On Friday, my wife and I will push off for Nashville, Tennessee. For the third straight year we will take part in the running of the Nashville Half Marathon. It has become an annual passage of spring and opportunity to connect with friends that are very near and dear to our hearts. Each year has been very special. Each time a little different. Last year was a defining time in our lives on several levels. It’s amazing what a difference a year can make.
One year ago we arrived in Nashville in the midst of a very uncertain time. Little did we know the journey that God would take us on to discover something even more special right here in Columbus, Ohio. Who knew we had to go 6 hours from home to find something that was right here in the city we call “home”. What would evolve from our trip to Nashville would become well known as “The Worst Kept Secret” among our friends. We would return again to Nashville in August for a visit that would potentially mean a relocation to that amazing city. Weeks and months went by but boxes were never packed and our home never went up for sale.
Then one day a phone call closed the door on “the worst kept secret” and an hour later, everything changed. We were so sure we were headed to Nashville that we had begun the emotional process of saying “goodbye” to this city. We were disconnecting from several things and were unsure once that door closed, where to pick up again in Columbus. When you go through a process like that, for as long as we did, you start to mentally live in the land of “what if’s” and “what if not’s”. Soon you begin to forget “what is” and “what is not”. That may make no sense, but to me it does…I think.
Anyway, an hour after “the call” I went out to the mailbox and a flyer caught my eye. We get flyers literally every day. Every day I throw them away. We get them for painting companies, lawn companies, mattress manufactures, schools and churches. Oh do we get churches. Yet this church flyer caught my eye. It had a look to it. It grabbed me. Soon I was stalking this church online and finding out why this flyer intrigued me. That Sunday we were in that church and everything changed. For the first time in literally months, it felt right. It felt like after not knowing where we were going to be, we knew where we should be. This, however, would not be easy. It meant difficult conversations. Very difficult conversations. It meant telling people we love deeply that we were leaving their fellowship to join another. They are wounds that might never heal the same. Yet when you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, you have to follow it. You just have to.
Here we are several months later and it’s been an incredible ride already. We are finally home. Columbus is finally (after 15 years) “home”. It’s like something made it finally okay to love THIS city. To have our hearts break for THIS city. To put down roots in THIS city. Again, this may make no sense to anyone reading it, but it makes perfect sense to the guy writing it. One year later we can finally live forward and understand backward. There isn’t enough space on this blog to explain what all of that means. I just know that there was not a step over the past 12 months that wasn’t ordained. There wasn’t a single moment that wasn’t within a much, much larger picture and plan. I know the next 365 will be the same way. We’ll spend each day living forward, understanding backward.
