LIFE IN TENNESSEE // Where Have I Been For the Last Year?

I recently came to the realization that I spent the last year hiding. And now I’m starting to admit it and talk about it and try to make sense of it.

I spent the last year hiding, not wanting to know or be known. Not knowing where I belonged and not wanting to figure it out.

I moved back to Nashville from L.A. in June 2009 but in the year that I’ve “been back,” I haven’t really been back. I didn’t settle back into life in Nashville. I traveled here and there and anywhere so I didn’t have to be “at home” in Nashville, so I didn’t have to figure out where I belonged. Granted, many of my trips were legitimate – for school, work and family – but I also really didn’t want to be around life in Nashville, so I just kept going.

One reason I kept moving: I wasn’t sure where I fit in anymore. Things changed in Nashville and I changed while outside Nashville. I wasn’t and I’m still not sure where I fit in but I’m ready to figure it out.

Another (related) reason I kept moving: I wasn’t sure what I learned about myself that I wanted to share with others. I needed to process a lot of information, experiences and thoughts and I didn’t have the time to do that – what with working full-time and going to school. So, I just kept going, to get things done, to do my work, to fill my time, to keep myself from processing.

The title of this blog, “Learning,” fits as well now post-grad school classes as it did when I started keeping notes while in school in 2008. And the song lyrics that inspired me then sound even more like me now:

Walking, stumbling on these shadowfeet toward home, a land that I've never seen. I am changing: less and less asleep, made of different stuff than when I began. And I have sensed it all along, fast approaching is the day.
- “Shadowfeet” by Brooke Fraser

A “home, a land” in one sense means “heaven” to me. But now it also means this place I live in, this city and community that I am a part of, in Nashville. It’s a land that looks different now. I feel like I’ve been walking and stumbling my way back to it, traveling and hiding from it.

And I’m finding more comfort in the line “made of different stuff than when I began.” For a while I just thought that meant I was learning stuff, learning theology and missiology and meeting new people, making new friends, living in new places and finding a new identity.

But recent realizations have shown me that I was afraid to show what I learned and how I changed while in school and in L.A. and in all those cities in between. I was a little afraid of and being a little selfish with the lessons and the experiences and the realizations that I’d gathered in the last couple of years. I was afraid of some not-so-great choices that I made or “radical” ideas that I’d collected. I didn’t want to explain myself. I just wanted to be accepted and known. But that’s not always possible. Some things need to be explained; some things need to be accepted. But either way, they have to be shown, revealed, shared. I need to allow that “different stuff” to be seen. Because it’s those things that have “made” me. It’s a new me, a new identity, which was something I felt developing as I even started this journey in L.A. in January 2008.

“I have sensed it all along….” These things, these feelings have been bubbling under the surface and I’ve put them off. But it’s time. That day is approaching when I’m going to be known by others and I’m going to seek knowing others – to the best degree that I can. I still don’t know when that day is arriving but…. I have always been a very private person, held my cards close to my chest, kept that poker face in place. And I don’t think that’s going to be changing much. There might be a couple more people in that inner circle but not many, I’m afraid. I’m still pretty selective but I’m learning.

So, I’m coming out of hiding. I’m going to start processing, asking questions of myself, of others, of God, sharing what I’ve learned in theology and missiology, and through my travels and experiences. Let’s see how it goes.

LIFE IN CALIFORNIA // Life Outside Tennessee

I just closed out my first six months here. Last Sunday it came to mind that I originally thought I would stay here six months and then go back to Nashville for six months, and then do it all over again.

Man, I can’t imagine going back right now. No offense to all my friends in Nashville but I really just can’t imagine being there right now. (I also haven’t fully recovered from the long three-day drive out here and am certainly not ready to make that trek again anytime soon.)

I guess it was easy to consider a 6-month/6-month trade-off when I hadn’t lived here yet. But as I watched life unfold here and there (Nashville), I realized there was more to this story than just coming out to get some courses done in California.

I was fine with moving to California. I knew that it had to happen eventually. I just didn’t think January 2008 would be the time. I wasn’t overly excited but I was fine with it. I knew that it was God leading me, which gave me confidence. I believed it was part of the story that he’s telling through me. And even in the moments of doubt, peace came. When moments of doubt came, I would think about the alternative to moving: staying. And the thought of staying in the same situation, going to work everyday, doing schoolwork and filling in any gaps with freelance, church, friends, etc., filled me with dread and agony. The best way to say it is that if I had stayed, I would have been miserable. Not because I was anticipating something so great in California, but because I knew I was supposed to leave. So to stay would have been wrong.

Yet I didn’t fully understand what it meant to leave. It wasn’t just about being in school and working towards a different career path. It wasn’t so much about going as it was about leaving. And it took me a while to see and accept exactly what was up.

It was interesting to see how life unfolded back home shortly after I left. My church merged with another church, for one. The church I had been attending and done ministry with suddenly looked different and pretty foreign to me. That led to thoughts of perhaps staying in California longer than short-term. Then some different things happened in the life of my best friend and I was thousands of miles away and felt completely unable to help. It was so frustrating. I was frustrated with the situation and I was frustrated with God for taking me so far away at just the point that I felt I could be really useful. I didn’t get it. I was upset, confused, separated but I didn’t feel alone. I didn’t feel homesick. There was no regret. So I said, “God, tell me. Tell me what all this means. Because I have some mixed feelings.”

And God’s cool. He reminded me that he wanted me in California and that the idea of staying in Nashville didn’t sit right with me. I would think again about the option of staying in Nashville and I knew that wouldn’t have been right. I felt the question, “If you had known this would happen, if given the choice, would you have stayed?” And I answered confidently in him, “No, no, I still would have left. I could not stay.”

And so God led me to the perspective that this journey to California wasn’t about going. It was about leaving. Leaving the world as I knew it Nashville. And I began to feel that God was separating me from the life I had known. My identity for the last 10 years has been in the music industry. What I’ve done and how I’m known, as for many people, have been tied to my job, my career. At his right time in the story, he plucked me out of Tennessee and placed me in California. (Though I still don’t have a clear vision of why or what’s going to happen in place of this previous identity.)

Sometimes I feel selfish because I don’t pay as much attention to Nashville. There are moments I wish that I were closer to home. Where I could jump in the car and just road trip to Nashville real quick to comfort a friend – or comfort myself. But that’s simply not an option being in California. And planet tickets are flat expensive. So here I am for a reason. I’m learning. I’m learning to see seasons. I’m learning why Jesus came to Earth. I’m learning about church. I’m learning patience. I’m learning to rest. I’m learning how to be away. I’m learning how to study, to read. I’m learning how to build relationships from scratch (this one is hard and requires much patience). I’m learning that I’m OK being single. I’m learning about faith in future grace. I’m learning the importance of living today because I have no idea what the future holds. And it’s OK.

And if I were in Nashville, I wouldn’t be learning any of it.

LIFE IN CALIFORNIA // My Box

I was thinking the other day about seeing things on a larger scale here in California. Los Angeles is a whole world away from Nashville. (And Nashville was quite a change from Michigan.) The diversity here is just…more! All the ethnicities, I see so much and so many around me. All shapes and sizes living life, whatever life that is (though I usually see it from inside the Jetta as I’m driving)

Fuller has me climbing out of my box to explore, look around and learn as well. I feel at home while I also wonder where I am. There are always rumblings about Fuller being liberal this or liberal that but it is a fully evangelical seminary. The faculty encourages all ideas to be laid out on the table. One is free to choose whatever idea she likes, just back it up! So I have found myself in interesting discussions or lectures where logical ideas that I never heard before were brought to the table. Some sound good but they just don’t seem to fit the world that I know while some absolutely make my spirit jump for joy. Take some and leave some. My Anthropology professor made the point in lecture this week that if we focus more on books with little application, we will quickly become cynical and that's how some have lost their faith in seminary (my paraphrase of Dr. Kraft).

For example, in my New Testament: Acts to Revelation course this winter, our professor gave lectures on the textual criticism of the Pauline corpus: which books Paul wrote, which ones he didn’t, when they were written, etc. I found myself getting caught up in those discussions. I found myself becoming cynical toward the Christian tradition I had been brought up in. We might find out one day if Paul or one of his disciples actually wrote Colossians but for me it finally down to the point that the argument didn't matter when it came to applying the words canonized in the Bible as the words of God. And I decided though it was interesting to investigate and discuss, that was a part of Fuller that didn't find a place in my daily application and context. So, I took the notes and became more scholarly but left most on the table.

On the opposite end, in my New Testament: The Gospels course this spring, my mind and spirit seemed to flourish as the assignments had me straight up in the Bible, teaching me how to read it with different eyes. The notes and the techniques Dr. Green gave us were and are absolutely applicable. It’s flat out amazing when you just do a “close reading of the text.”

Recently my box (my life and my perspective on it) came to mind. A time or two in the last six months, I think I toyed with idea of throwing my box away and starting over. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? Get out of that box and think differently? Plus I had people here and there telling me that I would trade in Nashville for Los Angeles. All this together, I decided that I needed to go back and look at my box.

I found that six months later my box, my world, is bigger. It’s holding a few more things but it's still me. It looks like me and smells like me. It just sounds and thinks a bit differently. And I felt for the first time, I knew that it was OK. I knew it was OK to keep the same box rather than toss it out and start over. For a while I listened to the voices saying, "You like it; you'll stay." But recently I've worked at quieting those voices and decided that I need to hold onto this box, my world, me, what I know. It's 32 years of history, memories, stories, faith. This is where the word "go" came to me. This box holds the vision for this journey.

So this Midwestern-by-way-of-the-South girl knows that God doesn’t want her to get rid of her box, her world, for a bigger West Coast one. It just doesn’t make sense. The West Coast box would certainly cost more. But God is adding some West Coast things to my life, my world, but it's still me. I thought I would have to start over and get a new box for all the California and seminary experience. But really this is all growing with me. It won’t be too small for all these ideas, visions and perspectives at the end of the journey. I don't have to become an entirely new person. God didn't start over with me; he just took me to a new location.

And I think I believe more now than I ever have that this box, this world, this life of mine holds a mess of secrets that won’t come out until it gets a little bigger anyway.