2 Letting Go

Hey Friends,

This morning I read a great passage from Beth Moore's new book, So Long, Insecurity.  Be prepared to spend a little bit of time reading this post because it is just that good.  At the end of the post I've shared some pictures from our fun-filled Easter weekend.  Blessings to you all!

     People who are chronically insecure often have an overwhelming tendency to become control freaks.  Upon serious consideration, that inclination makes perfect sense.  We feel most secure when our environment is in control, and since no one is able to control it to our satisfaction, we decide we have to do it ourselves.  If someone would do it and do it right, we wouldn't have to take over, so it's not really our fault, we reason.  It's our responsibility.
     There has never been a soul on earth I wanted to control more than Keith Moore.  He wouldn't mind me telling you that he has a rebellious root so deep that to pull it up could cause a tremor all over the state of Texas.  I've nearly thrown my back out trying.
     Honestly, I just wanted him to be happy, and he seemed to have such unnecessary ups and downs. (Does that sound familiar?)  I knew what worked for me, and I wanted it to work for him. (Also sound familiar?) The way I saw it, the man had so much potential if he would just do things God's way.  But since he wasn't really listening to God, maybe my way was close enough. (Is this getting on your nerves like it's getting on mine?)  If he would just have a regular prayer time or memorize a few Scriptures or listen to Christian music or be more jovial or more compliant or less free with his opinions but more talkative about his feelings or more selective about what he watched and more careful about what he ate, he'd be so much happier.  Clearly, I needed to take control of the situation and try to shove Keith to his happy place.
        I bought men's devotional and inspirational books, but he used them for a coaster for his Route 44 cherry limeades from Sonic. I got him so many great CDs that you can hardly get the glove compartment open in his car to put one in his player.  I got audiobooks by the actual authors, and he has taken such good care of them that they're still in the cellophane.  I purchased enough vitamins and supplements to keep a whole football team healthy, but the bottles still have the safety seals on them.  When he complained that he was looking older, I bought him a skin regimen complete with toner and lip balm.  At least I know it's there in the bathroom drawer when I run out of my own.
        I'm much better about it now than I used to be.  Now I vacillate somewhere between giving up altogether and giving it one more tiny little try.  I live in neither place, but this much has become remarkably clear: we cannot control people.  Goodness knows I wish we could, but we can't.  It doesn't work.  It will never work.  And here's the worst part: the insecurity that drove the desire in the first place only deepens with each failure. Our attempts to control can take us all sorts of places we never meant to travel. Sometimes we impose ourselves on our controllee, but other times we're invited there.  Even dragged there.  When was the last time somebody put you in charge of his or her problem? Ever been in charge of an alcoholic's liquor cabinet?
       The tricky part is that God blatantly instructs us in Scripture to help one another, so how do we know when help has morphed into a quest for control?  The first clue is when the helper is the one doing all the work.  Simultaneously, the one being helped lazily lapses into the mentality of a victim of his or her own weakness and all the while gets to be the center of a strong person's attentions.  What a deal.  It took me forty years in the wilderness to realized that at the end of the day, people do what they want to do.  You can't make them do something else.  You can't force them.  You can't change them.  You can't deliver them.  Only God can.  And that's why He's omnipotent and we're not.
        We are not in charge.  Somewhere along the way, we each have to acknowledge that our loved one is a separate person from  us - someone God loves, pursues, and when necessary, chastises.  When we try to do God's job, we get in God's way.  We are called to cherish, support, and pray for others, but tying our security to them is a lost cause.  That knot we keep tightening is no more fair to them than it is to us.  Hand that rope over to God.  Let Him undo that tangled-up mess and retie your security to Himself.  He's the One with all the power.

Friends, that message speaks volumes to me and I hope you all benefited from it as well.  Beth is doing a live simulcast on So Long, Insecurity on Saturday, April 24th.  To find a church near you, click here.  As promised, here are the pictures from our Easter weekend in Dothan.  Enjoy!

 

The Ridley Family

Courts (my brother) and me

Me and Raleigh

Every year Raleigh's Nan Nan does an Easter Egg hunt at her house.  She hides four eggs with money in them and these are the ones that we found empty.

                                                                            Score!

Lu Lu enjoyed the hunt

The Price family

Till next time, let your light shine!

Blessings, christen

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0 Good Friday

Happy Good Friday!

Friends, I hope all of you have a wonderful Easter weekend!  We are heading to Dothan to celebrate this wonderful holiday with our families.  Yesterday, I went on a walk through our neighborhood with my new camera and took some pictures of all the pretty flowers blooming.  It is no coincidence to me that spring appears in full bloom right as we are remembering the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and how he rose from the grave.  He loves us so much! 

"Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." - Ephesians 5:1-2

This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem....When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them.  While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven.  Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.  And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God." - Luke 24:46-53"

Till next time, let your light shine!

Blessings, christen

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1 First Priority

Good morning!

I feel so good today.  The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and I have had some good time with my friend, Jesus.  Friends, these past couple of days have rough for me so to feel this way today is truly a breathe of fresh air!  If you haven't noticed, the blog has been pretty silent this past week.  We will get into that as we keep going today, but I will tell you that Raleigh and I have been battling a stomach bug that has taken its toll on both of us.  One day will be okay and then POW! a wave of yuckiness would hit us again.  No fun at all.

Anyways, enough of that.   What I really wanted to take time to share with y'all today was time itself.  How we spend our time and if what we are truly doing is worth our time.  This past month has been an interesting one for me.  As you know from my previous post, the beginning of March marked a new beginning for me as I left corporate America and began the venture into mommy/stay at home world.  Back in February, all I really focused on was finishing up work and I knew once March rolled around I would have plenty of time to focus on my goals, the babies, and everything else that I wanted to do.  That first Monday after leaving my job, I sat down and wrote out a huge to-do list for myself.  I did my lists in four categories: Adeline and Maralee, House, Personal Growth, and Hobbies.  I just knew that each day I would dive into accomplishing those goals on those lists.

Now, with today being the first of April, I have to admit that I have barely scratched the surface on those lined college-ruled pages.  What I have found over this past month is that I am still learning how to prioritize my time.  I think a big misconception associated with stay-at-home moms is that they have all of this free time compared to working moms. I realize the girls aren't here yet so my view is not focused on changing diapers and feeding schedules, but I have been doing a lot recently preparing for their arrival.  What I can say from this past month is that regardless of being a working mom or a stay-at-home mom, we all struggle with finding enough time in the day to get the things done that we really want to accomplish.  There are just so many "other" responsibilities that come up and take priority over our priorities.  Funny, huh?

The question to ask now is, "How do we make our priorities a priority?"  That my friend, I am still trying to figure out but here are some things that I am learning:

1. To let go of feeling like it is my responsibility, or my obligation to do those other things.  
2. To graciously say no without feeling guilty.  
3. To focus on me so I can serve others...in other words, not being a slave to other people's needs to the point of exhaustion which, in turn, debilitates me from being a humble servant
4. To invest my days instead of just have them whizzing by me.  
5. To carve out quality time with God first thing so I feel rejuvenated the rest of the day.

Friends, this morning I let go of one of my "other" priorities.  The minute I let go, God showed me a bible verse that coincides perfectly with one of my goals on my Personal Growth to-do list.  I just grinned at that sly dog for giving me that verse right after I gave something up for him.  He is so cool in his timing and that is what makes me love my Savior more than ever today.  I pray that you all spend some time with him and figure out how to take away some of those others and get back to focusing on what matters most.


"Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you.  Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm." - Proverbs 4:4

Till next time, let your light shine!

Blessings, christen

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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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