Escaping Nashville
In theory Nashville seemed like a grand idea. In the summer of 2022 we were living in Memphis, a city we’d absolutely fallen in love with, when my husband received an opportunity to relocate to Nashville for work. Both of us being from Mississippi and moving to Tennessee a few years prior had been one of the best decisions we’d ever made. Tennessee felt like home instantly when we’d moved to Memphis. Since we thought Memphis was so incredible we imagined Nashville would be a wonderful and exciting place to call home.
About a year before we moved I remember a Memphian friend of mine going to Nashville for a bachelorette trip. She seemed less than enthused about the trip. When asking her about it she said ‘Nashville is just so overrated, Memphis is way cooler.’ I just couldn’t imagine how this could possibly be true. Everyone dotes over Nashville (except Memphians). I put that whole conversation away to a hidden portion of my mind until about six months after moving.
I remember the night my husband came home with the offer. We sat down at the dinner table and made a pros & cons list just like we did when deciding to uproot from Mississippi to Memphis. The pros leaned in Nashville’s favor, and just like that we were excited for another adventure in a new city. We called our agent, and within the same week our house was on the market. It sold almost immediately.
We made a day trip to scope out neighborhoods and a little more of the city since neither one of us had spent much time there outside of a business trip and vacation or two. The day trip got us even more excited to make the move. When we got back to Memphis we started searching for houses in Nashville and made an offer sight unseen on a house about fifteen minutes from downtown. Don’t be like us. We tend to pride ourselves on being spontaneous and adventurous so this just seemed like another fun idea. Also, the housing market was still insane and you had to jump on houses right away in order to get something worthwhile. But this wasn’t adventurous at all, this was actually insane.
The day we left our house in Memphis I cried like a child. I was leaving a house I loved in a city that had become pure magic for us, and friendships I still cherish to this day. As emotional as I was about leaving Memphis I was equally eager to start our lives in Nashville. After a three hour drive we rolled into downtown Nashville and I couldn’t help but get butterflies.
We pulled into the driveway of the house I’d never seen in person and I was even more in love with the idea of Nashville. It didn’t feel like home in an immediate sense as it did in Memphis though. I chalked it up to an eventful day and a busy mind so didn’t worry about it much. I eagerly awaited the day it finally felt like home. That day never came though.
Two and a half years later, a mental health relapse, bringing a child into the world, almost dying due to a medical mistake during child birth, and Nashville never felt like home. We tried to fake it for two and a half years. It was the most difficult season of our lives and neither one of us ever admitted we hated the city until we finally decided to escape.
The day Caleb came home with an offer to relocate to the beach I felt relief. We’d always said the beach was our end goal and it was happening much sooner than we ever expected. But, most importantly it was an opportunity to escape Nashville. What we didn’t know at that time was that Nashville wasn’t ready to let us go just yet.
We put our house on the market about a week before the housing market in Nashville turned vial. After three months we finally received our first offer. She backed out a week later. We lowered the price on a even though we were already upside down on the house. We were desperate to get out of the grips of the city. We received another offer a week later. Things seemed to be moving in the right direction, but three days before closing the buyer got cold feet and realized she probably couldn’t afford the monthly payment. We were devastated. Our POD was being delivered the next morning, most of our belongings were boxed up and our home was in disarray.
That night Caleb got on his knees with tears in his eyes to pray. It felt like the energetic force of Nashville was ready to hold onto us forever. It was hard to see an end in sight, but nonetheless we continued to pray and find refuge in the word of God. The next night a family knocked on our door. Caleb Answered. They saw the sign in the yard and asked if the house was still for sale. He replied ‘Yes, would you like to come inside?’. There were still boxes everywhere. The house was a total mess, but they must have seen a future for themselves in our home. The next day they made an offer.
Nashville was the most difficult season of our lives, but we stand firm in the belief that our God doesn’t make mistakes. It was a season we had to endure. An uncomfortable and painful two and a half years that have blossomed into blessings we never would have experienced had we not endured the struggle.
In this difficult season of life we’ve grown closer to God than I’ve ever imagined. Closer to each other, and can more easily find the blessings amidst the chaos.
I remember reading a comment from someone on a Facebook group I was in that said ‘Visiting Nashville and living in Nashville are two very different things, do your research’. It was left on a post of someone asking advice about moving to the city. It haunted me then and it still haunts me to this day. Those words surely rang true for us, but it’s a season of life we couldn’t be more grateful to have endured.
