Let Go

I wanted Nashville. So bad. Yet here I was driving north, with the city I thought I would call home for the rest of my life in the rearview mirror. You wanna talk about a hot mess? I was the epitome of it. I had gotten off my makeshift floor mattress before sunrise and loaded my car to head out. My newly chopped off hair curled out of my low ponytail and around my face in the 95% humidity and 93-degree heat.

My truck sped up as I drove out of the city limits, Nashville perfectly framed in my rearview mirror, tears thick and salty streamed down my face, I quietly cursed myself for not choosing a less enviable view to send me off on the long road ahead.

We all have that one big dream. One that tightens your stomach with excitement and nerves. One that you know will be worth everything it will take to attain it. That was Nashville for me.

I planned on Nashville. I planned on my dream. I never planned on leaving. I had really believed that if I fought hard enough, worked hard enough, just made a few more friends, or changed myself to be the puzzle piece I knew I needed to be to fit into my office, I could keep my dream. Honestly though, I was tired, I was homesick, I was ready for a change, and the scariest part to admit was the change might not include Nashville.

I think the hardest thing you do in life is giving up on dreams. And I know the saying, "never give up on your dreams", but as an adult you know and I both know sometimes the relationship is not meant to be, there's no saving the business or you have to move on simply for the fact that you cannot stay in the place where you've been.

Those places, simply put, suck. I've been there more times than I'd like to admit and I know you've been there too. I want to say I get it and I'm sorry. I know what it feels like to put your soul into something. Every life plan, every late night, every homesick call to a friend or family member just wanting to cling to something familiar in an alien landscape that you sure you'll conquer as your own one day, then all the hard work, all the "this will be worth it one day" feels gone in an instant. Whether that instance is a rejection, or two or three, the day you have to sign the papers, buy the other half of that one-way ticket or load up the car, you can feel like a failure, a fraud.

What had finally put me on the road out of Nashville that morning was simple, a job opportunity opened up back in California. Within 3 weeks I had a phone interview, a Skype interview, gave my two weeks notice at my current job, broke my lease, loaded my car, and headed west to drive back to California for the final interview. I'd like to say I had some idea what I was doing, that I knew it would all work out, but I didn't. I just knew I wasn't supposed to stay where I was, God was opening doors and I was (blindly) stumbling through them.

I'd also like to say I'm one of those people who love flying by the seat off their pants, believing everything will work out. While people who know me may say I'm spontaneous and adventurous, I'm also incredibly practical, a planner who loves knowing and controlling what comes next.

That showed when, on my cross country trip, I had 4 hours to kill in the Denver airport, I parked myself at the Caribou Coffee and applied to 14 different jobs all across the country. Ohio, Michigan, Washington, Kentucky, you name it I was shooting my shot, but really I was just terrified.

Terrified for the first time in my young 23-year-old life that I had no plan as to what was coming next. Eventually, the learning would come. The understanding of how God works in the mess and in miraculous ways. However, I was in the middle of it, I felt blind, I felt stupid and, to be honest, I felt pretty hopeless.

Turns out what I was convinced would be my deepest regret was just setting the stage for God's best. While I was so focused on the past and what I was leaving behind I was missing the biggest part, that God was desperately trying to get me to the next thing on time. He had something He didn’t want me to miss up ahead. He had answers to prayers I had been praying for years up ahead. God was taking me towards so much life. Life that I would have missed had I clung so tightly to something that was no longer meant for me. Promise me something, when you get to the same place, the place of clinging so tightly to the old because you feel like a failure or the fear that the new will never measure up, let go. God's got better up ahead.