into a room that I never could have imagined, let alone created. Mark took things that I had, subtracted a few, added others and arranged everything so all the different parts went together.

But the living room, as pretty as it is, isn't the point of this story, nor is my old, much-loved piano. Wednesday night, Mark called my cellphone. I was in the car driving home. He said he had an idea about what to do with our shutters, which are old and can't be matched. And that he had some thoughts about painting the windows, too. "Are you going to be home?" he asked. "I want to show you some colors." And I said, "You don't have to bother showing them to me, Mark. I trust you. Just do whatever you think is best." And he said OK and we hung up and I thought, I trust Mark the way I'm supposed to trust God. I don't have a single misgiving about what Mark will do. And this out-of-the-blue revelation stunned me.

"Do it your way. Do what you think is best." That's what I say to Mark about paint and flowers and colors. And everything comes out better because I trust him. With God, I say, "If you could please do this," and, "If you could just do that." I thought I trusted God. I would have told you I did. And then, right there on the Southeast Expressway, I realized I don't. That, in fact, I am always telling God what to do.

I have impatiens in my front yard, which are pink and orange and white. I never would have put those colors together. But Mark did. And they're beautiful. I have a couch with a pattern sitting on a rug with a pattern. I would have sworn this wouldn't work. But Mark has shown me that it does.

I wonder what God would show me if I let Him. I wonder how much more beautiful my world would be.