I had this grand idea of journaling during this pregnancy business to help me remember the different things I’d go through/feel/wonder about. I can’t imagine why I thought that would work, since I’ve only written for this site about three times all year. But still. Good intentions.

I wanted to find something with prompts that would help me decide what to write about. BIG PROBLEM – pregnancy journals are lame. (Maybe you had an awesome journal when you were pregnant and you filled it with butterflies and rainbows and food cravings.) I couldn’t find anything that wasn’t cheesy and emotional and oh-what-a-beautiful-experience-y.

So I started looking for prompted journals of any kind. I wanted to make lists, draw pictures, answer questions, that kind of thing. I found something called The Happy Book and decided to use it as a journal of my life over these months – not necessarily pregnancy specific, just a reminder of what was going on and how I was feeling.

It’s a pretty great book, actually. It asks questions about the games you made up as a kid and the songs that make you happy and lines from movies that make you laugh. It’s really fun to work on – Aaron and I have been doing it together every few days, each of us writing in different things. (Under ‘words that make you laugh’, Aaron wrote ‘sonofabitch’. That’s kid-appropriate, right?)

One page asks you to list your favorite people in the whole world. After writing about various family members, friends, and twitter feeds, I started a sentence with, “You know who would definitely NOT be on that list…” which very quickly devolved into a game we have since titled “Guess Who Else I Hate?” It’s like a 20 Questions of annoying people from our lives.

IT RULES. I realize that it goes against everything that The Happy Book stands for, but MAN it is fun to play. I’m not sure there’s much that’s more cathartic than talking about people who’ve pissed you off.

We are going to be great parents.

I had been sick all week. It started as allergies, turned in to a cold, then became kind of a stomachache/ coughing fit combo. It was glamorous, let me tell you. By Saturday, I couldn’t be up or moving for long without needing to lie down, and I slept horribly Saturday night. Coughing, nausea, restlessness. I woke up at around 6:00am with a half-baked idea and stumbled down the hall into the bathroom. It was pee-on-a-stick time.

I knew I had a pregnancy test crammed in the closet somewhere, it had been ages since I thought I might need one. I found it, got it open on the third try (I was still more asleep than awake), and followed the instructions. Horizontal line = negative, plus sign=positive.

I was looking at a plus sign.

I rubbed my eyes, turned it upside down (you know, to make sure), read the instructions again. They definitely said what I thought they said, and it turns out plus signs are still plus signs even when they’re upside down.

I got back in bed and woke up Aaron.

Me: I have two things to tell you, and I need you to listen to me.
Aaron: halfway opens his eyes
Me: Number one, I feel terrible and I’m not going to church today, and number two, I just took a pregnancy test and it’s positive.
Aaron: Okay. … wait, what?
Me: It’s okay. I’m sure it’s fake.

Because, obviously it’s fake, right? We’ve been trying for two years. I’ve had meetings with multiple adoption counselors. I’m reading books about adoption ethics. We’ve moved on from this. (This is where I put the first of what I’m sure will be many warnings – anyone who says anything along the lines of this happening because we’d moved on gets bamboo shoots up the fingernails. NOT HELPFUL.)

So I’m sure it’s not real. I’ve been taking some combination of Benadryl and Nyquil and who knows what else for over a week. Clearly those drugs are messing with the results. I decide to sleep for a while and test again later. Aaron goes to church, I meet him for lunch, we go to an open house that is three times what we can afford and is also the most perfect house I have ever seen. We swing by Target. I test again.

Positive.

I start googling things like ‘what causes a false positive pregnancy test?’ and ‘does Nyquil affect pregnancy test results?’ Turns out false positives only happen less than 1% of the time, and it is almost always due to factors that weren’t present in my case. But I still knew it was happening to me.

We decide to err on the side of ‘cautiously optimistic’ and test again on Monday. If we got a third plus sign, I call the doctor.

Test three. Definitely positive. Go to the doctor. Still positive.

We’re having a baby, y’all. What the heck.

I do the announcements in church every Sunday. Yesterday morning I was talking about a father-son campout that’s coming up. I gave all the relevant details and was saying something like “so bring your tents, sleeping bags, flashlights…” The plan was to make a joke about how I don’t know anything about camping or what the supplies are.

I was thinking about those hard hats with the lights on them, like miners wear, and I started to say the word ‘helmet’. (I realize at this point that you don’t need a miner’s hat OR a helmet to camp, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. As you will see.) But then my brain told me to stop saying that because it didn’t make sense, and then I just said “I don’t know”.

And that’s the story of how, in front of 500 people, the youth pastor of GracePointe Church said “so bring your tents, sleeping bags, flashlights… hell, I don’t know.”

Like the rest of America, I made a resolution of sorts at the beginning of the year to lose weight. The fall was hard on me, and I spent a lot of time stressing and eating whatever I wanted because I was tired and it made me feel better. Then Christmas came and it was awesome and also full of my mom’s chocolate dipped peanut butter crackers and Whataburger and Taco Cabana and La Madeleine. Something had to be done.

There’s a church a couple of streets over that has a Christian Recreation Center. I don’t know what makes it Christian, exactly, but if a treadmill and a few free weights are capable of a relationship with Jesus, then those are the machines and weights I want to be using. Surely they make your workout extra blessed, right? Your crunches are super holy?

Either way, we joined. Mostly for the spiritual rewards, of course, because it is where Jesus would work out (WWJWW bracelets, anyone?), but also because it only costs NINE DOLLARS A MONTH. We can walk to it and it costs nine dollars a month. Clearly it is anointed.

Also, it is awesome. As our neighborhood (and I’m sure the population of the church) is 99% retired, we are the youngest people in the place by about sixty years. Add to that the fact that our schedules allow us to go in the middle of the day and going to the gym is about the most fun there is to be had in our part of town. It is full of the most awesome people and it is such a blast to go that I almost forget how much the glute burn mode on the elliptical hurts. Almost.

My two favorites are Sue and Tommy. I think Sue is about 90, in both years and pounds, and she rocks that place like there is no tomorrow. The big draw for most of the patrons is the indoor walking track, and Sue is the queen of the walkers. After she does her laps she comes bursting into the workout room like a crazy person and does everything available in the room for about thirty seconds at a time. Ten crunches on the ab rocker thing. Five each of all the weight machine options. A couple of spins on the bike. Four bicep curls. And the whole time, she is talking to you like you’re hard of hearing and dumb as a bag of hammers. I want her to be my best friend.

Tommy is younger, maybe in his 70s, and if you put four of Sue together you might be close to Tommy’s size. He pulls an oxygen tank around and talks to me about the same four things every day: the weather (so cold! so warm! so rainy!), where my husband is (we have to take turns coming in because there’s only one elliptical), why I’m late (apparently we have a schedule to keep) and how I better hurry before he gets on the machine first (he can barely walk). He is the nicest guy in the world.

It is so, so hard to get motivated to work out. I’d like to think I’d be able to keep this up on my own. I’ve been tracking my calories with an awesome app on my phone, so I know exactly how my workouts affect what I can eat, and I like to eat, so I work out to free up some calories. Maybe that would be enough motivation. But I am so thankful for Sue and Tommy and everyone else at our little gym. They notice when I don’t show, and they ask why. They are old and loud and nosy and crazy and they bring me so much joy. Regardless of weight loss, having that place and those people is definitely making me healthier and happier.

We’ve gone to the Behold the Lamb of God show in Nashville every year of our marriage. We were there at the Belcourt, we were there the year Sean and Sara Watkins performed, we’ve heard Pierce Pettis sing “Miriam” more times than we would care to admit. It is hands down my favorite thing we do in Nashville for the holidays.

And this year we can’t go.

We were already considering not going for financial reasons; the tickets seem really pricey this year and we are in serious budget mode. Then I realized I will already be in Texas for Christmas on that day so we definitely would not be able to swing it. Sad. I was even considering driving the hour and a half to Corsicana, TX, by myself just to make sure I get to see the show.

And then the heavens opened up and grace rained down.

Andrew Peterson retweeted this guy at about 5:00 this afternoon. I have never been so happy at 5:00 on a Wednesday afternoon, I am pretty darn sure.

Aaron and I booked it over to the church and found great seats. And, oh, it was wonderful. That show and those songs have become such a calming thing in my life. As we sat there in that dark sanctuary I could literally feel the stress falling off of me. Gabe Scott and his dulcimer, Ben Shive and his accordion, funky percussion and a gorgeous cello and so. many. guitars. I cried at all my usual moments: when they played the instrumental O Come Emmanuel, at the line “behold our broken hearts”, during the big “sooooo sing out with joy for the brave little boy” moment in the reprise, when the crowd sings the Doxology at the end.

It’s just all so beautiful and thoughtful and moving. It hurts me, it’s so good.

I know I talk about how much I love Nashville a lot. Maybe too much. But, you guys, I really love Nashville. Sometimes I think this city was tailor made for me. We’ve had a pretty tough go of it this year. I’d kind of written it off, thinking I could just hide out in Texas for the last couple of weeks and get a fresh start in January. But something in the show tonight gave me hope. Hope for the Christmas season this year. Hope that all the weird stuff that’s gone down this year will be redeemed.

I’m thankful to live in a place where there are free dress rehearsals of albums I love by artists I love full of songs that are so meaningful to me that I can attend on a moment’s notice. So thanks, Andrew Peterson. Thanks, Christ Community. And thanks, Nashville.

Sweet tea. Gilmore Girls reruns. Sparkly pipe cleaners. Angry Birds on Aaron’s phone. Avett Brothers live albums. Boots. Our Nashville people. Messenger bags. Our newly rearranged bedroom. Sisters who mail you slippers. Our neighbor who grows crops in his front yard. The funniest youth group on the planet. Being 30.

Grey nail polish. Stacks of magazines. Mawmaw’s chocolate pie. TOMS. Elton John on vinyl. Playing Scabble online with my dad. Burt’s Bees lip gloss. Memories of Miles. Naps. Purple ink pens. Friday Night Lights. Friends across the street. Twitter. A church where you can ask questions and be unsure and fit in anyway. Rolos.

Harry Potter. Car dancing. Clementines. Adults who love teenagers. Hot pink watches. Gel eyeliner. Work friends. Mexican street tacos. Orange tank tops. Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. Friends you’ve had for 25 years. Procrastination. Shopping on the phone with my mom.

Family in all its forms. Taking risks. Choosing to take care of yourself. The unknown. Safe places. The best husband I ever had.

Despite all the stress and drama around this place lately, there are some good things going on. The leaves are changing colors, there’s a chill in the air, I have some fun new boots. December magazines are coming out, full of gift guides and pretty things and recipes containing things like peppermint and cinnamon and cranberries.

But the best thing? Oh, the best thing comes along every Wednesday night. Which is a little bit confusing, I know, because the best thing is called FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS.

Oh, you guys. YOU GUYS. I won’t spoil anything for you non Directv people, I promise. But we are three episodes into the season and I have cried my eyes out multiple times. This show is intense. You just care so much about the characters. You want them to succeed. You want to protect them from the bad things you can see coming that they are missing completely. It’s kind of like working with teenagers in real life.

I don’t know if you can be overly attached to a tv show. I’m sure you can. Maybe we have some kind of serious problem that we would address if only we weren’t so busy cheering on the East Dillon Lions.

I have had a really stressful few weeks. I put myself out there for something that I thought I could be great and was summarily shut down. We are facing a holiday season with no income to speak of. Several major personal and family issues have just been beating me down. It’s been harder and harder to remember how much I love what I do when it comes along with so much drama and insecurity and stress on the business side.

But there have been good things, too, especially on the side of my job that I do love so much. You know, the youth side. I work with truly amazing kids and parents and volunteers, and today I need to document that.

Like when a new family comes for the first time to a Monday night youth group because they saw us sitting together in service yesterday and liked how we looked like a big family.

Or when I get to sit with a group of awesome parents and discuss dating and sexuality and the emphasis is not on rules or limits or fear, but on how to keep communication open and how to raise kids who are sexually healthy and how to deal with the shame issue as much or not more than the sin issue.

Or when a kid who, when he first showed up two years ago, was so shy and closed off and uninterested that he literally would not speak, is now so invested that when he tells us in class that he’s moving away the kids start crying right there on the spot.

Or when my junior high girls see a new girl who is having a hard time breaking out of her shell and connecting and go out of their way to include her and make her feel welcome and basically force her to be a part of the group, and now she is calling around looking for rides to youth group to make sure she doesn’t miss it.

Or when a small group leader, who has been so frustrated this fall with the chaos and insanity in his group that he has seriously considered quitting, has one of those nights where the kids open up and cry and lean on each other and share their pain and their stories, and he finally understands how all that seemingly meaningless chaos and insanity was actually building trust and community and that he wouldn’t have had that night if the chaos hadn’t come before it.

These are the things that matter. That really, really matter. Not petty arguments and bruised egos and old grudges. Those things hurt, and they need to be dealt with, and while they may be small individually they weigh an awful lot when they’re all stacked up together. There are definitely days when they feel too heavy to keep holding up, even if it means you get to have the job you have. But then there are days like today. I am thankful for days like today.

This is my last Avett related post for a while. I promise. It’s just so hard to contain the awesome, you guys.

We were all over it when tickets for the Avett Brothers at the Ryman went on sale this summer. They were playing two consecutive shows, so we paired up with our friends Scott and Becka to tackle the Ticketmaster monster the morning of the sale. They were looking at Friday night, we were looking at Saturday, and we would buy whichever night gave us the best seats.

We were not prepared for the part where we both got great seats. What option did we have? We had to buy them both.

Scott and Becka and I have a lot of overlapping music taste – they are the ones I see Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers shows with. It’s not generally music that Aaron is on board with. But we all love the Avett Brothers with an equal amount of passion and obsession, so we had to take advantage.

The first show was opened by Chuck Mead, who was the singer/songwriter of BR549. I don’t know anything about them, or him, but I know a lot of people take them both very seriously. I am not one of those people. He played FOREVER, first of all, and every song sounded exactly the same. It was like we were at Six Flags and decided to go to the Nashville Country Show to get out of the sun for a few minutes. Not a fan.

But the second show? Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. Grace Potter is straight up my hero. She is a total rockstar badass Stevie Nicks redux funky bluesy ball of awesome. She blew my socks off. Or would have, if I’d been wearing any.

I honestly had no idea what we were in for. I knew how much I loved the music. I’d been studying up on the deep tracks to make sure I would know all the songs. I knew they were known for really energetic shows.

But I had no idea how fantastic it was going to be. They opened the first show with their current single, Head Full of Doubt, and the place went NUTS. Everyone sang every word, on their feet, to the ENTIRE SHOW. I’ve never seen anything like it.

The high energy songs were amazing. The four of them stand in a single row at the front of the stage, the two brothers alternating between piano, guitar and banjo (while also playing kick drum and hi-hat with their feet), while the other two play bass and cello and dance around like nobody’s business. Have you ever seen a guy jump up and down and spin in circles while also playing a beautiful cello solo? It’s incredible.

But, oh, you guys. The slow ones. We’ve seen a lot of shows at the Ryman, but I have never seen a crowd go from jumping and dancing to standing still so quickly. It’s enthralling.

I had a mental list of the songs I was hoping they’d do, and over the course of the two shows I heard most of them. (No “Ballad of Love and Hate”, though, which was a big letdown.) Highlights included: Paranoia in B Major, Distraction #74, Living of Love, All My Mistakes (the song God Bless the Broken Road wishes it could be), The Fall, Laundry Room, And It Spread (one of the greatest crowd sing-a-long moments I have ever been a part of), Three S’s. My long shot was a song called “Colorshow”, which is on the Four Thieves record and that I have listened to on repeat for weeks at a time. It’s dark and messy and opens with one of my favorite Avett lines – “Be loud, let your color show, try to keep the madness low” – and ends with a loud kick-drummy chorus of “And I’m done forever, it’s you and me forever / Cause I’m done forever, see it’s you and me forever” and I just love it so much. And they played it TWICE. BOTH SHOWS. Just kill me dead, it was so great.

The shows were Halloween weekend, so there were lots of people in costume. The problem with the crowd that an Avett show draws is that it’s hard to tell if people are dressed up or not. A friend tipped us off to a game he calls “Hipster or Halloween?”, and we played several rounds over the course of both nights. For example: a kid is wearing jeans and a hoodie, but he is also wearing cowboy boots and a coonskin cap. Hipster or Halloween?

There were some great costumes, too. A guy dressed like the “Opulence. I HAS IT.” guy from the Directv commercial, complete with tiny giraffe on a pillow. Crazy Joaquin Phoenix. Space Ghost. Two Waldos were sitting together when a third Waldo came along and sat on their same row.

On the second night, while they were setting the stage after Grace Potter, Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” came on the speakers. By the end of the first chorus the ENTIRE PLACE was singing along at the top of their lungs. Space Ghost stood up and directed us like a choir for a while before busting out his best breakdancing moves. It was a perfect moment.

(I found this video when I was looking for the one below. So awesome.)

The first night had a very simple stage setup, basically consisting of instruments and a giant stripey backdrop. So we were pretty surprised when the curtain came up on the second night to reveal a haunted graveyard. There was smoke, there was thunder and lightening, there were creepy birds and tombstones. Then Bach’s Toccata started and they came walking out on stage, stumbling around with their hands ahead of them, DRESSED LIKE MUMMIES. Then they played the whole show dressed like that. It was insane and hilarious and awesome.

Here’s a video of the mummy entrance and the first song of the night. It really captures the feel of the show and the enthusiasm of the crowd. (Skip ahead a couple of minutes to get to the good stuff.) I am not kidding when I say I’ve never experienced anything like it. They were fantastic, the crowd was super into it, everything was perfect. I could have easily sat there for two more hours each night and listened to them play every single song they have. It was incredible.

My apologies to those of you I am friends with on twitter or facebook. I realize that it’s been very Avett-licious the past week or so. But, you guys, I can’t help it. I am in love with them. I promise this is the next to last post about them, though. For a while anyway.

1. Distraction #74
My favorite part of this song is right at the end when the three of them trade off every couple of words on the verse. And the line “I’m as true as I try to be”.

2. Laundry Room
This song perfectly captures how it feels to be with someone in the beginning. And it has a sweet bluegrass breakdown right in the middle.

3. Murder in the City
This one is Aaron’s favorite. I love the line “always remember there was nothing worth sharing like the love that let us share our name”. Such a beautiful picture.

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