It's a simple question really. One of my nephews wants to know how we ended up in Adamsville, TN. As I thought about that question, I realized that it wasn't so easy to answer. Of course, my first reaction was to just tell him "by car" but that would be too easy. Then I could tell him that Uncle Oliver's job brought us down here and that would be only part of the truth. I'm sure he's probably wondering why I haven't answered him yet and I do hope he's not taking it personally that I haven't. It's just that God has this amazing way of taking a simple question, or word, or situation, and embarking you on a journey to learn something - about Him and about yourself.
As I sit here I am filled with all kinds of different feelings. First being that I love it here in Adamsville and I love my friends so very much. We have been blessed to get plugged into a church family that I really thought could only exist in my dreams. They're a diverse bunch and that keeps it interesting. Plus we were able to find our dream house and move into it last year. We prayed for this house and God answered our prayers by providing it for us.
Then there is the uncertainty. After Oliver lost the job last September that brought us down here, we have been living in that murky area of wondering what's next. Will we have to move? That was the first question.... now it's more like will he ever find a job? He's sent out hundreds of resumes, hit the streets, done everything he can and should do, without one single interview. He's good at what he does, and despite being an old dog (although not quite old enough for social security) he's still quite capable of learning new tricks. Our savings having been depleted and no job on the horizon, it's scary at best. We literally have to go to bed at night grateful that today the electric is paid so we can watch tv and have heat, the water bill is paid so we can shower and for this month we have a roof over our heads. Our cars are paid for so there's no payment there to worry about. We have to see the good things or we'd be overwhelmed by the uncertainty of it all.
Oh this isn't the worst situation we've ever been in but it's stressing still the same. A few short years ago, we weren't sure he was even going to be alive as we went through the years of dealing with his cancer - which, by the way, he is free of. Last year the doctors weren't giving me much hope of living to see this day, until I got new doctors at Vanderbilt who not only gave me hope but have very much helped keep me alive and now are thinking I may have been misdiagnosed altogether. So we do realize that things can, and have been, much worse.
Two years ago when Oliver lost the job that he'd had for almost 20 years we were thrown for a loop. We prayed, we cried, we fought, and he found one actually quite quickly. We only went two weeks without a paycheck that time. The only caveat was that we'd have to move to Tennessee. We actually were thrilled. We had wanted out of the Chicago area for a long time. It just wasn't home anymore. We excitedly accepted the terms and Oliver left within a few days to come down here. I was stuck up there a while longer trying to sell the house and filled my time browsing online for a new one down here.
Those were hard days. The neighborhood we were living in was becoming more and more inundated with gangs and it was becoming scary, especially being up there alone. What was supposed to be a simple surgery for carpal tunnel sent me on this wild ride of medical testing and an open lung biopsy all because of a blip on a pre-surgical EKG. While my lungs were the issue in the physical sense, I have to ashamedly admit that it was my heart that was hardening in the spiritual and emotional sense. I felt all alone and scared and mad at the world. I really couldn't blame people for not coming around. I was miserable and was now living within the walls that I had only built up myself.
For years I refused to allow people into that inner circle where I kept my heart safe and sound. Oh, I'd be friendly enough and say the right words, but my actions didn't match up to them. There were a few people who broke through my barriers, but very few indeed. And those that did really, really irked me sometimes. Seems like the only ones that I would let in were the ones that I could have love/hate relationships with. God and I had some major discussions over some of them, yet I loved them just the same. Then life (and death) got in the way and somehow I lost them as well until I was literally all alone, laying in a hospital bed with nobody in sight. Just me and a God that I wasn't sure gave a rip anymore. Go ahead, shake your head... Lord knows I do as I look back on that moment but there I was none-the-less, thinking I had pushed everybody out of my life for good and that I didn't deserve anybody in it.
I literally was ready to just give up on life altogether. We hadn't had anybody look at our house in a couple of months, it was bitterly cold outside, Oliver couldn't even be home for my surgery. Life was bleak at best. I cried. Not a sobbing a cry but a cry out of frustration and just plain having had enough. Call the men in the white jackets if you must but I believe in that moment God came down and sat with me to have a chat. He basically told me that I could continue to harbor all the resentment and anger and live in a past that had not been pleasant within the walls that I had put up myself or I could let it all go right then and there and be ready to walk into a future full of hope and promise. The choice was mine.
It was a Kairos moment for me... a moment of an undetermined period of time in which something special happens. I argued with God that nobody really cared. I had alienated everyone. He so graciously gave me a picture in my mind of a man that I had only met once while vistiing down here in Tennessee two months earlier. A man in a wheelchair, named John. He told me that John was praying for me and that he cared. I became broken and it was in that moment of being broken that I made the decision to have a change of heart. Funny thing happened... within the next 24 hours, while I was still in ICU, someone came and looked at our townhouse and bought it. I was released from the hospital two days before Christmas and was leaving Chicago behind three weeks later. Everything literally changed on a dime.
Back to Adamsville. I, like my nephew, vaguely knew that I had heard about Adamsville but I Googled it as well. When I read that it was the home of Buford Pusser, I was flooded with the memory of watching the original movie "Walking Tall" - with Joe Don Baker. I remember a distinct part in the movie when they were walking down the road from the church to the cemetery and I remembered thinking at the time that Adamsville looked like the kind of town that I would love to live in. There was just something about it that I saw in a movie as a teen that touched something in me. Flash forward 40 years and here I am, literally driving by that cemetery every time we leave the house. A house incidentally that I found online and wanted before I ever even laid eyes on it in person. I just knew. Oliver knew once I convinced him to find it (mostly to stop me from nagging) and saw it with his own eyes. He was here every weekend walking the property and praying that somehow it would be ours.
So here I am, a little over a year later from moving into our dream house in Adamsville, TN and thinking about how we ended up in Adamsville, a place that I am proud to call home. A one stoplight, small country type of town. We still have phone booths on the corners - with working phones. The stores and restaurants prefer checks rather than credit cards. There is literally a barber shop on the corner and not one, but two beauty salons across the street. The kind of town where you can leave something outside and it will still be there when you come back for it. A place where you wave and smile at people you don't know and can strike up a conversation like you've known them your whole life. A town to call home.
In this year I have worked hard to let my heart be open to new people, new experiences and quite frankly a whole new way of life. Never have I been more content or feel more at home. Sure the people are different than others in my life, after all they ride bush hawgs and eat purple hulled peas and fried, well, everything. I can honestly say that I have not met one person here who has "gotten under my skin." Oh there are a few that I may just avoid, but for the most part each one has found a place in my heart and I'd do anything for them and know that if I needed something, I could call and honestly know that they'd be there for me. They're people that I'm so happy to be "doing life" with.
They allow me to be me. I laugh easily and these days sometimes I cry too easily but never, ever do I feel like I can't or shouldn't be feeling what I'm feeling. I don't feel judged and that brings with it a freedom that I've never known before. I never understood unconditional love and now I'm livng it every day. And John? Well he's become one of my very best friends, along with his wife Lisa. My pastor is not only my pastor but someone that I love with all my heart, as well as his family. They are my friends. We have neighbors that drop by just to say hi and we feel like we've been neighbors forever. We feel like pieces of a big puzzle and without all the pieces, the picture just wouldn't be the same - for any of us.
The area is beautiful as well. Filled with trees and wildlife of all kinds. A sky that seems to go on forever. A river that has a power and presence all it's own. I literally feel God's hand all around me. We don't know what tomorrow will bring. I tear up when I entertain the thought that maybe, just maybe, this isn't where I will spend the rest of my life, but I know that I wouldn't trade one moment or one experience or one person for anything in the world. We're not sure if and/or when our time here in Adamsville is ending, but we do know that God knows and we're trusting that He has our best interests at heart. He's brought us this far and the lessons I've learned in the past year about Him and myself have all been worth it.
So, Dean, to answer your question, "how did you end up in Adamsville, TN?" - I guess it would suffice to say that "God only knows."
