8 Introducing....

"A good name is better than fine perfume" - Ecclesiastes 7:1

I can't hold my tongue any longer....we have officially decided on the names of our two little girls!  Raleigh and I went round and round trying to figure out their names.  Funny how things work...we have always had two boy names picked out that we like but never have agreed on girl names.  Girl names are just harder to choose in my opinion.  Typically, all the names that I have thought of over the years have been names that I have liked, but have not really had any meaning to me.  And then there were the names that I loved but my teacher friends told me that they would be one of five girls in their class with that same name.  So, Raleigh and I decided to go old school.  We pulled out the family books and started to look for names that had a meaning to us.

The first weekend of March we went to the beach for a wedding. Raleigh's granddad has this great place that he built years ago right on the beach.  It looks like a big loft and has a back deck that walks right down to the surf and sand.  We love that place and the trip was perfect timing because Raleigh and I seem to make every big decision at the beach.  We have decided to stay together, get engaged, celebrate anniversaries, and pick out baby names at the beach.  It is our tiny slice of heaven and we always feel so much better about our decisions after spending time at that place.  Drum roll please......below is a picture of the names we have chosen:

Adeline and Maralee Price

When our little girls make their debut, Baby A will be called by the name of Adeline Summers Price and Baby B will have the name Maralee Simms Price.  I thought it would be fun to share where the names originated from, so here goes:

We took one name from our four sets of grandparents.  From my side, we have the Ridley's and the Creel's.  Raleigh's family names are the Price's and the Gunter's.  Adeline is from the Price side of the house.  His grandmother, Kennette Dowling Price had an ancestor by the name of Adeline.  From what we can tell, Adeline was a pretty solid gal and didn't get into much trouble.  Adeline is pronounced like "Caroline."  We just loved how it rolled off the tongue.  So southern, don't you think?  Summers comes from the Ridley's and was my grandmother's maiden name.  We really liked the spelling of Summers and it paired really well with Simms as middle names.  It gives the twins that "sameness" but their first names give them their "uniqueness."

Now, Maralee is a combo name.  As my mom asked, "Is this name real?"  Well, it is now!  My Paw Paw's name is Jackson Marion Creel and Raleigh's grandmother is Okalee Gunter.  So, one night we were playing with combining different names and came up with Maralee.   It is one name and is pronounced like, "Merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a dream."  We thought it was pretty cute and clever so it stuck!  Simms is also a family name from the Gunters and we loved how both Simms and Summers had the double "m" in the middle of their names.

These names aren't something you hear every day but that is what we like about them so much.  They are different and unique names and we can't imagine calling them anything else.  I am going to go ahead and warn you.....if you don't have anything nice to say about these names, please don't say anything at all!  Pregnant girls cry easily and I really don't feel like crying over what someone else thinks today :)

Below are some pictures of our family tree.  Soon we will get to add the sweet picture of our two little girls!  Through this pregnancy, we have both agreed that even though our twins will be identical in their looks, they should each be unique in their personalities.  Of course, they will show us their personalities but we just want to focus on each of them as individuals, not the same person.  We pray that our girls will grow up to have hearts that love the Lord and love others.  I can't wait to meet them!

                                                                          

Jack and Patsy Creel

Bob and Penny Ridley

 

                                                              James and Okalee Gunter                                                                                                                                                                        

                                                               Martin and Kennette Price

                                                                   

Jim and Connie Ridley

 

John and Sondra Price 

 Me and Raleigh

Till next time, let your light shine!

Blessings, christen

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1 Start Small

Hey friends,

I got this great video that I just had to share!  Enjoy!



Till next time, let your light shine!

Blessings, christen

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0 Lesson Learned

Wow, what a weekend.  Raleigh and I have been up to our ears getting ready for our twins to arrive!  My mom came into town last week and started to help us re-organize our upstairs.  Before, we had two guest bedrooms and an "art room" but now we are going to make the art room the nursery and one of the guest bedrooms an office/craft space.  As you can see from the pictures below, we had a lot of stuff in our closets to move!!!!

The new office/art room (work in progress!)

Cleaning out clothes to make more closet space

My brother was a HUGE help!!!

The nursery to-be

On Saturday, we headed to Dothan to look at cribs/furniture for the nursery with our parents.  Raleigh is the ultimate researcher in our house and he has been on the computer for hours upon hours trying to find the best deal in the crib that we liked.  Of course, I found my dream crib at a really great store but the fact that we were needing two cribs, along with all the other furniture made these cribs out of our price range.  We also have had our minds set on white cribs.  I love all the cribs, but white just reminds me of babies and I really want everything to be soft and airy in the nursery.  Well, for those of you that haven't started this phase of your life, white cribs are harder to come by than you think!  Raleigh and I are both planners and he was very ready for us to make a decision on the cribs so we could move on to the next portion of the nursery.  So, Saturday we took the pups to D-town for a day trip and ended up with a successful purchase when everything was said and done.  It really was a relief to have that portion checked off the to-do list.

Saturday night rolled around and it dawned on Raleigh and I that we needed to plan our lesson for Sunday morning with the youth.  We just started teaching on Sunday mornings and are honestly still getting used to how it works.  At our church, small groups are a big deal so a lot of group time is very conversation-based with lots of discussion.  Well, turns out Sunday mornings are a little more on the "classroom teaching" side than discussion-based. We decided to use some notes that I had from a previous study about "God's Good Plan For Your Life."  It was very scripture-based and an awesome topic, but to be perfectly honest we didn't really prepare for it.  On Sunday morning, as we sat in front of thirty sets of eyes, we both froze.  Neither one of us could really "teach" the lesson, we just kept re-iterating what the scripture was saying.  About halfway through we could tell that we were losing them but we just kept pushing through the topic.  Finally, the hour passed and it was time for them to head to big church. 

Yesterday was a huge awakening to me.  Here I am, trying to be a disciple of Christ, and I completely bomb when given a chance to teach the Good News.  I was so embarrassed and ashamed of myself for the lack of effort I put into preparation for that topic.  The hardest part of it all was that we knew we were better than how we preformed.  It was like back in high school when our team would lose a soccer game because we hadn't given our all in practice.  We didn't give ourselves time to practice for Sunday morning and we played a poor game in return.  Have you ever been in that kind of situation before?

It might seem like I am being a little hard on myself, but if you could have only been there to hear the crickets!  Today, I am thankful that it happened because I definetely learned my lesson.  Pride, laziness and self-confidence got the best of me and I just thought we could wing-it and be perfectly fine.  WRONG.  And besides, is that how I want to start doing things? A half-way version of my true self?  NO. 

The whole ironic part of it was that we were doing a lesson on God's plan for our lives.  Right now, I am laughing at myself for being so boastful in thinking I had this figured out and had no need to prepare notes.  I have recently been through some life-changing experience following God's plan for my life and not once did I even bring that up yesterday.  How much better the lesson could have been if only I had tried a little harder!

Friends, please know that I am speaking as much to myself as to you when saying this but we have got to start living out our full potential.  We have to give our work everything we have to be successful.  Doing things half-way will only give us half of the results.  God does have such a good plan for our lives but we have to do our part in fulfilling it.  Using this situation, I have to start preparing more in order to be a better teacher.  Do you find yourself ever just going through the motions?  Take it from me, start getting yourself into high gear so you don't find yourself flat on your face!

I want to leave you all with some of the lesson we spoke from yesterday.  Let's all start to live out God's good plan for our lives!

"God is good.  He wills only the best for us.  He has created us with rich capacities to enjoy - physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, spiritually - and He "giveth us richly all things to enjoy" (1 Timothy 6:17).  He has also formed each of us with unique potential to make a contribution to life.


Often we feel we know better than God does what is good for us.  Our definition of "good" is getting what we think we want when we want it.  We want what is easy and what will bring immediate relief, pleasure or sense of achievement.  God cares about our present joy, but He is also concerned about maturing our capacity to enjoy in all aspects of our person.  He wants us to learn a happiness that is not governed by what happens in our lives, a happiness that is stable, not always threatened.  He wants us to go beyond the dribbles of happiness that we can force life to give us.


True happiness must be based on a yielding, believing relationship to God.  It must include the ability to love God and others plus the feeling of fulfillment that comes from giving to life what we were uniquely designed to contribute."

Till next time, let your light shine!

Blessings, christen

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2 Me, Ashley, & Beth

Hey friends,

These have been a long time coming....here are the pictures from the So Long, Insecurity book signing that took place at Costco in Birmingham.  I had never been to a book signing before but it sure was fun!  Ash and I had a great time afterwards...we went to Pottery Barn Kids and then ate a yummy dinner at Macaroni Grill!  It was so worth it just to spend some QT with Ash!  Enjoy!!!!

Ashley and Beth

Me and Beth - don't we look like we are best buds? :)  I told her thank you for what she does and she just kept saying, "Jesus is Life."  I liked that!

Proudly sporting our recently signed books

Till next time, let your light shine!

Blessings, christen

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5 New Beginnings

"If we celebrate the years behind us, they become stepping-stones of strength and joy for the years ahead"

Hello, my favorite blogger community.  I have missed you.  I sure do have lots to catch you up on, but I will try to tell you everything in their own individual posts so they get their special time on the uncontainable truth.

Where to start?  I guess I should start by filling you all in on what has been going on in my life the last couple of weeks.  Actually, the last year but the change really started becoming a reality over the month of February.  Early last month I resigned from my job at the American Cancer Society.  This past Wednesday was my last day at work so now I have officially begun a new chapter of my life.  I'm excited, scared, and adjusting all at the same time but I know this change is a step in the right direction.

I think it is time to re-wind and fill you all in on what brought about this change.  Last summer, I really began to pray for the Lord to show me his purpose for my life.  I started to explore the spiritual gifts that he has given me and really define how I can use those gifts to better his kingdom here on earth.  As a follower of Jesus Christ, I am called to be his disciple.  For a long time, I really struggled with how I would go about doing that and what my "calling" truly is.  The Lord put on my heart to begin writing and sharing my thoughts with others so that is when the blog began.  When I attended the Beth Moore simulcast in late August, I prayed for God to answer the desires of my heart which were:
1. To put into action his purpose for my life
2. To become a mom
All fall, I searched for the answers to these prayers and really struggled emotionally with how these changes would affect our lives.  Raleigh, being the practical husband that he is, would constantly be running numbers and to be honest, it just didn't add up.  But, one Sunday, our preacher spoke about how Jesus' favorite word was "Go."  In Matthew 4:18-20 it says, "As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew.  They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen.  "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men,"  At once they left their nets and followed him."

Y'all, the Holy Spirit wrapped his loving arms around Raleigh and I that day.  It was like our preacher was speaking these words directly into our cotton-filled ears.  From that moment on, we were convinced that God was moving in big ways in our lives and we had better start following him before we got left behind.  That day, we made a decision that would radically change our lives.  We decided that it was time for me to run full-throttle in pursuit of Jesus so I could share his awesome love with others through means of bible study, mentoring, teaching, and serving others through my spiritual gifts. 

Over Thanksgiving, we shared for the first time His plans for our lives with our parents.  All four of them were in agreeance that if God had called me to do something, I better follow him.  It was so humbling to have their blessings on this decision.  When Raleigh and I returned to Montgomery after that weekend, we were given a reward from our loving Father.  We found out we were pregnant.  Friends, never in my life have I felt his face shine upon me like it did that evening.  We were awestruck by his wonderful ways.  It was truly a moment that I will return to again and again whenever I doubt if he is listening to my prayers. 

Now that a decision had finally been made, we were at the point of having to act upon it.  You would think that would be the easy part, but I was scared to death to jump off the cliff into the unknown waters below.  I started to analyze and question the decision.  I let fear and doubt come into my mind and Satan just had a field day with me.  The decision just seemed so not of this world and very unpractical.  I also had obligations.  I'm not a quitter and I loved my job so it really didn't make sense for me to just turn 180 degrees and drop everything I have worked so hard to accomplish.  So, like Moses, I started to ask God if he really wanted me to do this task.  I needed proof. Confirmation that this was real and not a crazy dream.

Well, if I needed proof, our Creator decided He would show me proof times two.  As I mentioned here, at our first ultrasound we found out we were having twins.  I just sat on the exam room table and let the tears go.  He knew I had always wanted twins but we didn't have them in our family.  Walking to the car that day, I received my strength from the spirit to let go of this world and to fully put my trust in the Lord that he would provide for our family.

Sweet brothers and sisters, I never dreamed that I would be where I am with my life today.  I couldn't imagine that this was what He had planned for me.  As the old saying goes, "Don't fix what ain't broken."  My job wasn't broken but God knew that there was no way I would leave it if I wasn't expecting twins.  He knew I didn't have a quitter heart and that I didn't want to let anyone down at that wonderful organization.  I loved what I did and I was good at it so why change it?  Because He loves me and knows that there is more work for me to do for his kingdom. Greater things are still to be done but with a willing heart I am taking my first baby steps in his direction for this new dawning of my life.

 If any of you are struggling with your "calling" in life, I urge you to fervently seek him for guidance.  At our winter retreat this January, our speaker had seven points that we should follow when answering our calling.
1. Define what God has called you to do (Nehemiah 2:17)
2. Question It (Luke 14:25)
3. Plan It (Nehemiah 2:5)
4. Deadline It (Proverbs 20:4, Luke 12:35)
5. GO FOR IT! (Proverbs 6:6, Luke 9:62)
6. Expect challenges to it (Exodus 4:29, Exodus 5, Nehemiah 2:17)
7. Be Found Doing It (Luke 12:35)
(Click here to view scripture from points 1-4 and here for points 5-7)

"Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him." - Luke 12:35

Till next time, let your light shine!

Blessings, christen

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