Finding Your Rhythm of Rest

I’m a mom…there’s no rest for moms. We are among the ranks of those who are on duty 24/7/365. While there’s definitely no rest for moms, we are most certainly among those who most desperately need rest. We cannot function in a manner that is glorifying to our God or an example to our children if we DO NOT REST.

Last winter I was burnt out, and it WASN’T from the baby! The triplets had stopped napping, we were homeschooling, we were trying to work through things that had crept up in our lives and needed to be intentionally dealt with. All of it left me feeling drained. I had nothing in me to give, nothing in me to share. Nothing.

I’m still a work in progress. I still fail miserably at getting and giving myself time to rest. BUT there is hope!

For the past few years I’ve been following Shelly Miller of Redemption’s Beauty (she has a beautiful IG feed), when she shared about a book that she had been working on for the past year or so, called Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World.  I could use a little advice on how to find rest amidst the busy.

289793_rhythmsofrest_meme-2Sabbath-keeping not only brings physical refreshment, it restores the soul. God commands us to “remember the Sabbath,” but is it realistic in today’s fast-paced culture? In this warm and helpful book, Shelly Miller dispels legalistic ideas about Sabbath and shows how even busy people can implement a rhythm of rest into their lives–whether for an hour, a morning, or a whole day. With encouraging stories from people in different stages in life, Miller shares practical advice for having peaceful, close times with God. You will learn simple ways to be intentional about rest, ideas for tuning out distractions and tuning in God, and even how meals and other times with friends and family can be Sabbath experiences.

Ultimately, this book is an invitation to those who long for rest but don’t know how to make it a reality. Sabbath is a gift from God to be embraced, not a spiritual hoop to jump through. ~ From Amazon.com

Shelly does a beautiful job of wrapping all of the wisdom of Sabbath living into one package; easily navigable, easily applicable. Through a collection of letters and stories and scripture, alongside Shelly’s own words, she has crafted a beautiful guide to how we can find and create a rhythm of rest in our own world-weary lives.

It’s a wonderful book and it releases TODAY!

I’m hoping that my hard copy arrives in the next day (the digital copy just isn’t so easy to make notes on).
You can order your copy on Amazon (last I checked it was discounted, selling for $8.92!)

 

Comment Books, Faith, Intentional Living

Homeschool 2016-2017

We just finished our fifth week of school! Yay! We usually follow our local school’s schedule pretty closely (starting the first Wednesday after Labor Day) but this year we decided to start as soon as the fair was over. The pool was closed, there wasn’t much else to do, so we started.

It actually worked out pretty well for us. The beginning of our September was a bit rough, since we were gone for several days. The early start gave us a bit of a buffer to not get behind before we had even started.

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What are we using this year?

We’re still sticking with Sonlight this year. It worked well for us last year, so why mess with a good thing. I know a lot of people shy away from Sonlight because of the cost, we’ve spent between $800-900 for each year’s curriculum, not including our math and handwriting (usually another $100 total). There’s a great post HERE about the cost of Sonlight and whether it’s worth it for the elementary ages.IMG_4696

In a nutshell I love Sonlight for a couple of reasons:

  1. I love building our family’s library, Sonlight has fantastic books as part of their curriculum.
  2. As a first time homeschooling mom (who wasn’t homeschooled) who has 4 other younger kids, I love that every day is already planned for me.
  3. All of it will be used over and over again (minus having to purchase enough worksheets for all the kids).

While Sonlight covers our Language Arts (with Explode the Code–Ave doesn’t like it), History, Science, and Theology, for Math we’re using Math-U-See again.

What we are supplementing with…

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Avie is in the Alpha level. It’s getting a bit tougher for her now, but she’s completely capable of what they’re teaching. My only qualm with Math-U-See is that the DVD quality isn’t that great. The volume doesn’t go up loud enough for us to be able to really HEAR what he’s saying unless it’s dead quiet in the house. That, and I wish it were available through a log in on my phone, then we could use headphones and maybe hear better.

Our only other supplemental curriculum is A Reason for Writing. We used this last year and Avie did well with it, so we’re at it again with Level A. Her handwriting is getting better, but boy, does she HATE doing it. The nice thing with ARfW is that they’re short, sweet and build up a bit each day, so it’s not this huge daunting task.IMG_4698

One of the things we’re doing a bit differently this year is attempting to throw in some Five in a Row picture books (I’m TRYING to get the triplets involved). Rather than taking the week off for Thanksgiving we’re planning on reading Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin and throwing in some unit study type-things.

My problem with this is trying to figure out where to squeeze read-alouds into our day. I really need to spend sometime looking at our day and figuring out a set routine (we do have a loose routine), but that is a whole ‘nother post.

 

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