Monday Morning Reset

Good morning, friends! Monday mornings offer a fresh week with opportunity to reset in a few areas. Here are a few things I’m refreshing this week!

Bible Reading

I’m trying a new way of studying the Bible where you read a book of the Bible 20 times through without stopping to study deeper or research along the way. Ordinarily, I really like to camp out in a passage, look things up in my concordance, and take notes, but I think this will be a nice new approach for me, just for a change. The idea is that by the time you’ve read through a book that many times you are quite familiar with the book (obviously) and with what is in each chapter and have a clearer understanding of the details with each reading. You know how when you watch a favorite movie over and over and pick up some new detail each time? Same idea here. Also, I have a new Bible! This is big for me because I like to stick with my old Bible with all my notes. But this is a new version for me– the Christian Standard Bible. I read that it sometimes helps to change up the version you read because if you’ve read from and memorized from the same version for years (which I have done–the NKJV) you might be losing the impact with the familiar wording. I researched several translations and decided to give the CSB a try. A bonus is that this one has lovely flowers on the cover. My husband and I are reading through Romans.

Daily Exercise

I’m struggling to get on a good summer workout routine due to vacation, having company, and my husband’s work travel. So, my walking has only been a couple of times a week and my other exercises have been almost nonexistent and I’m really feeling the effects in my back and joints. So, I looked at my week’s schedule over the weekend and have worked daily exercise back into the routine. Above is photo from this morning’s walk. It always refreshes to watch the sun come up and early morning is the coolest time to be out!

Eating Healthy!

We’ve had a lot of fun gatherings and celebrations lately and we’ve enjoyed some really good food! A lot of it has actually been healthy because I’m taking advantage of all the delicious fruit and veggies of the summer, but we’ve also overindulged on sugar and such. My husband and I decided to give up sugar and gluten for the next month, maybe longer, just to detox. This will also help with that joint pain I mentioned! We always feel great and energetic after a cleanse like this. Sometimes I go more radical and give up a lot more, but we both agreed to keep it to these two things. There will be a couple of occasions we’ll make exceptions, but we marked those out to each other and set our parameters, so we don’t go beyond those. So, it’s back to clean eating and lots of salads this month! The shrimp and peach salad above is one of the meals I plan to serve this week.

I hope you all feel refreshed this Monday in body, mind, and soul!