Love song for Nashville

When I was little, I always secretly wanted to live in Nashville.

I have no idea why! Nashville, at that time and speed limit, was about a five hour drive from home, meaning it was often the first stop on any family vacation, since we usually headed south. So we came here a lot. Almost every summer. I loved Opryland, wanted to sing in the shows when I was a kid, and loved the history and reverence for music that really pervades Nashville. I fell in love with the city before I really even knew much about it.

So when I moved here about 7 years ago to go to grad school, it was like icing on the cake. I’d applied to Vandy’s Divinity School thinking there was no way I’d be accepted and if I were, no way I’d be able to pay for it. I wanted to be a  religion writer for secular news at that point and knew I had to had to have a more ecumenical (for lack of a better word) view of religion in America than the Baptist world I’d grown up in and knew like a second skin. Miracle of miracles, I was accepted and given a large scholarship. And God used a decision I’d made about my future to make me own my faith and start me on a path that would lead to me editing a magazine for teens. I have to admit sometimes, He does know what He’s doing, even when He asks us like Abraham to follow and not know where He’s leading.

So I ended up in Nashville, the city I’d loved as a child. And I still love it. Sometimes, like today, I pass on the interstate and drive into town on a surface street. I love to come into the city on 4th Avenue, since it spits you out onto Broadway and you get to come into downtown through all the honky tonks and record shops and western wear stores, the places that are iconically Nashville. You can see the Ryman, majestic a few streets over. It’s actually kind of striking to see lower Broad early in the morning, when the bars are still sleeping and the neon lights are off, displaying the reality of what they look like, which isn’t very pretty. The streets that still teem with people on weekend nights are empty and quiet. The city’s still sleeping, waiting. I like watching the city wake up; the bustle slowly build. I like the history of these streets and the promise of the future.

Nashville probably isn’t the place I thought it was when I was a kid and wanted to live here for no other reason than it seemed cool. But it’s a pretty good place.

And for me, it’s become home.