Forgive me if you’ve heard this story.
I started playing piano when I was four.
It mattered to my mom—she played and directed the church choir before I was born.
So even with tiny hands and short fingers, I learned.
The first time I played publicly, at eight and a half, was in church for my Vacation Bible School group.
Right after that song, my mom suffered a cerebral aneurysm and never recovered.
So, sticking with piano has always been loaded for me.
Sacred, heavy, complicated.
Somewhere deep inside, it became about her.
After my dad remarried and we moved, I found a new piano teacher.
My parents—apparently determined to raise a perfectionist—insisted on good grades.
A “checkmark” wasn’t enough.
It had to be an A.
And as the daughter of a 23-year Army Master Sergeant, “good enough” wasn’t in our vocabulary.
When my grades dipped, my practice time went up.
Other kids practiced 30 minutes.
I practiced 45.
Others got an hour in the summer.
I got an hour and a half.
Others got weekends off—
I got to “honor the Sabbath.”
They were relentless.
And I grew to hate piano.
I hated practicing so much I got creative—
two cassette recorders, one song recorded over and over so it sounded like I’d been practicing for hours.
Brilliant, right?
Until my stepmom figured out the recordings all sounded exactly the same.
That wasn’t a pretty day.
So—back to practicing.
And I still hated it.
The only songs I liked to play were church songs.
Finally, at sixteen, I complained enough they let me quit.
Ironically, as soon as I quit, I got hired to play piano for a church.
Then the school chorus.
I kept playing—just differently.
Fast-forward a few decades.
The Thursday before Palm Sunday, West’s keyboardist quit—over COVID, of all things.
One of our band members called:
“Hey… think you could play on Sunday?”
I hadn’t touched church songs in years.
But as I practiced, something wild happened—
the chords, rhythms, muscle memory… they all came flooding back.
Because I’d practiced.
When Paul says,
“I have learned to be content in all circumstances,”
that word learned—in Greek, manthanō—means “to gain understanding through repeated practice.”
It’s not something you know once and for all.
It’s something you learn, forget, relearn, and keep practicing.
The same is true of gratitude.
The Greek word for practice is askēsis—
it’s where we get ascetic, meaning “training” or “discipline.”
Not punishment, but formation.
A way of shaping the heart through repetition.
We learn gratitude the same way we learn piano:
through repetition, mistakes, showing up when we’d rather skip.
At first, it feels mechanical. Forced.
But over time, it becomes muscle memory of the soul.
You start noticing small goodness in hard days.
You whisper thanks before the problem is solved.
You stop waiting for perfect before you find peace.
That’s what Paul was getting at.
Contentment isn’t automatic—it’s practiced.
Learned.
Lived.
So today, try it.
Practice.
Name two truths.
Notice something good.
Whisper gratitude for something ordinary.
Because the more we practice gratitude,
the more it finds its way back to us when we need it most.
Grace and Peace,
Andrea