Goodbye to Nashville

Today we say goodbye to Nashville.  

We have lived in and around the Music City for the past 10 years.  

I was excited about moving here in June 2014 and now I am happy to be leaving here in 2025.  

This isn’t and wasn’t “home” to us.  It was just another stop in the journey of our lives.   I have come to realize that we are wanderers.  We have never been able to live in any one place for a long time.   

Did we hate it here?  No, but it is time to go.

I still remember when we first arrived. We had lunch at a restaurant on Lower Broadway and I liked how alive it felt to be here.  That feeling didn’t last and I can probably count on one hand how many more times we have ventured down to Lower Broadway after that.  One of the common misconceptions is that Lower Broadway is the same as Music Row.  It is not.  Music Row is an entirely different area.  Lower Broadway is a tourist attraction full of bars and places to have a party.  

Nashville is definitely a party city and we came to realize that Nashville is the unofficial bachelorette party capital of the world.  One of the most annoying things about Nashville is the “entertainment transportation” which are the party busses, pedal taverns and all of the other ridiculous forms of mobile drinking and yelling that goes on both day and night downtown.  Another negative about working downtown is whenever there was a special event or another excuse for a party downtown that parking prices were jacked up for those of us who worked downtown every single day.  

There is one thing to know about Nashville - this place is always under construction.  It has changed dramatically in the 10 years we have lived in the area.  It is not the same as it was.

Another thing about Nashville is that the traffic is awful.   I know that is probably the same complaint for any large city but the design of highway system here is puzzling and something I would not wish on anyone to experience.  It is very challenging to get around the Music City.  There is no good transit in this city.  None.  When we first moved here we rented in Mt. Juliet east of Nashville and I took the train to/from work which I really liked.  However, that is the ONLY train service which is really, really dumb.  Nashville should really expand that service.  There is much more congestion in other areas which would be benefited by train service. 

As a sports fan, I became a fan of the Tennessee Titans and Nashville Predators since living here.  The most amazing time here was when the Predators played in the Stanley Cup final in 2017.  The years leading up to that were amazing to see here.  Although it ended in disappointment, this area was completely crazy about the Predators.   The last couple of seasons I have also become a fan of Vanderbilt basketball.  I definitely have some fond sports memories here.

Food is also awesome here but we converted to vegan/vegetarian a few years ago so our choices have been limited.  Some of our favorite places have been Pucketts, Five Points Pizza, AVO and Suki.   Really, you can find about any type of food here.  Usually the more spicy the better.  Hot Chicken is the specialty but never my choice.

Celebrity sightings?  Oddly enough, there hasn’t been much to speak of.  

For the first six years in Nashville, I worked downtown during the week.  Sometimes I would walk around different areas.  One of my favorite lunch spots was in an area called “The Gulch”.  It was also a good place to sit and enjoy the vibes of the city. 

We did have some favorite places to visit like Cheekwood and the Nashville Zoo.  The zoo has improved so much in the years we have lived here.  It’s amazing to see how much it has grown into a first class zoo.

A house is not a home, neither is the place.  We are taking our home with us as we look forward to our next adventure.  

I haven’t hated living here, it’s just time to move on.  

Tales of the Church: Lord of the Rings

I was recently thinking about my experience with rings and jewelry. Let me tell you a little story about it...

Let me give you some background here.

I grew up in a church denomination which taught that wearing jewelry was a sin.  Some in the same church today might dispute this however, I witnessed firsthand that we used to turn people out of the church for wearing rings.  Yes, I know how that sounds but you didn't live it like I did.

From an early age I was conditioned to look at someone wearing rings as an indication of whether or not they were a "true" Christian.  We were strictly prohibited by our church against wearing rings or any form of jewelry because it was “worldly”.  We were told not to wear "gold for ornament".

You can imagine the struggles I had when I started dating a girl who didn't attend our church. Yes, this was considered rebellious for someone like me. At this time in my life, I had already left home and living on my own but was still under the pressure of pleasing others and the church teachings.  When the relationship got serious and time to propose marriage, I knew she didn't understand my church and the ring issue, so I decided to propose with an engagement ring.  

When I told my father, his first comment wasn't one of congratulations.  Instead, he asked:  "Did you get her a ring?"  When I told him I had, he said:  "Well, that's the first mistake right there."   So that began a turbulent time for me and my relationship.  Sadly, I eventually caved in and broke off the engagement since she wasn't a "church" girl, and I am sure the ring issue was a huge part of that.  Silly?  Yes, it was but, again, you weren't living it and can’t understand the overwhelming pressure I faced at the time.

Fast forward about 20 years.... I was married (without wedding rings) and the church was exploring the idea of relaxing their teachings on jewelry and decided to "allow" wedding rings.  This issue created an incredible debate in the church.  If you weren't part of our church, you simply have no idea.  It was a HUGE debate that went back and forth.  Even though the church organization eventually ruled that it was okay to wear wedding rings, some local churches still resisted depending on the personal view of the local pastor.

The local church I attended was one of those.  My wife wanted to wear the rings.  I was still in turmoil about it.  I didn't think it was wrong, but I was having anxiety about being the only ones doing it.  Our local pastor was totally against it.  When we decided to wear our wedding rings, the pastor asked to meet with me about it.  In the meeting I told him that we were going to wear our wedding rings to church.  He told me that he was "very disappointed in our decision and that my grandfather would not have been pleased with it."  Yes, he definitely pulled the guilt card on me.  He went on to ask us to wait a week so he could prepare for us coming to church wearing the rings.  Yes, I know how that sounds.  I lived it.

Many years later I learned that the pastor had a secret meeting with the other men in the church to decide whether or not we should have any leadership roles in the church simply because we were going to wear our wedding bands.  Fortunately, the men decided it was okay, and we were "allowed" to continue in the church.  I can tell you that if I had known this information then, things might have turned out a whole lot differently.  

When the Sunday arrived, I was dreading it, but we walked in with our rings on, and it felt like everyone's eyes were looking at the rings.  Some ignorant ones did make their jabs about the rings. For weeks that followed, we even had someone who would anonymously leave messages on our answering machine with comments about the rings.  We finally discovered who it was.  It was a teenage girl of another church member.  When her mother found out, they met us and apologized.

It all sounds crazy and looking back now it was totally ridiculous to be judged totally on wearing rings.  A funny thing happened as a result of that where others also started wearing rings and years later one church member thanks us for breaking the ice. 

This whole ring experience changed me.  In fact, when I was a teenager, I read Romans 14 where it talked about people who had different beliefs and still accepting them as believers.  When I pointed this chapter out to my dad during the proposal situation earlier, he immediately informed me that I wasn't interpreting that chapter correctly - when, in fact, I was just reading it and understanding it as it was written.  There wasn’t any super-secret decoding of that passage.

Today, rings/jewelry aren't a big deal to me.  I don't use it as a tool to judge anyone.  I have learned it is more important to judge people on their actions rather than any jewelry they wear.  I have known people who have never worn jewelry to be just as vile and evil than a person who does.  

I look back now and see how silly this whole experience had been.  We certainly wasted too much time and anxiety over trivial issues.  I think the church back then totally missed the point.  The heart is what matters.  

Where Is God When Bad Things Happen?

Bad things happen. 

It is a part of life.

When they do, we often wonder where God was.

I posted something once about God when someone commented to my post "Where Was God At Auschwitz?"  

Certainly we can't ignore the reality of suffering in life and wonder why God allows bad things to happen.

Auschwitz was the largest of the German Nazi concentration camps and extermination centers. Over 1.1 million men, women and children lost their lives there.  It is horrible stain on our history that these events ever took place.  So it is difficult to understand why God would have allowed this to happen.  

Could God have stopped the Holocaust from happening?  Yes, He could have.  Why didn't He?  Where was He?

What we have to understand about God is permission for horrible things to happen to people doesn't mean He approves of them. God’s allowing the Holocaust in no way suggests His approval of it. God is grieved by the sinfulness of man and the hardness of his heart. While nothing can justify the evil of the Holocaust, it did indirectly bring about an advancement in biblical prophecy. The Holocaust was a primary reason the White Paper of 1939 was rescinded, freeing European Jews to immigrate to Israel. Regardless of one’s political stance, the fact is that the 1948 restoration of an independent Jewish state helps to fulfill such biblical prophecies.

The blame for the Holocaust lies squarely on the shoulders of sinful humanity. The Holocaust was the product of sinful choices made by sinful men in rebellion against a holy God. If the Holocaust proves anything, it is the utter depravity of man. The real question of "Why did God allow Auschwitz?" should be "Why Did We?"

We cannot allow horrible things that we don't understand to keep us from trusting in God.  No one can adequately explain why God allows these things to happen.  We have to believe that there must be a reason for it.  We might not like that answer but we don't know the mind of God and not understanding shouldn't determine if we believe in Him or not.  

Even though I post positive things about trusting God, I still have trust issues at times when I suffer loss or experience difficult times in my life.  We all do.  Trusting in God isn't always easy.  I often wonder where God is at times and why He doesn't intervene to help.  I was scrolling recently and read a story about a couple who were leaving for a date in the parking lot of their apartment complex when they were random targets of a kidnapping.  They were taken away, mercilessly tortured and murdered in a community where you would never think something so horrible would happen.  The entire time I was reading this story I also wondered why God didn't send someone by to help them or stop it in some way.  They both died a horrible death for no reason.  

We can also look at the story of Job in the Old Testament.  Many like to point at the patience of Job but if you read the story, he also questioned God after God allowed Satan to take away everything and everyone around him.  Job demanded an explanation from God and in Job 38 God responded.  While there may be evil and suffering that God allows in the world which seems needless, tragic and unjust, God has the wider view and there may be a vast network of factors that make the same tragedy fit into a larger cause and effect pattern that ultimately works together.  It's just impossible for us as humans to know the mind of God and what He's doing.  

Obviously, none of us like that answer.  It really doesn't answer our question when bad things happen to us.  We are finite beings and our brains are not designed to take in the information necessary to make evaluations of God choices.  We are not God.  We are human.  We will never understand these things in this life.  

So where was God in Auschwitz or when our loved one dies?  God is right there with us.  Although He could have prevented it, for some reason He chose not to but that doesn't mean that He is absent.  These are the times our trust is tested.  No, there aren't any easy answers or memes we can post to overcome those questions but we have to find a way to trust God's wisdom when we encounter suffering rather than trying to figure out the reasons for it.