2018 Reflections

And just like that, 2018 has come to a close.

Oh friends, what a year this has been. For me, it has been one of the best years of my life, and yet I know that for others, it may have been the most painful. Before I go on, I want to acknowledge that. If there is anything that infertility has taught me, it’s that perspective+empathy is a winning combination for tact and compassion. I know I’m not perfectly tactful all the time, and not perfectly compassionate, but I hope that I’ve become better at it. I have been on the side of doling out grace (as we all have!) when people do and say tactless things. Thoughtless things. When they unknowingly (or knowingly) broach a subject that will illicit hurt. I try to remember the perspective I’ve gained, and try to be gentler with my words. I write a little less adamantly these days, because I think fewer opinions are black and white.

Don’t get me wrong, I still have an awful lot of opinions… haha!

But I guess the path of two years of infertility, followed by the birth of our precious baby boy, has taught me to be a little kinder, a little more guarded, and yet be willing to open up when the moment and people are right.

Receiving messages from readers and followers who have been touched by infertility, or motherhood topics, or are traveling to Iceland, or love Bernese Mountain Dogs, continues to be my favorite part of having this little space online. I love connecting with people and I hope my words offer hope or guidance or even just a good story. As I looked over a couple messages I received over the last month, I read one to Tom and said, “You know, sometimes I just want to close up shop, and let blogging end here while I stay at home with Silas. But it’s these messages that make it worth it. I know I have people who read and never reach out, and that’s okay… but it sure would encourage me to keep going if this happened more regularly!” and we laughed and that’s when I decided to dust off my editing page again.

I really hope those of you out there, who still bother to come by this little space, enjoy the far and in-between writings of this Tennessee momma. In the new year, I plan on making Joy Lynn a place I come back to regularly again. Though I must admit, the last seven and a half months with my boy have been absolutely blissful. Tiring. But blissful. All that to say - please reach out if the mood strikes. I promise I don’t bite! Message me on Instagram, Facebook, or email me here.

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Now, on to reflections of this year:

As you can guess, it was one that was overwhelmingly baby-focused. As I was rocking my not-so-little 19lb baby to sleep, tonight, I hugged him tightly, and realized how quickly it all goes. I realized this is the last night I would lay down my baby in the year he was born. In the year I became a momma. (Can you tell I’ve become a giant sap since becoming a mother?! haha). Though, I’m so looking forward to 2019 and enjoying the spring and summer with a toddler instead of a newborn.

This year, I’ve learned that…

• no good comes of comparing your parenting choices with someone else’s.

• all babies are different.

• with a new baby, comes a new level of communication with your spouse.

• you have got to have a sense of humor for every stage and season of life or you’ll go crazy and be miserable.

• overly serious people are not our kind of people .

• Hondo’s Instagram is so extra… it’s our favorite thing.

• you really do know your baby and the less you doubt that, the happier you’ll all be.

• breastfeeding is incredible, but also REALLY time consuming. Pretty sure it’s been my full-time job the last 7+ months.

• hobbies matter! My baking and photography are getting picked up more often and I’m so glad for it.

• marriage after a baby is pretty awesome.

• making time for yourself as not just a mom, but an individual, is important, but sometimes hard to come by. You gotta be creative!

• finding a baby carrier you love makes a huuuuuge difference.

• traveling with a baby is not pleasant.

• even though so much has changed, Tom and I still bring on the sass and it cracks us up on the daily.

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There’s not much more I can really say to reflect on this year, besides reiterating how extraordinarily blessed we feel. Tom and I literally fight over whose turn it is to hold Silas on the regular and that alone probably sums up our feels as new parents. We’re a couple of saps, and we have no shame about it. We are completely smitten.

We are so grateful for God’s grace and forgiveness and promise of salvation, we are grateful for our Silas boy (and Hondo!), and we are grateful for one another. If we walked into 2019 with nothing else, we would be as richly blessed.

Happy New Year, my friends.

And thank YOU all for continuing to drop in even while I’ve been taking this time. I love interacting with you on Instagram, and if you have any topics in the meantime that you’d like me to take on in 2019 PLEASE DON’T BE SHY! Would you like me to review anything? Bake anything? Compare any products? Write about Nashville? See more house posts or photos? Minimalism? Marriage topics? Hondo guest posts? (haha kidding) Monthly updates? Favorite products lately? Come on - lemme hear it! It’ll help me get the ball rolling! :)

As always, much love,

Joy

Go Home

This is a post I’ve wanted to write for years, but haven’t at the risk of sounding whiney.

Let me preface this a bit.

Tom and I met and married in Wisconsin and lived there for two years after getting married. But then we were ready for an adventure. “Anywhere but here syndrome” they call it, I think. We were ready for a change and were in stagnant jobs that we wanted to leave. We job hunted online all over the country, and whenever we’d see something in Atlanta, we’d look at each other to gauge our thoughts on it. We’d pause, scrunch up our noses and say, “nah.”

Low and behold, though, that’s where we landed. Tom was offered a job with a salary nearly as much as we had been making combined. So we figured why not! And honestly, we still never regret making the move to Atlanta because it truly furthered Tom’s career into what he is doing and loving now, and I got to explore work-from-home life. It was a good move. When we announced our move, all sorts of people came out of the woodwork and mentioned their times living in The ATL and how much they loved it. We were a little skeptical, but we believed them.

But we hated Atlanta.

I’m finally coming clean and I don’t feel bad when I admit it, now!

It had its bits and pieces, don’t get me wrong.

• We loved our church home… but it took 40 minutes to get there. If there was no traffic.

• We loved the few people we really got to know.

• We got Hondo in Georgia!

• I got pregnant in Georgia!

• We discovered Indian food, and never had to go far when a craving struck.

• We loved the outdoor mall where we could take Hondo into every store.

• It was nice having an IKEA around.

• We learned to appreciate the long spring and fall seasons that met briefly in the middle with about a week of “winter.”

• We were able to visit Savannah, Hilton Head, Tybee, Asheville, Blue Ridge, and more…

But we were also battling all the emotions and doctors appointments that went along with two hard years of infertility, in Georgia. We rarely went into the city because traffic always made it a whole ordeal. There were far too many chain restaurants and almost no coffee roasteries. It was crowded, people were not indistinguishably friendly, and meeting people with common interests was very hard because of its melting-pot nature (which was sometimes really cool, but no one who lived there was usually FROM there).

I talk about lessons learned here, right? Well this was one of them.

Moves like that stretch you. They build a little character. They help you learn more about yourself (and maybe your marriage too).

Basically, what I’m getting at is, try to see the positive in everything. The silver lining. Trust in God. But when it comes down to it, you don’t have to live somewhere you hate forever. MOVE. FIND YOUR HOME!

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Atlanta did not suit us. Not at all. So when the opportunity to move to Nashville came about we were ecstatic. Atlanta was simply a stepping stone for us, but I am really, REALLY glad to be “home” in Nashville. We are still loving it more every day. Will we always love Nashville? Who knows. But I can tell you one thing: we already feel far more rooted in the community here than we ever did in 3+ years in Atlanta.

• We love going into the city.

• Target is right up the road. (priorities)

• We still get a lot of visitors!

• There is snow in the winter! (This is a positive to me)

• Tom can get to and from work far quicker than he was ever able to before.

• I’m not afraid to drive here.

• I was able to have my actual OB deliver my baby instead of having the on-call doctor (that would have been the case in Georgia).

• The coffee and food scene is amazing!

• I weirdly have more pride in living in Nashville than I ever did in Atlanta.

It feels like home, and you don’t really realize how priceless that is until you leave a place that does NOT feel like home.

I guess I’m just writing this one to stay.. it’s okay. It’s okay if you don’t like where you live. It’s valid, even. But don’t fixate on it. Make the best of it… but don’t be afraid to just pull the trigger and leave after a short time if you think that’s best. We thought (after buying our house there) that we’d be there for at least another 5 years. Two years after we said that, we were burning rubber on our way to Nashville. You can make a change and you can move if you’re unhappy! I think so many people think about the what-ifs and the risks so much that they put off a great decision far longer than they need to. I guess I’m just writing this post to encourage you not to stay somewhere that makes you unhappy.

I haven’t written a super ramble-y post like this in a while! Haha frankly, I haven’t been writing at ALL lately, so sorry if it’s all over the place. Sometimes I miss those old “diary days” of blogging, ya know? Anyways. All that to say….

I’m really glad we live in Nashville. It’s been a good 3+ years since we’ve felt this happy where we live, and I’m just excited to say that.

What We Didn't Picture

From relatively young ages, we all start to picture our futures. What we want to be when we grow up, what kind of person we'll marry, where we'll live, the places we want to see, the kids we'll have, the house we'll live in, the lifestyle we'll follow, and so on. 

In college, that picture of our future starts to come within reach. We study fields we want careers in, maybe we meet our spouses, and the timeline of the next distinctive season of our lives seems to clarify. 

I remember spending many a night throughout those fours years with my girlfriends (and even good guy friends) talking about our hopes and fears and expectations of life beyond the brick walls of that cold Wisconsin campus. As in the years prior, they were visions of jobs, spouses, children, places, and impacts we'd make in the lives of others. It was exciting and scary, but I'm still grateful that it was in an environment that urged prayer and devotion with one another.

I'm grateful because those prayers and moments in God's Word together, brought us increasingly closer and have helped each of us along in life's challenges today. A friend recently reminded me of the things we seemed to gloss over in our thoughts as we dreamed of our futures. 

Because you see, what we failed to picture in our futures were the heartaches. The hard marriage seasons or divorce, the infertility, the loss of a child, spouse or other loved ones, the miscarriages, the financial burdens, the job layoffs, the loneliness, the anxiety or depression, the hard adjustments, the illnesses, the accidents, or anything else that falls under devastation and heartache. It was in that safe bubble of college dreaming that we visualized the happiness. I wouldn't trade that time or even go back and warn myself and my friends, because it was a place of innocence and joy. I think back on it fondly.

Now, however, the reality of those sweet timelines and plans have begun to set in. We do see the heartache and we have no choice but to face it. It's not all a grim view, of course, but with that picture perfect vision slowly morphing into one with sad seasons, you can't help but mourn the vision you once had.

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Yet, it's how we face these challenges that will determine the outcome of our lives. In our marriage, we face trials head-on. We don't sugar-coat, and we lean heavily on the Lord. We see the struggles and sad seasons of our friends and we pray, offer a listening ear, support, and love them. We have learned how little we really know about the trials of those around us, how very little we actually control, and how blind we are to the heartaches.

But when we open up and let the people we love in, we create a safe place of vulnerability and honesty. A place where you hear "me too" or "how can I help you?" A place where you can face reality with the strength of many, instead of baring it alone amidst the everyday routine. A place where active prayer and God's Word are shared to remind you you're never alone and His plan is best... even when it's hard to accept it in the present.

Maybe the fantasized picture of our lives would have been the easiest or most ideal by our standards, but isn't it the hard things that stretch us and teach us and bring us new perspectives and understanding? It's a hard lesson, learning to be grateful for the tough stuff, but it's important.

You learn that even when you feel like you're about to fall apart, you don't. You're stronger than you realize. You learn to be grateful for the seasons of peace and quiet. You learn to value the little things, the little victories, and the people who are most important. The very things we didn't picture are the things that give us purpose and help us relate to others who are stumbling through the same storms. Sometimes it's God's way of bringing people together and teaching us humility, mercy, forgiveness, and grace.

How will you face the challenges you never pictured? Who will you ride out these storms with?

For me, it will be Christ. He is my rock, and he is the rock of my marriage and many of my friendships. I will face the trials I never pictured all those years ago, and take from them new perspectives and a kinder outlook. I'll choose (though I'll fail to do so many times) to trust His plan and be a witness of His grace and love. I'll work to be a shoulder for those who need it, and try to offer the same peace He gives to me.

Our trials can make or break us. What we didn't picture can help us grow, or crush us to pieces. Join me in letting others in, and allowing life's ebbs and flows to strengthen you to become a beacon of hope and solid confidence for those who need it.

And maybe by doing so, we'll see the incredible picture He had in store for us all along. We'll revel in the outcome and be grateful for the journey that got us there. Regardless of reality, I know that I'll spend eternity with Him. Today, I'm thankful for what I didn't picture. Are you?