The Holidays

Well, it’s been a minute! All of you who get antsy, remember: no news is good news in the medical journal. As for the travel journal, it’s the opposite! Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year. We had a great lead-up to Christmas week and were able to enjoy living in Nashville for the holidays. 

In the week prior to Christmas, we went to a For King and Country Drummer Boy concert at the Opry. Then, on the Sunday before Christmas, we went to a Michael W Smith Christmas concert with a huge orchestra and choir. Both were excellent shows and really set the stage for a great Christmas week. We also took Tank out with us multiple times on Christmas light “tours.”

Leading up to all of that, Amanda had been having issues with her hip. So bad that she had to go back to using her walker, which she hadn’t been using since my arrival in early December. After a week or so of it bothering her really badly, we were at the orthopedic doctor for a follow-up on her knee. Amanda mentioned the hip issue, and he quickly sent her back for an X-ray. Everything was fine and no bone issues. He chalked it up to muscle atrophy, which seems to be everyone’s answer for issues after a lengthy hospital stay. 

I thought it would be good for her to see a chiropractor. I had two where I’d been going that I deemed acceptable enough for Amanda to go to, one more so than the other. We saw the better one, and he concurred with PT that the issue was her hip flexor. After an adjustment, she was already walking better and more so the next day. Weekly adjustments have helped her to get better and better, and now, thinking about it, I’m not sure if she used the walker much after that first adjustment. 

If you know me, you know I like a good plan, so I was itching to get one to go home. I settled on going back at the end of January, but I was still not sure. I was hoping Amanda would be able to go with me for a bit while we wait her stubborn kidneys out. We’d been waiting for more info on home dialysis, and finally, I told Amanda she needed to push a bit on it. She talked to them a little more, and we got an appointment with the at-home guy. There are two types: you can do one every day, and the other multiple times a week, as she does now. We opted for the everyday, which is easier on the body, but required a different port. The issue then lay in the port; it took two weeks to heal, then they wanted her to stay under their care for a month. So, Amanda getting to come home with me in late January was shot down, and she’d need to stay a little longer. 

We were able to meet with a friend who has been a big supporter and prayer warrior of ours. Amanda used to be active in a few pacemaker groups in the pre-Facebook era, on blogs and different websites. That’s how she met our local friend Bev, as well as Jenny from the Houston area, who came up to stay with her while I was gone. There are many others Amanda has become friends with around the globe. Beckie is from the Pacific Northwest and was near Knoxville with her husband, helping her daughter and son-in-law while they were in the area. They were here for an extended period, and we were able to meet them halfway and have a long lunch. It was good to meet them in person, finally. Amanda has met a few of her ‘heart’ friends, as we call them. We look forward to meeting more ‘heart’ friends as we travel more once Amanda gets back on her feet.

It’s been a crazy ride over the last year. Late December, I saw a year-old Facebook memory of Zoey, our dog, whom I had to put down while Amanda was in the hospital. It seems like so long ago, and it seemed we’d lived, and I’m sure I’ve aged five years since then! That was a terrible time, and I thought of how much we’ve endured since then. How many hospital nights we’ve had, relocations we’ve made, too many complications to count. Yet, God has brought us through it all. 

In keeping with our usual Christmas tradition, we made some baskets to give to local friends. We usually give our baskets to friends with about a dozen or so homemade items, from chips and salsa to bread and cookies. It’s a tradition that takes a lot of work and organization. At first, Amanda didn’t want to do it, but I eventually talked her into it. It did take a good bit of work and a lot of Hobby Lobby shopping to get all the right things to put the basket together. Including a new addition this year, a gnome-topped jar that we used for the salsa! I made the salsa from scavenged peppers from the Mexican mercados in the ghetto! It was fun being the only white boy walking about with a basket full of “international” ingredients! What is a normal pepper in a Texas HEB grocery store is a hard find in Nashville, Tennessee. I roasted the peppers on the grill by the pool and also spent an afternoon smoking pork tenderloins along with some cheddar and cream cheese. I have multiple traditional wood smokers back home, so it was a curveball to smoke anything on a gas grill, much less the cheese. I persevered and got it done, though. We did make it to a young adults’ church party, where we took said cookies and salsa with homemade chips shaped like gingerbread men and snowflakes. The effort of homemade salsa and cookie-cutter chips didn’t hit as hard as it would have with an older crowd. One of the husbands said, “Look, little men eating a chip,” to which his wife scorned him, saying, “Those are gingerbread men!”

Christmas Eve, we didn’t forget our usual tradition of a puppy pupappuccino and Christmas present picking trip. We always take the pups on a run to Starbucks for a pup cup, Chick-fil-A nuggets, and to a pet store for them to pick out toys and snacks. We went to get nugs first, but it was early and breakfast time. So, Tank got chicken mini instead; he didn’t seem to mind the difference, though! Since he was hanging out the window and all up in their business, he got a pup cup from there, too. Then it was to the pet store. Tank isn’t much of a play with a toy dog, weird, I know. But he loves him some treats, so he ended up picking some lamb lung tips. The cashier gave him a good boy beef strip, too. Then Amanda and I wanted breakfast, so we went to get a taste of home from a new Whataburger in Brentwood. They loved Tank’s cute face and ended up giving him a pup cup filled not only with whipped cream but also with ice cream. Needless to say, we skipped his StarBs pup cup run after all of that! Then we took him to Woof Gang Bakery and Grooming to pick up a few treats. He was a tired boy and needed a nap after that outing!

For Christmas Day, we had an invitation to the interim pastor’s house for a brunch. We weren’t sure about going since we had company coming in on Christmas Eve night, but they welcomed us all. Ryder, one of my old youth group students whom Amanda and I would claim as our own if we weren’t such good friends with his parents, was coming up to stay with us for Christmas. He arrived just after the Christmas Eve candlelit service at church, which is relatively early, 5 pm, compared to what we were used to, since it gets dark so early around here. He was just in time for our traditional Christmas Eve crab leg dinner, though!

On Christmas, we all opened some presents. We put all of Tank’s goodies under the tree for him to find, along with a truck full of goodies for Ryder, as well. Around lunchtime, we all went to Tim and Becca’s home for brunch. Tim is one of the worship leaders who stepped up as the interim pastor at our church home away from home. I started going around the time he began preaching. He was also a professor at Belmont University, close to Vanderbilt. He’d just quit that, so his main bread and butter is from his YouTube channel, where he reviews bibles. Mostly premium bibles, a new world has been unveiled to me through following his channel and reading his book, Bible Translations for Everyone. I have since bought a good many books, many during Black Friday sales. He ran a 12 Days of Christmas giveaway, giving away multiple premium Bibles each day. I participated every day, commenting on all platforms from YouTube to FB, to the Gram each day of the giveaway. My persistence paid off, I won a premium bible, a calfskin ESV Heirloom Bible, Gloria Dei. It is the nicest Bible I’ve ever held in my hands and has made me a fanboy of premium Bibles, for sure! Amanda was jelly belly after she didn’t win one, too, though.

After we were at Tim and Becca’s home, it wasn’t long before I was presented with the Bible, new in the box with wrapping still on it. After chatting and getting to know each other better, swapping in-the-trenches ministry stories, and having a great brunch. Tim asked if we wanted to see the “Bible room,” his studio where he records his videos. It was upstairs, so Amanda held back to preserve her knee function for the day. Ryder and I were in tow to see the said room, though. This man has more Bibles than I’ve ever seen in one place, more than the Christian bookstores of the old days! After showing us around and letting us flip through some really nice premium Bibles. It wasn’t long before he told Ryder, “I can’t let you leave the Bible room without a Bible.” He asked what translation he wanted or what he was looking for. Ryder, being the old soul he is, wasn’t interested in a $300 premium Bible and wanted a “simple Bible,” he said. He still ended up with a nice Buffalo Skin ESV study Bible. Ryder also left with a bible translation bookmark, Tim’s Bible translations book, and his new Daily Scripture Guidebook! To find out more than you ever thought you needed to know on bibles, follow Tim on his YouTube Channel or check him out on Facebook or Instagram. Or just Google Bible and Tim Wildsmith, and his website will pop up!

I’d jokingly told Tim earlier in the day that Amanda was butt-hurt she didn’t win a bible. He had mentioned something to the tune of we’ll have to fix that, but I didn’t catch it. Before we left his studio, he had me pick out a Bible for her, as well. I narrowed it down to a couple. I knew she’d want a personal-sized one for the pulpit when she was back to leading worship. We took my choices down for Amanda to investigate. She is indecisive; I knew it would take her a minute to decide. I’d lined it up for her to get a premium She Reads Truth Bible for Christmas from her brother, who is always asking what to get her. So, when I saw one on a black Friday sale, I was preemptive and beat him to the punch this year, sending him the link. He shipped it to the apartment, and I even wrapped it to Amanda’s standards! Becca had the same Bible, so she went to get hers so Amanda could see the color against the ones she was choosing between to see which matched better. Amanda settled on a complementary green to her other new Bible and is now starting a green Bible collection. Of course, premium green Bibles aren’t the easiest to come by and are expensive; leave it to Amanda to even be Bible bougie. She’s made me bougie with some things, and now that I’ve developed an affinity for premium bibles, that bougieness rubbed off on her! 

We all left with Bibles in hand, saying we’d just been to the Bible Santa’s house! Tim and Becca are my age, they’ve been in the ministry a while, and they have no children besides Louie, their rescue dog, whom they adore. We have a lot in common with them, and I imagine that won’t be the last time we share a good time and a meal with either of them. If that was one extreme of Christmas, then our evening meal and company were the other. We had been invited to dinner with Joel, my interior designer friend, and his partner. He hosts a Christmas lunch where friends who don’t have families to spend the holidays with can go to his place. He’d invited us, but we already had plans to go to Tim and Becca’s, so he invited us to dinner at a Thai place where they knew the owners. We had planned just to go all Christmas Story and eat Chinese anyway, so it worked out. It was good to hang out with them and have some good Thai curry. To say the least, it was from one extreme to the other, from Tim and Becca’s lunch to dinner with Joel and Hong! I like having a collection of friends from all walks of life whom God has placed in our lives to bless us. The longer we’re here, the more I realize Nashville is all about connections, and boy, have we made some here.

The day after Christmas, Ryder was up reading his new Bible he’d gotten from Bible Santa! We were waiting for the arrival of our good friends and their parents, Nathan and Kim, along with his siblings Kynley and Holten. They had left Texas Christmas Day and stayed the night in Memphis, and we were planning to meet them for lunch. You know you have great friends when they come 1000 miles to see you for Christmas. We had lunch with them, then Amanda had to go to dialysis. I went home and started working on dinner. We’d planned to have Christmas dinner with them. I’d picked up a great deal on a small rib roast from a local grocery store. So we had prime rib, along with butternut squash soup, stuffed baked potatoes, asparagus, some honey wheat bread Amanda made, and a custard pie for dessert. Last time they were up, Amanda was barely coherent, so it was great to catch up with them and just hang out. 

The following day, Amanda wanted to take Kim to the store where the prayer room was, as Brittany had mentioned in her post. We all shopped around, then the girls went in the prayer room. It was a moving experience for them. A lady who worked there came in and ended up praying with them for a while. Nathan and I were standing outside, and a lady came in front of us with mouth dropped, looking at Kim, Amanda, and the lady praying. I was confused, then I heard her say, “Does that lady work here?” It seemed foreign to her that someone would pray in public like that, muchless someone who worked there. That shop has a feeling about it, and whether they know it or not, they have a ministry there. Much like my friend at the cleaners, who likes to speak boldly about Jesus and hands out heartfelt hugs like they are candy. Little does he know how much I needed one of those hugs after a rough day in the hospital. It just goes to show we are all called to minister right where God has placed us. 

That afternoon and night, we went to Opryland, not the Opry, but the resort. It’s a massive resort with a gigantic atrium and a bunch of restaurants. It was decorated with over 5 million lights, and I think it said 15,000 poinsettias! It was pretty, but a bit busy for me. Think cruise ship, the atrium, all the walking, and not knowing where anything is, reminded me of a cruise! 

Nathan and Kim had hoped to go to Gatlinburg and had booked a cabin on a lake about halfway between there and Nashville for a couple of nights as a base. After we all went to church together, they took off that way. Though we had 70-degree Christmas here, the cold weather blew in as they went East. They never left the cabin and just hung out inside on the cold, rainy days. We did make over to hang out with them for a day. 

They had planned to come back through Nashville and stay a couple more days with us, but cut it short and ended up just making a run for Texas. Their travel plans are like a moving target, and they just go with the flow of how they feel that day. I’m so detail and plan oriented that it is almost foreign to me! I had some plans for things we could do when they came back, though, but we’ll have to put those on hold until they come back up next time!

Amanda had taken a break from PT and rehab while they were here, so that wouldn’t get in the way of anything we’d do. She wasn’t in a hurry to add those appointments back, so we took that time just to veg out and not leave the house. We’d had a few days just to hang out and do little, which is our typical MO after surgeries. So, we took advantage of the time off, and it was nice to just binge-watch some shows.

That about gets you caught up through the holidays; not much else has been going on. There is some other big news with the kidneys, but I’ll need an entire post to catch you up on that. In short, Amanda will be coming back with me to Texas soon, but she can’t stay too long. And once back here in Tennessee, she’ll be staying solo for a while, with me coming back sporadically. I’ll fill y’all in on those details in the near future.