Weekly Rundown: He is Risen!

Hey there! Happy Resurrection Sunday! I’m back from vacation–more on that in an upcoming post–and I’m getting back to the Weekly Rundown (even if it’s a bit late this week). Our week wasn’t a normal one, as we drove back from Florida for three days and took another day to get organized and settled. Ever have a 3-day week that actually feels really long? That was this week.

We’re celebrating Easter this weekend. It’s a strange holiday to wrap my head around most years because the immenseness of what we’re celebrating is a lot to take in! We had a great church service this morning, a gospel-centered sermon, and an extra-long time of singing.

Over the last several years, so many churches have added to the gospel. Watered it down. Supplemented it with other things. Made it seem too small on its own. Gospel that has been altered is not gospel at all.

Learning Well LLC is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Affiliate links from Amazon or other programs are used on this website. For more info, please refer to our disclosure statement.

Jesus is enough.
We cannot save ourselves.
We all deserve death.
Jesus overcame it.
Repent + believe.

That’s it. That’s the gospel.

We had to leave our church a year ago because it became glaringly obvious that the gospel wasn’t enough there. Our new church is amazing and our only regret is that we didn’t join there sooner.

Happy Easter, my friends. I hope your Sunday has been beautiful.

Here’s the rundown from this week:

Reacclimating this week has been a TASK! Can we go back to Rosemary Beach?

MAKING HOME

So far this year has been really choppy with sickness and travel and regular busyness, so the projects we started mid-January are STILL in progress and I’m really over it–but this week, returning home from vacation and trying to get back in to homeschool, we got nothing done on projects.

But we did spend one day cleaning and picking up. We also dyed eggs on Good Friday night like we usually do. We added cooking oil to a couple of the dyes for a fun effect.

RELATED: Natural Egg Dye

WHAT WE’RE LEARNING

After being gone for over a week on vacation, I was not prepared for school Tuesday morning. Tuesday is our Homeschool Band day and we are gone most of the afternoon anyway, so I took the morning to plan out lessons for the next two weeks and get organized.

RELATED: How I Plan Our Homeschool Days

Wednesday then was our “Monday” and we had a pretty short week but it felt long. Spring is always the worst time of year for me for motivation in our homeschool. We’ve got 8 weeks left of this year, so I guess I can’t say I’m totally unmotivated–it does motivate me to finish the year strong and complete what we’ve started once I can see those single-digit weeks left!

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE READ:

• The Birds Our Teachers by John Stott. (HIIIIIGHLY recommend!)
• Exploring Creation with Zoology: Flying Creatures of the 5th Day
• Beautiful Feet Books Around the World with Picture Books Part II
• Genevieve Foster’s George Washington’s World and I cannot express how much I love these books! We are reading this as part of Beautiful Feet Books Early American and World History
• Sebastian Bach: the Boy from Thuringia as part of Zeezok Music Course
• SQUILT March Listening Calendar. We finished up the March calendar and are starting on piano music for April!

NOTEWORTHY

I watched + listened to a few things over the last week that are definitely noteworthy. Kind of all over the place, but all worth your time:

• Have you been feeling like the media is nothing but a bunch of liars? Ha! Me too. I watched HOAXED one night when we were driving home from Florida. Really well done. You can only get it from iTunes–banned from Amazon, so it must be good 😉
• A lot of churches and pastors don’t like to talk about sin, the depravity of it, and what horribleness our hearts are bent toward. I listened to this sermon from R.C. Sproul on Good Friday. He talks about sin and does not hold back.
• To move or not to move? Have you noticed a lot of people are moving lately? We’ve been questioning whether or not we’re in the right place too. On our drive home, we listened to THIS PODCAST from The Sword and the Trowel on moving…well worth your time if you’re feeling that nudge too.
• Many believers I know are feeling a sense of urgency. Maybe to prepare for what’s ahead, maybe to prepare their children better, whatever it the root of it, there us much urgency among believers. I loved THIS ARTICLE from Doug Wilson this week. Seven super practical things we can do right now.
• Do you need a little help in your quiet time? Carole Joy Seid had a wonderful podcast this week with practical things we can do to help improve our time with God everyday. LISTEN HERE.

ON MY HEART

I’m working on something: how I talk to myself.

When we got home from vacation Monday night, the unpacking and getting back into regular routine felt overwhelming. I let it overwhelm me. I feel behind, buried in stuff to get done, like I’m failing at all the things, and worse. It’s not just that I feel those things, I actually speak them to myself in my head on a loop.

It’s a pattern of: things stacking up, overwhelm setting in, paralysis of beginning, romanticizing of another time when it felt like I did have my stuff together, and the self-talk begins. Repeat loop.

Do you ever do that?

I’m working on memorizing some scriptures to say instead of the negative self-talk. Anyway, that’s been my battle of the week for me.

Back to Instagram?

For Lent, I took Instagram off my phone and let it go completely. I haven’t felt the need to check in or felt like I was missing anything at all. Now with Easter here and gone, a friend asked if I’ll be adding it back this week.

Honestly, I have no desire to.

There are many great things that come from social media, but also, social media is a huge time waster. The constant click/like/swipe/skim read is just exhausting and not something I’m feeling like I want or need right now.

For now, I’m enjoying this: writing out full thoughts, emailing you to let you know I recorded a full thought, reading your comments in response to those thoughts.

There are tons of new articles coming in my editorial calendar and I love to write them! That’s where I want to focus right now.

So, say HI to IG for me, I’m not hopping back on just yet.

ON MY NIGHTSTAND

Here’s what’s on my nightstand:

• Live Not by Lies by Rod Dreher–must-read!
• The Huntress. A work of historical fiction about a woman charged with persecuting Jews in WWII.
• Don’t Make Me Count to Three  A parenting book with the approach of starting with the heart of your child as you discipline. Everything leads back to scripture so you are training as you discipline. This idea is so good!
• Becoming MomStrong is a new bible study I’m doing with some friends and I love the book so far. Really solid biblical teaching. A lot of women’s bible studies are completely surface-level. Not much depth or too overly emotional. I just really struggle with good, solid bible studies, so I usually just go back to the solo bible. I actually learn a lot more that way. But I am happy that this study looks really good.
• Mere Christianity with a friend and it is excellent so far!

BE THANKFUL

Quick List:

• My church + my pastor
• Cooking dinner with Vera
• Unsolicited hugs from my kids
• The promise of heaven because of Jesus took my place in death.

What are you thankful for this weekend?

Talk soon!