Going to Nashville was a LOT harder than I had anticipated and God made His presence known there in some really surprising ways. I want to share with you some of the stories about what happened and how (with the benefit of hindsight) God truly was in control the whole way.
It started with an American basketball team being put through the check-in in Sydney ahead of me. I got there early! Plenty of time even! And yet I found myself waiting at check-in for over an hour and a half and stuck in security as my plane boarding time was coming to an end. I texted my hubby to tell him I wasn’t going to make my plane. I shoved my things through security, threw my bag over my shoulder and ran for it.
I arrived, gasping for breath at the gate as the guy demanded the last call to board. I literally made it by single-digit seconds. I flopped into my plane seat. Stressed. Seriously contemplating if I should climb straight back off (I hadn’t wanted to travel so far without my young family). How kind of God that I didn’t have an hour sitting at my gate to contemplate not getting on the plane. In honesty I may never have gotten on.
Fast forward to LA Airport. I had made the naïve mistake of telling my fellow passenger that I hadn’t been there before. A young man, he had seemed very friendly. But now he was insisting (whether well-meaning or not-I don’t know) that I follow him out of the Airport to a shuttle bus that would apparently take me to the terminal I needed. He followed me through security to where our bag change over was. I knew in my guts something wasn’t right. I approached a tall African American Airport worker with a kind face (the passenger trailing me) and told him I wasn’t sure where to go. He looked me straight and replied with a wonderful LA accent ‘My darling, I am your angel. I will take you exactly where you need to go!’. He proceeded to tell the young man to go on without me, and he (momentarily) left the lady he’d been pushing in a wheelchair to take me to my gate (sorry lady). I never had to set foot outside the Airport to get there, in fact it wasn’t far at all. How kind of God to provide the help I needed to keep me safe in that moment.
Fast forward to Nashville and the studio I’m working in in an industrial area in Nashville is frankly just not working out. My producer and I are surprised and not thrilled with the privacy of it. We are experiencing ‘bleed through’ noise interrupting our recordings, in an isolation booth (that’s not supposed to be possible). And on top of that, I don’t like tight spaces and that vocal booth was like a cupboard I was shut into all day. I wasn’t singing well at all.
My friends and I were also being woken every few hours at night by a dump truck emptying something at all hours. The jet lag couldn’t really have been much worse.
We reached out to a producer friend who happened to have a free studio at his home in Franklin.
The girls and I packed up, moved to a GORGEOUS motel in Franklin. It felt like home. I’m a country girl and I realised I needed the green space. The studio was wonderful… and due to the recording settings we used there, I love the vocals from that space so much more than the first one. How kind of God to allow bleed through noise at the expensive studio (seriously, how?) to move us to a friendly space where the sound of the vocal even at a processing level, would be far more beautiful.
It also allowed for connections with humble people serving Jesus in the most incredible ways. Conversations with both producers and their families, meals together which were nothing short of precious. How kind of God to allow the city experience to be … well… pretty awful.
He also provided annual leave for two precious friends from Northern Ireland and the support they needed at home to be able to leave little people behind. He provided a dear friend of 18 years to meet me at the airport and spend wonderful time reconnecting. How kind of God to send me the support I needed, quite literally from around the world.
We visited the Grand Old Opry on the Wednesday night and to be honest it was probably the lowest point for me, as that was when everything just seemed to not be working out. I was pretty miserable watching the show. During the intermission my friends offered to get me some refreshments, and I even declined going with them. Preferring to sit and feel quite sorry for myself. Well, onto the intermission screen in front of thousands came a lovely young Christian artist named Connor, who shared what it had meant to be a Christian in the public space of Country music. I have never needed to hear the encouragement he offered more. I felt like I was precisely where I was meant to be at that exact moment.
How kind of God.
I’ve had a lot of people ask me how I got to Nashville. You may be wondering it yourself. How does a primary school teacher who didn’t really want to be a professional musician end up recording in Nashville? Some of the answer I’m not sure you’ll even believe, when I do write a blog purely about that journey one day… But the overarching answer I’ll give you here is this… one day I gave up music completely. Another day, 7 years later God showed me clearly that I should pick it back up and be faithful with any opportunities He would provide (without chasing them myself). And through a series of interactions, a traveling musician’s words, the connections at worship conferences (which others sponsored me to go to), dreams (not mine), two dear musician friends connecting me to first one and then another producer, God providing the funds, the community and the courage… God opened doors that I had promised Him I would follow Him through… all the way to Nashville. The whole process has spanned 15 years… but particularly the last 7. In my blog I share about some of the things I am continuing to learn along the way.