I have loved music all my life, and learned to play piano as a teenager. When I got my McDonald’s paycheck I would walk over to the music store to buys some albums. I made $3.75 an hour and the cassettes cost $10. I touched them, lifting them up to see the names of the songs and taking a good long look at the album art.

I knew some of the artists, and there were more I hadn’t heard. My one radio station I was permitted to listen to didn’t play them all. That music store was a Christian bookstore. I walked past the Precious Moments figurines and the bible study books to get to the music section. I would usually buy two cassettes and sometimes splurge on a third.

On the way out, I would tear open the plastic cover to put it in my Walkman right away. The tunes! I’d listen to each album, then drill down on the one I liked best and play it on repeat for days. The second album would get it’s turn after I’d sucked the marrow out of the first.

I sat on the brown carpet in my room, opening up the album insert. The lyrics were included in a long fold-out from the cassette case. The lyrics, the songwriters and the producers were read again and again.

And the city at the end was Nashville. The clues left for me to follow went there. My young heart imagined what it was like, and how I might sing my heart out there.

It’s been a long time since I judged Amy Grant for being too worldly, but I landed in the Nashville airport last week. That dream came true at last.

Sort of.

Not as a singer, but as a writer. I had dreamed of writing as well, but I knew it was too big a dream. I had no idea what to do for that one.

Music dreams had a city with a name.

A lot has changed. I’ve learned so many things.

But I haven’t stopped dreaming. People lined up to buy my book, I signed my name on the dream made real.