Two Suitcases, A Lifetime

I showed up here roughly a year and a half ago with two heavy suitcases in tow and an array of other bags slung over my eager and determined shoulders.  Sidewalks were pounded, apartments were scoured, temporary homes were squatted in, subways were hesitantly navigated, and after two months or so of this frightening carousel, I settled in to a cool and spacious home in a little neighborhood called Williamsburg.  It was then, finally, that I began to think I could make a home of New York City.

And I did make it my home.  I discovered things with my own feet and eyes and ears and nose that had been discovered by so many before me but for the first time were being recorded in my own consciousness.  I wandered bookstores, traversed avenues, chose favorite benches in parks, and began to wear the paths of my own feet familiar.  I made new friends and then I made more new friends and each one had more and more in common with this new self I was creating.  I turned 30 years old, published a book, drank too much sometimes, missed my good friends far away, traveled out of the city to get perspective.  Perspective that looked like the Manhattan skyline disappearing and then reappearing days or weeks later looking exactly the same.  This is a city that changes by the minute and yet is completely timeless.

I rode a bike that didn’t go anywhere twenty-some times, sweat dripping even from my eyeballs, just to prove to myself that I could.  I jumped off a platform holding only onto a thin trapeze bar and let go at the precise moment a stranger in flame-printed tights caught me by the hands.  I fell in love with a man who lived far away from the city, in my past, and one day he showed up and said, “I live here now too.”  And the city was anew again with springtime and love and new tastes and sights and flutters of the heart.  And now I’m leaving, full and happy, like I’d just finished a luxurious meal course by course which has made me sleepy and euphoric.  I am satisfied.  This city has fed me bitter, savory, rich, and sweet but never bland.

What will I miss most?  It’s hard to say yet, for the imprints on my memory are still too close to see the whole picture.  Will I come back?  Absolutely, though I’ll be changed yet again and so will bewhat I discover when I come.  Can I be happy somewhere else?  Surely, for I am a nomad, an adventurer, and my home is within myself.

Tennessee was a wild horse that I tamed and made my own.  New York is a wild bull that bucked me off, but only after my eight seconds were up.  I’ve had my ride.  I have no regrets; nothing was missed; not a moment was wasted, even the rough ones.

I leave here today the same way I came – with two heavy suitcases in tow and an array of other bags slung over my triumphant shoulders – and yet I’m completely different.

God is Building a ‘Casita’

Last month I visited Mexico to serve as the officiant for the wedding of some friends of mine.  It was both vacation and an opportunity to be a part of their special day!  I wrote the wedding with some feedback from the bride on what their relationship is like, what they value most, etc.  I’ll share just a little piece of it with you here.  I tied this reading to marriage, but really it’s a beautiful thought for all of us:

Sara and Colin have both already committed their lives to God. The great C.S. Lewis talks about what that process is like, letting God into your “house” and remaking you:

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

As you enter into the sacrament of marriage, you’re moving to a new house, so to speak, as you are becoming one being. Again you are faced with the choice to invite God in, this time into the house of your marriage, and let him make your marriage into a palace where He will live with you.

I really loved the trip!  I did learn the lesson that vacation is more a state of mind than a place, and I was not in my most vacation-ish state of mind at the time, but despite that I still enjoyed myself and hope to go back.  I swam or read by the pool; I walked the resort grounds saying “hola” to everyone I passed (which never failed to make me think of Dora the Explorer); I loved my Casita (house) and its patio with a bed and its outdoor shower; and I stood on the beach and marveled at the stars – so much closer to the earth than ours!

Here are some shots from the trip:

Wake Up Older, Try to Move On

Eleven years and seven months ago I was a seventeen year old girl who pulled into Nashville in my daddy’s red truck, filled to the brim with little girl dreams.  Dreams of working for a record company, of significantly influencing the world of country music, of discovering friends who were “just like me”, and falling in love with a man who loved music, or me, or anything as much as I loved music, or him, or anything.

In eleven years and seven month’s time, I didn’t necessarily change the music industry though I did work in it for quite a while.  I’d like to think I may have changed the town, or at least my communities.  I don’t work for a record company but I did start my own company, which is definitely better.  I found friends who I wished I was just like, but then I didn’t.  I needed them and they needed me and then we hurt each other and we were both left alone together.  Then I made friends who were different from myself but were just the way they should be, and we don’t “need” each other but are part of each other forever.  And I fell in love.  A couple of times.  With men who loved music, adventure, God, learning, drinking, winning, failing, lying, leaving, trying, and sometimes me.

I have a one way plane ticket dated for next week.  As I prepare to move on to the next chapter in my life, I am remembering the girl I was when I arrived here so many years ago.  Now, I am broken and rebuilt.  I am stronger and surer.  I am scarred but I am not scared.  I am changed and unchanged.  I am alone but I am not lonely.  I am wiser but I still have mistakes to make.  My time in Nashville, my entire adult life to this point, has been filled with more than a lifetime’s worth of memories, lessons, blessings, heartache and love.

I wouldn’t change a moment of it.

See: A collection of my favorite pics from “The Last Five Years“