Callouses Wanted ...?

I have been spending some time practicing guitar at home to build up some callouses after not playing for about 18 years or so. Generally I have been able to play for a maximum of 20 minutes at a time in the last week or so, about one to two days apart. 

They were building up a little, but they were still hurting after practicing.  

Then tonight I was at someone's home and since I could play guitar and nobody else showed up who wanted to play one, my host handed me a guitar to play.  I ended up playing for about an hour.  OUCH.  I enjoyed playing with a group, but wasn't counting on the extra punishment to my fingertips!

Callouses are necessary to be able to play guitar for any period of time exceeding five minutes.  Developing them hurts.  But the body does build up extra layers of skin to compensate for the punishment and playing is easier with them there.

So callouses are wanted - on the fingertips. For guitar players that is.

Callouses on the outside are fine.  It's when there are callouses on the inside that I get very concerned.  When another's suffering doesn't touch me, when I could "care less" - those are the things to alert me that I am building a callous on my spirit.

We're humans.  We're not Vulcans.

Deciding that we are going to expunge negative emotions from our lives - at whatever age that happens - has the negative side-effect of numbing us to the pleasant emotions such as joy, love, tenderness, and peace.  This happens when we allow ourselves to be hurt but we deny that we are being hurt.  It happens when we keep getting into situations that are bad for us, and numbing ourselves to the pain by telling ourselves that we don't feel angry, or sad, or whatever. Before we know it... we are living in a stoic fog.

Emotions - I am so fond of saying this that I'm sure you must get tired of it - are NOT BAD.  They are emotions. They were designed to alert us to our inner life.  They are valuable.

I reiterate.  Emotions are not the enemy; they are a part of our human nature which was put there by God when He made us in His image!  He has emotions - and He gave us the capacity to have them too...because He loves us!  They have a purpose!


Stoicism is not to be desired.  Emotions were created to alert us that something is wrong, to enjoy the moment, and to motivate us to do great things: right wrongs, meet needs, go the extra mile.

When our emotions get us into trouble is when we: 
1) hold onto them (prolong them more than the moment requires),
2) deny that we are having them (suppress them) or
3) tell ourselves that we are really feeling the opposite of what we are feeling.  Some people call this "speaking in faith."  I just call it "lying."  

I know because I spent a lot of years in denial of what I was truly feeling.  It ate at me like a cancer and caused me to live in a spiritual straitjacket, not trusting my own feelings.  These days, I still do deny my feelings sometimes, but not nearly as often as I used to.  

And you know what?  When I admit what I am feeling and let my emotions alert me to what is going on in my inner life, that kind of honesty refreshes my spirit.  I don't hang onto things, nurse grudges like I once did.  And I can forgive stuff that people do to me just a LEEEtle bit more quickly.  If I were doing this all on my own I could boast, I suppose.  But God is the One who has given this to me in this journey ... and it is He who gets the credit.