Glad to Be Home
Reflecting on 10 amazing years in a place we never expected to be
A little over 10 years ago, Susie and I were at a bit of a crossroads. In the fall of 2015, I had come to the end of my two-year commitment to serve in the role I began at Lifeway Christian Resources in 2013. I had the option to stay on in that role, but ever since we had moved to Nashville in the fall in 2013, shortly after getting married that summer, we saw it as a stop for graduate school en route to some kind of settling in the Midwest, perhaps back in Indiana.
We scrapped and saved enough for a meager down payment during those first two years of marriage, and we were ready to buy a house and settle down somewhere. We just weren’t exactly sure where.
By the time the new year rolled around, in early 2016, we had two options: 1) I could accept a new role with expanded responsibilities at Lifeway, or 2) we could begin looking for ministry opportunities closer to home, somewhere around the Midwest (our original plan).
After some consideration, we decided to take the new opportunity at Lifeway and stay put in Middle Tennessee for at least a little while longer. We decided we would buy a home and put real roots down. Our two-year stint in the South would be extended…for at least a little bit.
The question we had to answer once we decided to stick around was pretty simple: where can we afford a house that won’t require an extensive remodel?
The Smiths
At the time, we were living in an apartment in Hermitage, an area of Nashville just east of downtown—close to the airport and the Opry Mills Mall area. It wasn’t a bad area, but we didn’t particularly love it either. We also just didn’t have great community. A lot of our best friends that we had made through work or otherwise weren’t within a 20-minute drive of where we were living. As a newlywed couple in a completely new place, we were watching a lot of Netflix and not getting together with friends very much.
Earlier in 2015—I don’t remember exactly when—Susie and I went to coffee with Brandon and Christa Smith in Nashville. They were considering a move to Nashville so Brandon could help lead the launch of the Christian Standard Bible, but they were unsure about moving to a place they had never lived and so far away from family. Brandon and I had become friends through bantering on Twitter—as you do—and so when they were in town for one of Brandon’s interviews, we got together with them to talk about our experience as transplants in Nashville far away from home.
The Smiths eventually moved to Nashville in 2015. They had us over for dinner in the fall of 2015, just a few days before our terrible wreck on I-65, and were singing the praises of this college town they settled in called Murfreesboro, about 30 miles southeast of downtown Nashville. I was aware of the city, but it wasn’t really on my radar when we were talking about places to settle down until we were talking to the Smiths about it.
So, when we began seriously looking at houses in the spring of 2016, we considered Murfreesboro. I had to convince Susie to consider the suburb, mostly because it would significantly increase our commute time to the city—which was a worthy concern, to be sure. We had been driving about 15-20 minutes each way from our apartment to our offices in downtown Nashville, and this move would triple that commute time (on a good day).
Eventually, based on our new friends the Smiths living in Murfreesboro1 and the fact that Murfreesboro more and better houses available in our budget range, I was able to convince Susie that we should zero in on Murfreesboro.
The Hunt
I recognize that “the housing market” has been “kinda crazy” in a lot of places for a long time for a lot of reasons. But the housing market in the Nashville area in the spring of 2016 was unlike anything I knew could actually happen in a housing market. Houses were not hitting listing websites before they were being snatched up by all manner of aspiring renovators, Airbnb entrepreneurs, and transplants from around the country.
Buyers were paying all closing costs. Houses were being bid up beyond their listing prices by tens of thousands of dollars. It was bananas. We could barely go look at houses before they would be sold and unavailable. And even if we could go see a house that was actually still on the market, we wondered if we would be able to compete in any sort of bidding war that would almost certainly ensue.
The Nashville area was hot.
Eventually in March, we made the drive down to Murfreesboro after work one day and looked at something like three or four houses. After not loving any of the ones we saw initially—”Great bedrooms, tiny shared space”; “Lovely house, no yard”; etc.—our realtor suggested we look at just one more house. I remember being pretty fed up and ready to go home for the night. It was Friday and we had some West Wing to binge back at our apartment. But we went the last house.
We walked through the house. We loved it. We thought it was the perfect starter home. But it was a solid 10% more than the top of our “budget range.”2 We had no clue if we could make it work financially, let alone if it would still be available by the time we got back to our apartment to formally make an offer.
Given the nature of the market, we knew we had to make a decision fast.
The house went on the market on Friday morning, March 4, 2016 at 8am. We toured the house around 4pm. We put an offer in by 8pm.3 The offer was accepted by 8am Saturday morning.
We were moving to Murfreesboro.
The Move
We moved to Murfreesboro on Saturday, April 23, 2026. Some family and a handful of friends from the Hermitage area were kind enough to help us load the truck at our apartment. We knew we had some friends waiting for us to help us unload in Murfreesboro, but we didn’t really know.
It took just a touch less than an hour to get from our apartment to our new home—which we had spent painting much of the weekend before our move.4
Not long after we arrived with the moving truck and our cars full of everything we owned, still plagued by the smoke smell of our next-door neighbors in the apartment, we were greeted by the handful of friends we knew would be meeting us at the house—the Smiths, Trevin, Aaron, and a couple others.
What we didn’t realize is that the Smiths had invited about a dozen other people from their church to help us move into the house. Susie and I were floored. We had never met these people in our lives, and they were taking orders from Susie and me about where to put all manner of furniture and boxes. Susie often says when we talk about the move, “All I know is that I never lifted a box.”
They had us all moved into the house in under two hours, as I recall, aside from a couple of pieces of furniture we were letting air out in the front yard to keep from bringing the stale smell of secondhand cigarette smoke into our perfect, beautiful new home—a gift we inherited from our apartment neigbors.
We figured we were going to check out the Smiths’ church among others, once we moved to town. But after the church provided a small army to help us move in and get the house all set up, we weren’t sure we’d ever even check out another church.5
The Last Decade
As of last Thursday, we’ve been in our house for 10 years. The “perfect starter home” has become the home we may not ever leave, and not just because we have a primo mortgage rate.
We never planned to settle down in Middle Tennessee. Susie and I are simple midwestern folks through-and-through. Pass the ranch. Yes, for the pizza.
But we love the city of Murfreesboro and the people with whom we get to share it.
Of course there is our church community. We have walked through all kinds of life experiences with the people of our church. In our church family here we see the kindness of God made manifest in so many different ways. We are grateful for a community of brothers and sisters who are tender when they need to be tender and tough when they need to be tough.
The people of our church make me want to be more like Jesus because they point me to him in their words and in their deeds. They steward the gifts and talents God has given them for his glory and others’ good—and my family has been the recipient of that faithful stewardship so many times. We are so grateful for the ways we have been cared for and loved by the people of our church family, and we hope that we have mirrored that care in all the ways we know how.
Beyond our church family, we have been so grateful for the teachers and staff of Maggie’s school, now that she has entered kindergarten. As I’ve written about before, Maggie attends a pretty rigorous public school in our area, and this first year of school has not been without its challenges for both student and parents alike. But the teachers and administrators at Maggie’s school have been so helpful and kind. We have all grown this year, and while we are eagerly looking forward to a break from all the homework, I am excited to see how she continues to be stretched next year in first grade.
On top of all of this, we enjoy so many other blessings.
Maggie and Daisy have been learning music theory and piano from a local teacher since they were just beginning to walk.
The girls have gymnastics teachers they adore.
We walk to a massive city park next to our house multiple times a week where we have informally adopted a pet turtle named Helga (Maggie took her American Girl doll to meet Helga last week).
We are blessed with lovely neighbors, one of whom is named Miss Bonnie. She works at the park and is fighting cancer. Pray for Miss Bonnie if you would. We love mis Bonnie.
We get all manner of birds feeding at our feeders in the backyard, and we’ve become friends with our local Wild Birds Unlimited owners, who are amazing and love seeing our girls cause a ruckus in their store.
We enjoy some incredible Thai food and Middle Eastern food from local, family-owned restaurants on a regular basis.6
We’ve been able to watch teenagers we led in youth group grow up into full-fledged adults. And we have seen those adults to be some of our girls’ favorite people in the world. It’s so sweet.
God has been so good to us and provided us so much more than we could have asked for or imagined.
We are so glad to be home in this place and at this time. We would have never thought to be in Middle Tennessee for this long. And now we can’t think we would ever leave. But we don’t get to plan such things. So for now, we will just be glad to be home, here.
One day, Brandon, I will forgive you for ripping your family away from mine. :)
When I look at what we paid for our house 10 years ago compared to what some of our friends have had to pay for comparable houses in the last 3-4 years, I feel so bad for them. We thought we had it rough with our market, but we would probably barely be able to buy our own house if we had to buy it today.
I included a heartfelt note to the homeowners about how Susie and I were excited to raise a family in the home. I think it helped.
Our shoddy painting work is still evident throughout the home, even to this day.
(We didn’t.)
We spend too much money at these places.