I can’t believe that after this post, we’ll only have 2 more left in our organization series! (Coming up in the next two weeks: Organizing our spiritual lives and Organizing our kids. It’s gonna be a good!)

Time: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Finances: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Home: Emily’s post and Nancy’s post
Personal Life: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Work: Em’s post and Nancy’s Post
TODAY: Relationships – read Emily’s post here!
February 27: Spiritual Life
March 6: Kids

This post is an exciting one to me. The older I get, the more I realize just how important it is to prioritize the relationships that mean the most to me. Organizing all of these other wonderful aspects of life – our work, our homes, our time… it’s honorable and good. But the one category we’ll be able to take with us after this life is over? Our relationships. I believe the relationships we invest in here on earth will be carried on in heaven. I think we will recognize and know our families and friends, continuing to build on those relationships in heaven. It’s a pretty amazing thought, isn’t it? That’s why It’s worth spending time prioritizing and organizing them here and now. And that’s what today’s post is all about!

Another thing I’ve learned through the years: you can’t grow deeper in relationship with someone you aren’t willing to spend meaningful time with. Period. Relationships require time and intentionality.

So organizing the relationships in my life comes down to prioritizing time spent together while opening up meaningful communication. Let’s take a look at how I organize the most important relationships in my life!

My relationship with the Lord
This one is the most important relationship of them all. If you aren’t a Christian, you might find it odd that I listed it here. While I will be covering much more about this topic next week, I want to be clear and say: when I prioritize spending time with the Lord, all of my other relationships in life are much more fruitful, joyful, and in unison. It all starts here.

My relationship with my husband
I love my sweet husband so much. We’ll be celebrating 10 years of marriage this year, and 14 years of being together as a couple. It’s easy to think, “We’re married! We live together and do life together. There’s nothing that needs organizing here.” But nothing could be further from the truth. I think that’s how things get a little too routine in a marriage. For a while it’s probably fine, but after years and years of a marriage with little to no maintenance, there’s too much risk for boredom, unspoken anger, and ultimately divorce. A longlasting marriage takes work, and this is how we organize our relationship:

Daily: We always ask “how was your day?” and take time to listen. If there’s something “off” between us, we always bring it up – even if we can’t pinpoint it, I’ll say something like “Are we good? I feel a little off today.” We always kiss each other goodnight.

Weekly: We have a “Sunday check in” where we go over our schedules for the week and ask each other 6 questions – the same questions every Sunday. (Will knows I really appreciate eye contact during these questions ;)). We got these questions from Beating the 50 Percent and we have really loved them.
1. What brought you joy this week?
2. What was something that was hard this week?
3. What’s one specific thing I can do for you this week?
4. How can I pray for you this week?
5. Is there anything that’s gone unsaid, convictions, confessions, unresolved
hurt?
6. What’s a dream, desire or thought that’s been on the forefront of your mind this week?

Monthly: We go on at least 1 date a month, and we also add these two questions to our list:
7. How are we stewarding our finances?
8. How is our sex life?

Quarterly: Will and I see a marriage counselor once a quarter. We have been doing this for about 2 years now, and it’s been incredibly helpful navigating some difficult conversations as well as inspiring during the easy seasons of marriage. We highly recommend it!

Yearly: We always do something special around our Anniversary… extra special date night or a getaway somewhere.

Noteworthy Milestones: Every 5 years, we do a more extravagant anniversary trip. For our 5th anniversary, we lived on a boat in the British Virgin Islands for 7 days, and it was amazing. We’re coming up on 10 years, and we hope to go to Italy! We also plan to renew our vows every decade (10, 20, 30, etc).

Image by Eric Kelley

My relationship with my kids
My girls are 2.5 and 6 months old, so it certainly is fairly simple to keep these relationships organized especially when comparing it to some of you who might have grown children. However I do want to leave you with one piece of advice that has changed the game for me and Will this year: “Mind Body Soul Time” with each kid for 10 minutes a day, twice a day. I learned this from my friend Amy inside her course: Positive Parenting Solutions. It’s the best way to keep our relationships intentional, and it fills their little attention buckets in the best way. So here are the rules: for 10 minutes, twice a day, each parent gets 1 on 1 time with each kid. The KID gets to decide how they want to spend the time – not you! And you have to keep it uninterrupted. No TV, no phone, no talking with your spouse – just you and the kid. It’s been so fulfilling for me as a working mama too – to always know we will have “Mama Milly time” and “Mama Lyndon time” leaves me feeling so fulfilled at the end of the day.

My relationship with my family
My family includes my Mama, sister Mary Lindsey, and her family (husband and 5 kiddos!) who all live in Nashville, TN; my Dad and Leslie and younger siblings Ryan and Reba, my brother Johnny who lives in PA, Will’s Mom, Will’s sister Jess and husband Kyle, Will’s brother John and wife Sam, and Will’s Dad. In short, both sets of parents are divorced and most siblings are grown and married… which makes for a lot of people to connect with individually!

Because there are so many households to schedule and connect with, we aim to connect with each at least every other month. For the local family, that means something in person. For distant family, that’s a little harder to do, so I try to facetime more often to make up for it. In addition to these times of connection, we try to have 1 trip with Will’s family each year, and 1 trip with my family each year. And of course, Christmas looks a bit like the movie 4 Christmases, but it’s worth it because we do love spending quality time with each parent and sibling. Thankfully, our families are incredibly gracious and nothing like the movie, so we can spread out our celebrations over the span of a week!

My relationship with my friends
Has anyone else found it more challenging to invest in friendships the older you get? I have. To be honest, looking back at my 20’s, I was so driven and focused on work, I let a lot of relationships go. It’s one of my biggest regrets and it makes me sad, but thankfully I am more intentional about my friendships now, while simultaneously dishing out much more grace to myself now that I have kids.

There are 3 weekends a year that I take time to invest in our friendships:

1. Minki getaway: this started just last year, but we’ve officially made it an annual thing. Me and my 3 best girl friends getaway for 1 night, maybe 2… just to laugh and be together and relax. A spa is usually involved, too. We’ve been best friends since 9th grade, we’ve been bridesmaids in all of our weddings, and it means so much to all of us to set aside time for this each year.

2. Camping with the Thomases: Yes – we love to go camping with Emily of Em for Marvelous’ family! Every year we choose a date and location and fight to make it happen in our busy schedules.

3. “Grandview Vacay”: This is a friend and business retreat with the Schultzes and Wheatons… some of our dearest friends. We’ve been doing this for 4 years now, and it’s so nice to get away and laugh with some like minded business owners.

There’s nothing like spending time to invest in relationships, and no better way to really do that than a weekend away together. But in between all of those weekends, with those and other friends, Will and I try to have a steady social calendar. This is fairly simple, but it looks like 1 – 2 dinners a month, in addition to 1 playdate on a mama day.

My relationship with my team
I love my team. If I’m honest, Callie and Olivia have become some of my dearest friends. Talk about spending time together – I spend the MOST hours with these sweet girls.

Each morning, we have a morning huddle. We share a Bible verse, pray together, and share our 3 priorities for the day, while also reporting whether or not we finished our 3 priorities from the day prior. It’s a great way to connect meaningfully before work.

We also just stop working when life calls for it. If we need to share something on our hearts, we do. We always try to love and support each other throughout our work days.

Outside of work, we love and support each other as well through birthday celebrations, running races and showing up for support, going to fundraisers together, and occasionally grabbing dinner as well. This means so much to all of us, as it’s important to share in life together outside of the daily grind of keeping NRP going.

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Don’t forget to read Emily’s post today, too!

I’d love to hear: what was most helpful or new to you? And do you have any suggestions or tips for how you organize your relationships? I’m all ears!

The last few weeks, I have been blogging alongside my friend Emily a fun new series all about How We Do It: a series on organization! I hope it’s been practical and helpful – a peek into how we do life. Here’s what we’ve covered so far, and here’s what you can look forward to!

Time: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Finances: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Home: Emily’s post and Nancy’s post
Today: Personal Life (read Emily’s post HERE!)
February 6: Work
February 13: Relationships
February 20: Spiritual Life
February 27: Kids

Today we are sharing how we organize our personal lives. The last time I blogged about this, I didn’t have any babies, so I debated if the better title for me nowadays would be “how to organize my family life.” However, after much thought, I think personal life is best because it encompasses everything we do as a family as well as everything we do with friends, travel, home decor, and everything in between. Also, I hope when our children are gone from our home we still have a strong personal life to sustain and maintain, because we’ve kept it strong through the years!

So here’s my biggest piece of advice when it comes to having a strong personal life full of rest and deep friendship and family memories:

SCHEDULE EVERYTHING. It call comes back to the schedule!!

I plan our calendar consistently:

Before the year begins
At the beginning of each month
At the beginning of each week

During these times, Will and I touch base about what’s most important, what we should keep, and if there’s anything we need to drop. The Year discussion is most time consuming, but the monthly and weekly talks are brief.

I use two tools in scheduling our personal events:

My iCal for big events and recurring dates (like birthdays)
My Simplified Planner for the weekly and daily planning (I prefer the weekly edition)

I do have my iCal categorized by color: Home (yellow), Work (green), Ministry (purple), Booked Shoots (grey). Will and I share the home calendar with each other via Google.

You might be thinking: “Nancy, doesn’t this fall more in the category of how you organize your time?” And in a way, you’re right. But here’s the thing: I’m not a very spontaneous person. I don’t usually call someone up to have coffee that day. I’m a planner, and my work and life really requires me to plan ahead. So if I want to hang out with my friends, we just have to get a date on the calendar and then it happens! If I want to go for a run, or have some “me” time – I MUST plan it, or it just won’t happen.

So disclaimer: many people who have more of a relaxed personality or love adventure and spontaneity might be weirded out by this, or maybe you just won’t relate. That’s okay! I just know I won’t have any friends or family memories or half marathon goals if I don’t plan for time spent doing those things in my ACTUAL calendar. I know because it’s the way I lived life for many years (with NO life) and I don’t want to go back there!

Okay so let’s break it down! Here is how we do it:

Yearly Personal Calendar

What are the most important memories I want to make this year? Specifically referring to the trips and vacations and goals and events that take a little extra planning? Will discuss this and we always put these in our calendars FIRST. Here’s our list for 2018:

Minki getaway
NRP Team Retreat
Return to Rest
Making Things Happen
Milly’s Birthday
Half Marathon
Our 10th Anniversary
Annual Camping trip with Thomases (Yes, Emily!!)
Marriage Retreat
Lyndon’s Birthday
Beaufort – Father’s Day
Myrtle Beach
Nashville family visit
10th Anniversary trip to Europe
1 Month Sabbatical
Will’s birthday
Thanksgiving in Mountains
Nancy’s birthday

It is also at this time that I choose the 12 books I plan to read for the year. I even assign them month by month! This is a hugely important piece of my personal growth and my life as a whole!

I also have these recurring dates that repeat yearly in my iCal:

Monthly traditions
January 1st – Declutter / clean out
February 1st – Decorate for Valentines’ Day
April – 1st Spring Cleaning
May – Mother’s Day Strawberry Picking
June 20th – Decorate for July 4th (We’re BIG on Independence Day)
October 1st— Get Pumpkins at the Farmer’s Market
November 1st – Gratitude Chalk Wall
December 10th – Goal Setting for Next Year

(In honor of our How We Do It series, I had to include this camping pic from last year with my little fam and the Thomases!)

Monthly Personal Calendar

At the very end of the month or the very beginning of the month, Will and I look ahead and briefly touch base about what life looks like. What weekends will we be gone? When do we need childcare? When are we going to go on our date? When do we need dogsitting / housesitting help? We chat about the things we need to do,

Will and I are more task people than people people. So we touch base about how many social events would be good for us each month, make sure they are on both of our calendars, and make sure we have childcare lined up! Things we always discuss:

Which Sundays I lead worship (and have worship practice)
Date Nights
Travel plans
Plans with friends
Rest Days + Home Nights

Photo by Gina Zeidler

Weekly Check Ins

By now, we have our month planned out. But life changes, plans come up, and sometimes we just forget. It’s always good to check in with each other once a week (we usually do on Sundays) to discuss the upcoming week. We always try to do 3 things:

Go through our weekly questions for our marriage
Choose our Sabbath day for the week ahead
Make sure our calendars line up for the week

My favorite part of our weekly check ins is our weekly questions for our marriage. I’ll talk more on this in our upcoming post – How we organize our relationships! For now I guess you’ll have to wait 😉 But don’t miss it because they change the game in the best way.

In addition to my chat with Will, I personally decide and schedule two very important things that also affect my personal life greatly:

My reading goals
Exercising at least 2x

I write both of those in my calendar. Goodness I hope those two things don’t get lost in this giant blogpost because they are SO fulfilling and so important for me as a wife, mama and woman! Exercising and reading are just SO important in keeping my personal life fulfilled and feeling whole.

I keep my current book beside my bed for easy access, and on the days I plan to exercise, I get dressed in my exercise clothes.

A few Daily Thoughts

I can’t fail to mention the importance of staying close to the Lord in my personal life, day to day. It’s the foundation of everything for me, which is why another blogpost devoted entirely to organizing my spiritual life is coming up, too!

I don’t shower every day. Well – that’s not totally true. I do a quick “bod-show” every day (Nancy talk for body-only shower), but I only wash and style my hair twice a week. That’s a real time saver!

Tidying my home and kitchen on a daily basis also brings me great joy in my personal life. We always have the kitchen clean and the coffee made before going to bed, which allows for a wonderful fresh start each morning.

We do laundry once a day. This keeps things from piling up, which is so nice now that we are a family of four!

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I’d love to hear – do you do any of these? What do you do in addition? How do you keep your personal life in order?

Don’t forget to read Em’s post if you haven’t yet!

To Read Lyndon’s Birth Story Part One, click here.

8:05PM
We got checked in, made it to the room, and the nurse checked me: 7 centimeters!

I was pretty thrilled about that! I labored in the bed with the heart monitor strapped around my belly. Goodness labor was intense at this point. I remember feeling hot, and my prepared mama busted out her American flag fans and kept us all cool! I loved having her there. She knew just what to do to keep me calm and comfortable, just like moms do.

After about 40 minutes or so, I really felt like I needed to push and I asked the nurse to check me again. I KNEW I had made progress because things were picking up with such intensity.

7 centimeters.

Forreal? Listen, I know it’s only been 30 minutes, but things were DIFFERENT. Or so I thought. But I continued to labor and wait and take it one contraction at a time.

I had Sissy and Will trade off reading scripture over me. My two books I used over and over again: My Pregnancy Prayer Journal and Supernatural Childbirth. Both come equipped with labor verses, and Supernatural Childbirth has the most amazing delivery prayer in the back. I remember yelling “LOUDER” at one point because I couldn’t hear my sweet sister’s voice over my own moaning, haha! Bless my sweet sister’s heart. Best doula ever.

I decided to try to pee (sorry, but nothing is TMI in birth stories, so if weird lingo freaks you out you can stop reading now), knowing that it might relieve some bladder pressure and the vertical position helped the contractions intensify. I labored on the toilet for a while because my shaky legs just couldn’t hold me, and then I really started pushing without even trying. I told her nurse and she said, “Let’s not have a baby in the toilet! Come on – back to the bed!”

9:25PM
The midwife checked me, and told me the news:

7 centimeters.

I MEAN COME ON. I literally couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know how my body could do it much longer – they were just so, SO intense. Mentally, it was so hard to hear. Then the midwife said,

“What if I broke your water? There’s no pressure to do so, but it might progress things for you. And I might have to break it 2 hours from now, or I could just break it for you now.”

I looked at Will and my sister, asking them what they thought. We weren’t really sure what would be best.

2 contractions later, I looked at the midwife and said, “YES. Break my water.” I couldn’t stand the thought of doing that for 2 more hours.

9:32PM
I felt my water break between contractions and thought “let’s see how this goes!” And then the next contraction came like a tidal wave.

I started losing my mind, grabbing my sister around the neck, shoving Will away (I’m sorry and I love you). I yelled “Jesus HELP ME” and began to cry out loudly. Then I let everyone know… “THE BABY’S COMING! IT’S COMING RIGHT NOW!!!”

“Ok let me check you” said the midwife, immediately followed by “YES the baby’s coming!”

I immediately went from 7cm to transition (10cm) and the baby’s head crowning, all in a matter of seconds. It was INSANE.

No one was ready! The midwife grabbed the giant light and shoved on a hospital gown as best as she could! The nurses flew into action, shoving a giant pad under my bum, doing their best to get everything in order before this sweet baby came.

I wasn’t even pushing. My body was doing everything, and I felt like I was on a wild ride. After a couple of minutes, they said “Look down! Your baby’s head is out!” I tried but my belly was still quite big so I couldn’t see anything!

The midwife looked at me, “I need you to push one time – one big push – to deliver the baby’s body.”

So that’s what I did. I gave one big push, and she looked at me and said the same thing my first doctor said when I delivered Milly:

“Reach down and grab your baby.”

9:38PM
I reached down and took hold of the incredible, miraculous tiny hot body and pulled my sweet baby right onto my chest.

And then I started laughing. Such joyous laughter! Just so overwhelming. I didn’t even cry – I just laughed and laughed. Will was crying, I was so relieved. I was thankful it was all over. I felt victorious, like God Himself had held my hand through it all. Because He had. And I felt Him laughing right there with me.

I held that baby so close, and I couldn’t believe that from the time my midwife broke my water to the time I had my baby in my arms was just 6 MINUTES. (We asked because we wanted to know how fast it happened!) Craziest 6 minutes of my entire life.

Will checked to see if it was a boy or a girl, and after one look he laughed and said, “It’s another GIRL!” We both were cracking up! Another girl!! Will comes from a family of boys, we knew Milly was a boy, and I had so many signs that pointed to “boy” with this baby it was hilarious that I was holding another girl. I was absolutely thrilled! My sister is my dearest and closest friend, so for Milly to have a sister was the greatest gift.

I was nervous, but when I asked the midwife if I tore at all, she said only a little! I only needed 4 stitches – a 1st degree internal tear! My heart was so overwhelmingly thankful in this moment, as you can imagine.

I hugged my mama, my sister, and Elizabeth goodnight. Having them all in the delivery room with me was so, so special. I had my sister go get us Cook Out (because DUH, I just had a baby and a burger and milkshake sounded perfect), and she returned at about 1am. Never in the history of ever has a cookout tray tasted so dang good.

Will and I relished in this sweet new little girl, and debated on her name overnight. We weren’t 100% sure when she was born, but by the morning we were proudly introducing her to our family and friends:

Our beautiful daughter, Lyndon Whitfield Ray.

And introducing her to her sister was a moment I will treasure in my heart for the rest of her life. Milly has wanted to touch her, kiss her, hold her, and snuggle her from the moment she entered our lives. Their little relationship is already off to the sweetest start.

I still have to pinch myself. TWO GIRLS.

And if you’re reading this, feeling afraid about childbirth, feeling unsure about God in it all, I hope you can see these truths in this story:

If you ask God for help, He will swiftly come.
His Love is greater and more powerful than any fear.