Disillusion

Lewis has said that the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing is not an easy one to make. I think this appears in whatever undertaking we begin, from a little kid who is excited with the new found ability to read who then meets a textbook to a pair of enamored lovers entering the ups and downs of marriage.

Disillusion preys on the idyllic visions that play in our heads. By changing my major from piano performance to music therapy, I thought I would be cultivating a more meaningful way to change the world and minister to people in pain. Music therapy was a romanticized picture in my head of working with children in the hospital or connecting with adolescents. For Music Therapy Practicum I was not placed with kids, but in a nursing home. Walking into the facility on my first day I felt so uncomfortable – it didn’t smell very nice, loneliness seemed to be a blanket on every person’s lap, and the group of wheelchair-bound patients in the therapy room was unresponsive due to advanced Alzheimer’s. Only one lady in the group could actually talk, and she kept asking where her husband was and saying he was due for a visit anytime because she missed him. The therapist pulled me aside and said that her husband had died two years ago, but since her memory could only retain that fact for five minutes they refrained from telling her so that she wouldn’t have to re-live her grief on a daily basis. This first session did not match up at all to the ideal in my head, and I was so heavy with the loneliness and hopelessness in the eyes of the seniors living there that I began to cry when I got to my car. After thirty minutes in the car, I had almost decided that music therapy was definitely not for me - too uncomfortable, too hard, too emotionally draining. When I told this to my best friend, she didn't give me the affirmation and understanding that I expected. She said, "What if the right question is whether or not this is where your gifts meet the world's deep need? I don't think vocation's path is exactly strewn with daisies." Completely taken by surprise by this faithful question (everyone else probably would have simply agreed with me) I realized that my decision in the car was dependent on emotion and therefore lacking any desire to find God's intent when he made me.

Sometimes I wish that God would carry me to the goals that he sets before me. I hope that in the struggle with free will and disillusionment my decision will be strengthened with conviction.