On Saturday, we will celebrate three years here on Floating Axe Farm. Three years. I’m both unsure how so much time has passed, and completely shocked that it’s been so short a time.
To some members of our family, East Tennessee is still just becoming home. And I understand, I do. I myself was routed from the place of my growing up years mid-high school and drop kicked into a new environment that fit me as well as a too-tight shoe. My hair was wrong, and my accent was funny, and why on earth do you people go to a grocery store with that name? It was an uncomfortable time and an awkward place, but in the end it turned out o.k. And in the end, it will for those of us still struggling to wrap our brain around the fact that we live in Tennessee, of all places.
I had an easier time adapting than anyone else. I’ve heard these accents all my life, already know the rhythms of life here. My mother was born and raised just a hair north, and my father just a bit farther than that. I myself split the bulk of every summer on either side of the state line, alternating between Kentucky and Tennessee and running myself ragged with cousins and bottles of RC Cola and jars of fireflies. I grew up with a Mamaw and a Papaw, not a Grandma and a Grandpa. My first sandwiches were fried bologna. This part of the country was already hardwired into my DNA, and I’ve slid back into life in the South without much effort at all.
It’s not perfect, of course. No place is perfect. Discrimination against folks “not from around here,” is alive and well. My husband has had to note, loudly, on more than one occasion that while he isn’t from Tennessee, his wife’s people are—and that seems to smooth over most situations. There are other issues, issues all of America deals with: racism, obesity, poverty, drug use, failing schools. It’s not an oasis. It’s the real world, and it needs Jesus.
But it is my happy place. A completely unexpected turn of events, but true all the same.
See, when we had to come back to the U.S., I was heartbroken that Western Washington wasn’t a possibility. The Lord had shut that door firmly, and He wasn’t reopening it. So I pined. I pined and I longed and I asked why, why if He wasn’t letting us stay in Nepal, He wouldn’t let us go back home to Washington.
Washington. Where life was good. Where we had friends. Where we knew how life worked. Where we fit in. Where we had roots. Where we were happy.
But God said no. He said no, and He waited until we were ready to open our hands and receive the blessing of new roots, new friends, and a new goodness. He waited until we let go of what we had once had, and opened our eyes to what was coming. He waited until we were ready for Tennessee.
And here we are. Three years in. Growing, thriving, secure in a rhythm of travel and ministry and home life that we didn’t know we would come to embrace. Happy in a house we never dreamed we’d own, on property for which we never dared hope.
Home. In Tennessee.