The beauty of Looking Back: Stitch, Study, Salon Stories

Y'all! It's super hard for me to believe: this month marks twenty-eight years since I went back to school to major in Visual Communications at what is now Nashville State Community College, back in 1998, it. was simply known as Nashville State Tech.

If I did't know better, I would super easily say the year of nineteen ninety-eight was one of the worst years of my life, as my mother passed away on the very first day of the year nineteen hundred and ninety-eight. Can you imagine how horrible it would be, to start a new year off with the death of a loved one? So, yes, that's how nineteen hundred and ninety-eight started and y'all I absolutely did not see any signs of better until the seriously hot August day I enrolled my thirty-three year old single mom self into the VisCom program at what is now Nashville State Community College.

After, my mother passed away on the very first day of nineteen hundred and ninety-eight, the Nashville Tornado of 1998 ripped through my house and me and my eighteen month old daughter became homeless in a single long stormy night. I was working downtown on Second Avenue as an Assistant Clothing Buyer, for Boot Country when the storm came through Nashville. Boot Country was also the place where I met Cheryl J, who sadly shared many stories with me about the loss of her own mother at the young age of twenty-five!

Not only did the year nineteen hundred and ninety-eight see me suffering the loss of my mother and my home, but in the middle of all of this suffering: Boot Country announces the relocation of their purchasing and administration office from downtown Nashville to Lebanon. So, yes I also suffered the sudden loss of a much needed job! 

There I was in the heat of the summer of nineteen hundred and ninety-eight: motherless, homeless and jobless. 

And here is the amazing But God part of my story:

My Boot Country job loss is what (after much testing) qualified me for the Work Force Development Program, which also provided a full scholarship (including weekly income) for me to enroll as a full time student in the VisCom program at what is now Nashville State Community College.

Sonya McCllough Lockridge 

Looking back, I can clearly see the ever shaping hand of God in every crack and crevice of this my one life and it's often in the beauty of looking back, which helps us to look and move fiercely forward knowing the same God is still working and shaping, even in the right now.