What the Heck am I Doing in Nashville, TN?!
Picture this: It’s a Wednesday morning, or pick any day. Really, it doesn’t matter. I’m making my coffee, part of my morning routine, and I’m sure part of yours. For me, it fits perfectly in between putting on my contacts so I can see and pick out my outfit for the day, a decision that should never be made non-caffeinated. Early in the semester, I wrote out the liturgy for morning coffee and taped it to the coffee maker so I could read it as the sweet and earthy aroma of the coffee drips out of the wonderful and amazing coffee machine that is a Keurig cabinet above. Ambitious, I know, and I probably only read it about every other day, but I count it as a small victory.
So you’re picturing it? I’m standing there, and the thought hits me: What the heck am I doing in Nashville, TN?!
I mean, really, truly, how did I go from a small town in rural, eastern North Carolina with a population of 2,000 people to living 12 hours away in the sprawling Music City? A place with too many restaurants, coffee shops, shopping centers, churches, and schools to fully count, where I haven’t gotten stuck behind a tractor once in the almost three months of living here. If each person is composed of those around them, what is the relationship between those from the quiet farm and beach towns that grew me to the loud and bustling city where I now find myself?
To answer this question, I can easily trace the goodness and grace of God from my hometown to four formative years at Wake Forest University (GO DEACS!!) to the abundance of truth, goodness, and beauty I have experienced through the Nashville Fellows. The doors that have opened year after year to allow me to be in this current place have never been opened by my own striving and efforts but rather a guiding and hemming in towards decisions from a good and faithful Father. Trusting doesn’t always come easy for me, but step by step, I am learning to fall into the knowledge that God’s good plans for me are the same in Nashville as in North Carolina. This is the kindness found in the full picture of the Gospel as four-fold: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Reconciliation. To miss any of these is to not see God’s whole character and the ways they have shown up time and time again in my life!
Again, I go back to what am I creating in Nashville? Creating a community with the twelve other Fellows, forming relationships with them in an environment that is set up for the beginnings of deep friendships. Ask anyone who just graduated college in May 2023. Post-grad life is hard and frequently becomes a life of comparison to friends in other cities, industries, and situations. The group of people I am doing life with right now have come alongside me, and I them, as we are learning to navigate the totality of our humanity while growing in our knowledge of the God who has been so gracious in also bringing my wonderful friends to Nashville! My life has been marked by the gift of community over the past seven years through the gifts of friendships, which encourage and have held me accountable in tight-knit communities and living alongside others. In reflection on these months in Fellows, I will forever be able to name the life-changing community and gift each person in this program has offered me - in moments of silliness, laughter, and inexplicable joy while also learning to comfort one another in sadness and disappointments.
And again, I ask, what am I learning here? I could have written an entire blog post or series of posts on the content of our classes or the duality of the clarity and questions I have about my future vocationally. As someone who loves to learn, Monday classes and leadership lunches are often parts of the week I look forward to the most, diligently spending time preparing the homework, reading, and questions given to us beforehand, ready to receive the knowledge of the day. (I know, you can say it, nerd alert!) To spare you all from the pages upon pages of notes I have already taken and would love to summarize, here are two bullet points of what I have found particularly compelling:
From St. Augustine’s Confessions: “Say to my soul, ‘I am your salvation.’ Speak these words in such a way that I can hear them.” (do I need a reference) If salvation is not works-based, it cannot be reasoned into. Thus, I must learn to truly see my heart as the well-spring of life and view my salvation as secure based on the promises God speaks to me continually, in His grace and mercy.
From our theology of Creation class: In Genesis 1, God continually calls His creation “good” - meaning dynamic and alive. Never does it say this pre-fall Creation was perfect or static. What a freeing realization this was to me as a perfectionist! Even in this world with right relationship with God, there was no standard of perfection but of being “good” and “very good” to commune with him!
I am also learning that I love my job at UpRise Nashville. Working directly with people to encourage them into who they have the potential to become, rather than who they might see themselves as or have been told they are, has been a wonderful experience professionally and personally. The work I am doing every day may not seem the most important in my eyes, but being able to serve this organization and, in turn, these people is a great honor. May I grow to see that in my every day! I am so thankful to UpRise and the other Employer Partners across the city who have Fellows working in their companies for their care in giving us the opportunity to discover the holiness of work, even sometimes mundane work, over these nine months!
One last time, I ask myself, what am I doing here? I think I’m starting to get some answers, and you, my reader, might be starting to get annoyed with me asking this question. A few weekends ago, we gathered with Fellows programs from across the nation in Washington DC, spending time getting to know one another and learning from some wonderful, intelligent speakers. On the way back, we all got to return home together!!! There is such joy in this statement alone - of the provision that I get to come back to and experience daily of the life I have begun to build in Nashville. That life in community with the other Fellows, my host family, the church community I am part of, and the classes we take — that all of this is here in Nashville and is immeasurably more. What the heck am I doing in Nashville, TN?! I am creating and learning. Resting and working. Step by step, slowing down and growing in my understanding, there is a good God who delights in giving me good gifts, of which I am partaking here and now. Hallelujah!
Dailey Rae (DR) Leary Class 11
Hometown: Richlands, NC
Graduate of Wake Forest University, NC
