It was 2 years ago today. I was on the road somewhere between Indianapolis & Nashville. It was a cool but full of sunshine morning & my first mission after checking out of the Super 8 I’d stopped at around 12:30am the night before was to find a Starbucks. A few exits down the interstate with a Caramel Machiatto in hand & my soundtrack set I was ready for the drive to Nashville.

I was on mission “Take a Break from Appleton” & in the middle of wrestling about what to do with the my life. Would I stay at the church I was working at or leave? 6 weeks prior I had been in Nashville when God punched me in the gut with a stranger’s question which left me reeling as I realized I had been ignoring His still small voice for months now.

Truth be told, somewhere my head knew that it was time to move on & my heart knew it was no longer at home in Appleton, but the two hadn’t yet communicated with one another. That phone call or email or text message…whatever it was…came on I-65 somewhere south of Indy that morning. I don’t remember a lightening strike “ah ha” moment, but I know that when I arrived in Nashville later that day I told a friend I had come to peace with the decision to leave my job.

I didn’t know, then, that it was possible for a city to woo me. For a city to be a community that would teach me relationship. For a community to be people that would teach me what it meant to truly do life with others.

I was at the Nashville Public Library yesterday & was taken by this quote from Martin Luther King Jr. on the wall:

At last I’d found words that seemed to perfectly answer the question “why.” Why Nashville? Two years later I now know that it’s because a city wooed me. And a city can woo me because a city is a community. And the movement that has taken place in this community I know today is love. Love that encourages, supports, challenges, & ultimately inspires. If there’s a secret, I think that’s it. And for me, that secret has made all the difference.

I also discovered a challenge on Saturday at the library:

It’s pointless to discover the secret if it doesn’t move me to action. And the time for action isn’t when I go on a hunt for a new secret in a new city in another lifetime. No, the time is now. The place is here. If I’ve been inspired then I’d best do something with it.