That Sounds Fun

Picture this: you're sitting in a coffee shop on a quiet Tuesday morning, watching people hurry past the windows with their heads down, phones glued to their ears, rushing from one obligation to another. When was the last time you saw someone genuinely laughing with pure joy? When did you last experience that yourself? We live in an age of endless productivity, constant connectivity, and relentless pursuit of success, yet something essential seems to be missing from our daily experience.

The truth is, we've lost our capacity for simple, authentic fun. Not the manufactured entertainment that screens provide, not the temporary highs that shopping or drinking might offer, but the deep, soul-refreshing joy that comes from genuine connection, playful discovery, and embracing our amateur hearts. This book explores the profound difference between mere distraction and true delight, between escaping our lives and actually living them. Through personal stories of both triumph and failure, moments of breathtaking beauty and crushing disappointment, we'll discover that the pursuit of fun isn't frivolous—it's fundamental to becoming fully alive and deeply connected to both ourselves and the divine source of all joy.

There's something magical about the memory of snapping green beans on a summer evening. I can still feel the cool cement porch beneath my bare legs, hear the satisfying snap as the bean breaks into perfect pieces, smell the earthy sweetness of fresh vegetables straight from the garden. My grandmother sat beside me, her weathered hands moving with practiced ease, while my mother worked quietly on the other side. The ritual was simple, unhurried, purposeful. Each bean mattered. Each moment stretched like honey in the fading Georgia light.

Those afternoons on Ebenezer Road weren't just about preparing dinner—they were about something deeper, something I didn't have words for as a child but recognize now as Eden. Not the literal garden from Genesis, but that sense of rightness, of being exactly where you belong, of time moving slowly enough to actually inhabit your own life. In those moments, I wasn't worried about tomorrow's test or next week's drama. I wasn't performing for anyone or trying to become someone else. I was simply Annie, sitting with women I loved, doing work that mattered, in a place that felt like home.

The eighteen acres of my childhood held countless such moments. Racing sticks down the creek behind the pond, building elaborate forts in the woods, pretending to host television shows with an audience of trees. Every inch of that property was mapped in my memory, not through GPS coordinates but through joy. The grapevines where we'd play hide and seek, the pasture where fireflies danced at dusk, the barn where my grandfather once kept cattle—all of it woven together into a tapestry of belonging.

But Eden, by definition, is something we lose. My grandparents passed away, my parents sold the house, and suddenly the place that had been my north star was gone. Standing in the driveway for the last time, keys in hand, I felt the full weight of what theologians call "the fall"—that sense that something precious has been taken from us, something we can remember but can't quite reclaim. Yet here's the mystery: if we can remember Eden, even dimly, perhaps we can find our way back. Perhaps the very longing we feel is a compass pointing us home.

The word "amateur" has become an insult in our culture of expertise and professionalism. We use it to describe someone who makes mistakes, who doesn't know what they're doing, who clearly needs more training before they're ready for public consumption. But the original definition tells a different story entirely: an amateur is someone who engages in an activity for pleasure rather than profit, someone who pursues something simply because they love it. What a beautiful way to live.

I learned this lesson the hard way when I started my podcast with absolutely no idea what I was doing. I'd never conducted an interview, never edited audio, never built an audience. I bought a cheap microphone off Amazon, read one article about podcast equipment, and dove in headfirst. My first interviews were clunky, my editing was terrible, and my download numbers were embarrassingly small. By every professional standard, I was failing spectacularly.

But something magical happened in that space of not knowing. Without the pressure to be perfect, I could focus on what actually mattered—having genuine conversations with interesting people. I could ask the questions I was genuinely curious about rather than the ones I thought I was supposed to ask. I could laugh at my mistakes instead of hiding them, and somehow that transparency became the very thing that connected me with listeners. They weren't tuning in for polished perfection; they were showing up for authentic humanity.

The freedom to be an amateur extends far beyond creative pursuits. It's permission to try new things without guaranteeing success, to explore interests without monetizing them, to play without keeping score. In our LinkedIn-optimized, Instagram-curated world, we've forgotten that not everything needs to be a side hustle. Some things can just be fun. Some things can just bring us joy. And paradoxically, when we give ourselves permission to be beginners, to be awkward, to be imperfect, we often discover gifts we never knew we had. The joy isn't in the destination—it's in the courage to begin the journey at all.

I fall in love constantly, completely, and without apology. I fall in love with coffee shops and song lyrics, with strangers' laughter and the way afternoon light hits a bookstore window. I fall in love with jackets in Scottish wool shops and small-town diners that serve breakfast all day. People sometimes tell me I use the word "love" too liberally, as if there's a limited supply and I'm being wasteful with my portion. But I've learned that love isn't diminished by sharing—it's multiplied.

There was the man who ghosted me after what felt like the beginning of something beautiful. For weeks, I replayed every conversation, analyzed every text message, wondered what I'd done wrong. Friends suggested I was too intense, too quick to open my heart, too willing to say the scary word that sends people running. But sitting in that labyrinth at Onsite, looking out over rolling Tennessee hills, I made a different choice. I wasn't going to close my heart to protect it from future pain. I was going to love bigger, not smaller.

The truth is, falling in love—whether with a person, a place, or a passion—is what makes us feel most alive. It's what reminds us that we're not just surviving, we're thriving. When I walked into that tiny shop in Scotland and fell head over heels for a vintage military jacket lined with custom tweed, the shop owner saw something in my eyes that made him open his closed store and create something beautiful. When I fell in love with Lost Valley Ranch, it became the place where I learned to peel off the professional armor I didn't even know I was wearing.

Love is vulnerability with a purpose. It's choosing to be affected, to let someone or something matter enough to change you. Yes, it's dangerous. Yes, it hurts when what you love doesn't love you back, or when beautiful things come to an end. But the alternative—a carefully guarded heart that never risks, never reaches, never really lives—is so much worse. The capacity to fall in love is the capacity to be fully human. And being fully human, it turns out, is the most fun you can possibly have.

The children started calling me "Crazy Annie" when I moved to Nashville, and the nickname stuck like glue. I would show up at backyard barbecues and birthday parties, always ready to play soccer in the grass or create elaborate games involving sidewalk chalk and playground equipment. While other adults stood around making small talk with drinks in hand, I was usually on the ground building Lego towers or pushing someone on a swing. It wasn't calculated—it was instinctive. These kids brought out something in me that had been buried under years of trying to act like a proper grown-up.

What I didn't expect was how much I needed them. Being single in a world designed for couples and families can feel isolating in ways that are hard to articulate. You're not just missing romantic companionship—you're missing the daily rhythms of chosen family, the sense of being essential to someone else's story. But then Jarrett came into the world, and suddenly I understood what it meant to have someone scream your name with pure joy when you walk through the door. Then came more children, more families, more opportunities to love and be loved in return.

The Barnes family changed everything when Annie looked me in the eye and asked if I wanted to be listed as their emergency contact. It wasn't just a practical arrangement—it was an invitation into real commitment, real family. Suddenly I wasn't just the fun aunt who showed up for birthday parties. I was the person they called when life got complicated, the one who knew where they kept the spare key and which kid needed which kind of comfort after a bad day.

There's something profoundly healing about being chosen by a family, especially when traditional paths to family haven't unfolded as expected. These aren't the relationships that biology or law creates—they're the ones that love creates. They're messier and more intentional, requiring constant choice rather than assumption. But perhaps that's what makes them so precious. When a five-year-old declares you part of their family, when parents trust you with their most treasured relationships, when you find your place at tables you helped set—well, that's not just fun. That's sacred. That's a glimpse of the kingdom of God, where love matters more than blood and chosen family becomes the truest family of all.

The front porch of Harvest House started as an afterthought—a small concrete rectangle outside my living room that I decorated with leftover Christmas lights and fading outdoor furniture. I never intended for it to become the heart of my home, but when the pandemic forced the world indoors, that little porch became my sanctuary. It was where I held meetings and ate meals, where friends stopped by for socially distanced conversations, where I learned to find peace in a world turned upside down.

There's something powerful about creating a space that's entirely your own, a place where you can be fully yourself without apology or explanation. As I swept the pollen from the table each week and arranged the cushions just so, I wasn't just cleaning—I was creating. I was taking raw materials and transforming them into something that reflected my heart, my hopes, my understanding of what home could be. The multicolored Christmas lights that I never took down became a daily choice for joy. The books stacked on the side table became invitations to slower living.

During those long months of isolation, I realized that sacred spaces aren't just about the physical elements—they're about intention. They're about deciding that this corner of the world, however small, will be dedicated to beauty and rest and connection. When I lit candles and put on a record and settled into that faded couch to read, I was practicing a kind of worship, a recognition that my soul needed tending just as much as my body needed feeding.

The renovation of Harvest House Porch taught me that creating sacred space is both an art and an act of faith. It's believing that beauty matters, that rest is productive, that the simple act of making something lovely can be a form of resistance against a world that often feels harsh and hurried. Whether it's a front porch or a reading nook, a garden bed or a breakfast table set with care, these spaces become altars where the ordinary transforms into the sacred. They become the places where we remember who we are and whose we are, where the scattered pieces of our souls can finally come home to rest.

The search for authentic fun isn't about adding more activities to an already overpacked schedule—it's about recovering a way of being in the world that our souls remember but our minds have forgotten. Through stories of loss and discovery, amateur adventures and unexpected grace, we see that true joy emerges not from perfect circumstances but from the courage to remain open to beauty, connection, and wonder in the midst of ordinary life. Whether we're snapping green beans on a childhood porch or learning to love the sound of our own laughter again, the path back to Eden runs through the simple decision to show up fully present to our own lives.

The deepest truth revealed in these pages is that fun and faith are not opposites but partners in the dance of becoming fully alive. When we give ourselves permission to fall in love with small moments and ordinary people, when we embrace our amateur hearts and create spaces of beauty in a broken world, we're not just having a good time—we're participating in the restoration of all things. The laughter that bubbles up from a child's surprise, the satisfaction of mastering a new skill, the peace that descends when we finally feel at home in our own skin—these aren't distractions from spiritual life but expressions of it. They're foretastes of the joy that was always meant to be ours, reminders that the God who created laughter and play and delight is the same God who created us. Chase the fun, beloved friend. Your truest self is waiting there.