Many years ago, I wrote a song entitled “He Knows” based on one of my favorite verses, Jeremiah 29:11. Thanks to a wonderful friend at our church, we have a recorded version of the song from shortly after I wrote it, but I never wrote the music out. It was just in my head. And over the years, I played my piano less and less and when I would sit down and try to play it, it just wasn’t there.
It’s amazing how the mind works, though.
We recently moved my piano out of our house into my parents’ and after it was in place in mom and dad’s family room, I sat down and started playing around. Chloe told me to play my song and I told her that I didn’t remember it anymore. She has a copy of the recorded version on her phone and she sat it on top of the piano and hit play. I started to pick it out a bit at the beginning and then … my fingers suddenly took off. There were a couple places that I got stopped up and had to pick out the notes, but the whole thing came back to me. It was the most incredible thing. Mom and Chloe were cracking up at my face, because I was staring at them with wide eyes, mouth hanging open, not even looking at the keys as my fingers played the song completely from memory. Muscle memory.
I am in awe of the way God created our complex brains.
Maybe when I sat down at home to try to play it before, I was blocked for some reason. Maybe I just needed to let my mind and fingers find it at the right time. Whatever the reason, it was a fun moment to share with my mom and my daughter.