Transition

Originally written April 30, 2023

About 6 years ago, I left work to go home for lunch. I was about a year out of having left my marriage, but was in the thick of divorce. I knew, when we had gotten married, that I wanted to pursue higher education (if you’ve known us/me long enough, you know that we had gotten engaged in Boston, while touring BU as a graduate school option for me). I also knew I wasn’t ready for grad school at that time, and frankly had more discerning to do. If you’ve been around long enough, you ALSO know that while I was a stay-at-home-mom, I built a tiny life coaching business while we were married, and tried to continue it afterwards, but knew I wasn’t ready (despite everything everyone was telling me). I knew it still wasn’t quite right and that I wasn’t quite formed and ready. I could feel that. I wanted to give GOOD information. Not just any information. I wanted to help people deeply transform themselves and their families, not just their lives on the outside. My business was actually doing okay for being so new!! But I didn’t want to just make money. I want to transform our culture and redefine legacies. Over the years, I have honed even more so what it is I am being called to do—and I hope the awareness of that wisdom continues.

There are a few times in life I have felt God CLEARLY call me to something and my vocational purpose is one of them. So, when I left work for lunch that day the calling I felt next wasn’t exactly surprising, but was…terribly inconvenient. That is an enormous understatement. Something had been wrestling around inside of me all day and when I got home it hit me. I was being called to go back to school. Like—NOW. At the time, my son Nolan and I were on food stamps and WIC. Divorce was…not very kind to us. And I was spiritually and financially destitute in many ways. I also knew exactly what God was calling me to. There was no doubt—the message was clear. I also thought He HAD to be crazy. Like, did He see my life?! I fell down on the rug in the middle of my living room and sobbed for my entire lunch break. I think I grabbed a sandwich for my quick drive back into work. I thought I could do school online, at this point. I knew that I had to (and still have to!) maintain my primary residence in the county our divorce was finalized in, in Alabama. No Boston or Yale or any other dream schools that I had researched were going to be for me! I couldn’t move cities, much less states. Well, I had no idea what was actually headed my way.

I’ll save the boring research and logistical details that led me to the next step in this. But, they found me applying to Vanderbilt Divinity School (VDS), 2 hours away in Nashville, Tennessee. I had no idea what I was doing, but I did know what I was being told. There was so much fear, second-guessing, and wrestling I found here which is never fun to think back on and is too much for a blog post. So, I’ll fast-forward to around a year later. I had been accepted to VDS along with a very large merit/academic scholarship. I was in a new job making about twice as much as I had been the year before, and was in Nashville for Vandy’s “Welcome Weekend”, of sorts. Another fun (not so fun) aspect is that I’ve suffered from chronic pain for, now more than half of my life. I changed everything (literally) about the way I live around 14 years ago. It makes my life so much more bearable now. Although I was doing much better than I had been originally: 5 years ago I would still get stopped fairly regularly with debilitating pain. Where I can’t move, might throw up, would probably pass out if someone asked too much of me. When it happens, it completely stops my life. Well, that pain happened during Welcome Weekend. I could feel it coming on, so I left the lecture hall and started walking to the parking garage before it truly hit—knowing I still had a 2-hour drive ahead of me. I have a really high pain tolerance. I’ve been dealing with pain for a longggg time. But, tears were steaming down my face as I walked back to my car, because physical pain is one thing. But, the emotional pain of me, being as driven as I am, not being able to do what I feel called into is…unbearable. I feel like the timing of this pain was Divine. On the way back to my car I said, “God. That is enough. If you are calling me into this, I have to have a place to live here, in Nashville, on the weeks I don’t have my son. I’m not doing it otherwise. Period.”  You can call it challenging God, or throwing a tantrum, or whatever. In reality, I think God had already prepared the way. I am the one who needed to know that I needed a place to stay. God was way, way ahead of me. I had to catch up! I got a substantial raise, financial aid came through, and your little sister-friend found herself living in two places by the time school started. How crazy…

What transpired over the next few years was…wow. More than I could have ever imagined and far, far more than I could have known to hope for. I got another raise and a promotion which had me leading a company—sometimes from 2-hours away 🤣. I dropped a class the first two semesters and took summer classes the first year because I simply could not hang. Then I had to step up my game for year-two and go ultra-hard so that I could maintain my scholarship. I finally got divorced, praise God. That process almost killed me. I met amazing, lifelong friends, soaked in the fun of one of my favorite cities, got thwarted by a worldwide pandemic, just like everyone else. And met people and made relationships that truly, deeply, and forever have changed me. I made a much-needed job transition to Church of the Redeemer, in Nashville, which was a balm to my wounded and tired spirit. I prayed for a job and God definitely delivered. I’m left a little speechless, still, at the healing and grace I found through the people there. I found rest after what had honestly been a traumatizingly hard grad-school experience. Getting 3 hours of sleep a night and subsisting off of espresso shots for years on end during graduate school probably took years off of my life. Even more substantially, Redeemer prayed for and with me during some very, very big and hard experiences—throughout the pandemic and still now. The grace and care they held me with, as a staff and parish was almost without bounds. Allowing me to care for them, in turn, was an even bigger gift still. I will miss this place terribly.

Alongside this, I truly found a soul-friend in our priest, Thomas McKenzie and I miss those conversations, that wisdom, our laughter and dark-humor, I miss his encouragement and accountability. Most people find me too intimidating (and will tell me that) to hold me accountable or to tell me I’m wrong. It robs me of my own growth when people are afraid to be honest with me! But, he would look me right in the face and tell me he wasn’t intimidated of me—and it was such a gift. He would quickly tell me I was wrong, would discuss things if I insisted I was right (most of the time he was) and that means when he did tell me I was right, that he believed in me, and when he encouraged me—it means I knew they weren’t platitudes. He believed them. It helped me believe them, too. I trusted him and he was my biggest encourager. He told me the truth when I was wrong so I could believe him when he told me I could do something, too. He knew most things about me and so when he told me God loves me I could believe him when he said that, too. It’s strange how you can live your whole life, have multiple degrees in theology, and still have trouble feeling that truth, deeply. But, I do know that, intellectually. And I believe him. The core theology he shifted in me was much deeper than even this, but is a story for well, probably a book or two. Grieving his death, alongside the parish has been a huge aspect of my overall healing. And knowing that pain will be enduring, is okay with me. Glennon Doyle taught me that grief is love’s souvenir and is one of the ways that we know that love and loss are equally ours. What a gift to have been given so much. His friendship…both the experience of it and the loss of it I think is something I won’t ever get over. Instead of “getting over” it I think it will just come through me, forever and ever, amen. The way he foundationally altered my theology has forever impacted me and the way I move in the world—not only in my personal life (although also tremendously in my personal life) but in my vocation. The lessons I’ve learned from him have been a large aspect of me feeling like I’ve finally grown enough and am ready to circle back to these aforementioned vocational plans.

The way the people at Redeemer have loved me, and I them, is a gift we don’t get regularly. As much as I just wrote, Thomas was actually just one aspect of that. I couldn’t (and wouldn’t) name everybody individually. But, this staff and parish are so loved by me. As I leave, I feel in awe and gratitude for what a great, great thing I have been given. Now that I have officially left my job at Redeemer, after over a year of prayer, I am finally jumping in head-first to creating and building a non-profit. I won’t say too much until it is up-and-running. But, it will be centered around helping victims of domestic violence. My goal is to have it, and an accompanying endowment fund, up-and-running by the end of the year and to HOPEFULLY have my book finished and prepared to publish, next year. Leaving my job to do this is a huge leap of faith. But, God has carried me through far worse and more than I have mentioned here! I was driving out of downtown Nashville the other day, utterly overwhelmed by all of the gifts God brought me during these last 5 years, during which time I questioned my sanity constantly. Had some of the people I love and trust the most tell me I was crazy. And it was so worth it. As I enter into this next level of insanity I can rest in the comfort of knowing how far He’s already carried me. And being convinced that I have not come this far to only come this far.

If you are the praying or “good energy sending” kind, I would love those prayers and good vibes now! This is a huge, hopefully massively positive transition for our family, but I’m still scared! I have no doubt that as long as I am able to steward it, this non-profit will be exactly what God intends it to be. I am merely a channel for it and I have no fear about that aspect! It has been generations in the making, and a very long time coming. Throwback picture below, to late 2018 when I was working, walking, and living in The Gulch (in Nashville), because what I really need prayers for is the courage to pray with my feet and the resources to make it happen.

These last 7 years have been a Dark Night of the Soul for me. In it, I have been able to more deeply accept—and sometimes even embody—that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.