leighann's

I love living in Nashville. Last night I went to see the Lion King (AMAZING!) with a group of friends, and as I was walking away from TPAC through Lesislative Plaza gazing at my surroundings, I just felt so happy to be there. During intermission, my friend Kristen had told me that she and her husband moved to Nashville without even having jobs because they just knew that they were supposed to live here. My experience was somewhat different.

When Jeff told me in late December 1997 that he was being transferred to Nashville, I cried. I had no desire to come here. "What's in Nashville?" I asked. What a dork. I grew up in the mountains of East Tennessee, and if I was going to move back to Tennessee, that's where I thought I should be. But we felt God telling us to go, so to Nashville we came.

When I first got here, I used to complain about the traffic all the time. Living in Birmingham, I was always five minutes from the interstate, and from there I could get pretty much anywhere I needed to be in 15-20 minutes, tops. Not so in Nashville. Both of our houses have been a good 10-15 minutes from the interstate to begin with, and then getting somewhere from there was a challenge. Not to mention the fact that Jeff moved here six months before me, so I was incredibly frustrated that he knew his way around and I was totally clueless.

Nine years later, I truly could not imagine living anywhere else. I have fallen in love with this city and its surrounding towns. What's funny is that even though we've moved 20 miles south of the city, I still consider myself a Nashvillian. I'm sure the natives of Spring Hill never imagined that their sweet farming community would one day become a suburb of the city, but here we all are.

I love living here in the center of our state government. Walking past the capital building last night and across the Plaza, I was just struck with the history of the place. How many people over the past 150 years have enjoyed its majestic presence? It was a beautiful, cold, clear night last night, and the stars truly seemed to be dancing in the sky overhead. Did you know the capitol building served as a Union fort during the occupation of Nashville during the Civil War? President and Mrs. James K. Polk are buried there. The architect, William Strickland, is entombed in its walls. All those years of history. And since I've lived here, the Plaza was Ground Zero for defeating the state income tax (yes, I drove by and honked my horn just for the fun of it) That was grass roots at its best. And who can forget Al Gore standing on stage declaring that it was just "too close to call"? This is where I live.

Then there's just the fun of it all. I swore that I wouldn't become desensitized to all of the cool stuff that I've gotten to do through my church (see link on the right), like singing on stage at the Ryman with the Gatlin Brothers, filming a video segment for Martina McBride's Christmas concert (even if it did get cut), getting to sing with Twila Paris, Steve Green, Larnelle Harris, David Meece, FFH, just to name a few. Oh, and what the heck, let's be in Michael W. Smith's movie. My husband had a hilarious encounter with Kenny Chesney driving down the interstate one day, and had coffee right across Starbucks from the Governor and his security detail. And where else could I live where my daughter's birthday party gets crashed by Vince Gill?

I have been able to sing and record on numerous occasions with my church choir under the direction of David Hamilton, one of the nation's premiere conductors and arrangers. I truly have gotten to where I take all of this for granted because so many cool things are happening all the time. But even when we're not doing anything "special," just being able to worship at BBC on a weekly basis is an incredible privilege.