Journal

My first journal entry of my life was written during class one day when I was in 5th grade. My great aunt owned a bookstore, and had given me a blank lined book, in which I recorded my displeasure over being cast as Miss Hannigan instead of Annie in our school play.  So began my life of writing my thoughts.

In high school I wrote often, but I confess now that I played to an invisible audience.  What if someone snuck and read my journal? Or what if I died?!  Even though I felt like the lowliest living thing on the earth during those years, I wanted anyone who came across my journal to think highly of me, and my entries were crafted (unsuccessfully, I must admit) to that end. It wasn’t a very useful account.  I hadn’t yet learned what kinds of things I’d one day wish I’d recorded.

In college I kept only a sporadic record, which mostly focused on boys I was infatuated with.  #sigh   When I left on a mission, my journaling frequency really picked up, infused with the fire and ferver of my plans to convert Whole Cities!  #cringeworthy
Marriage and motherhood soon followed, and last year, divorce became a part of my story.

There are enormous gaps between entries; months and sometimes a year or so (e.g. my current hand-written journal spans the past 11 years), but I’m satisfied with the frequency of my entries.

For the past few weeks I’ve been re-reading all my journals from my whole life. To be honest, this has been a little bit excruciating. Even reading it in the privacy of my bedroom, there have been moments when I’m so embarrassed by me. The insecurity! The Angst! The limited perspective!  The immaturity, obliviousness, naivety, uncaged zeal and enthusiasm!  Words, sprawled across pages year after year, describing my endless struggle to figure out how to change the things that were wrong with me, overcome my shortcomings, and deal with the trials in my life, leaped off the pages and refreshed anew those feelings.  It seemed like decades passed, but no matter how aware I was, I just never figured out how to change.

But the surprise of it all has been seeing how, as I’ve gotten to the most recent years, I’ve actually grown!  After rehashing the same themes year after year, some of my struggles, quite without fanfare or my even noticing them, have slipped away and no longer plague me. 

I don’t know that I would have realized this if I hadn’t recorded my innermost thoughts over time. In some ways life feels like a blink…I’m not so different from that 5th grade girl who scratched out the very first entry..at least it doesn’t feel like it.  But reading those tens of thousands of words poured out into pages (often in my darkest hours), it’s easy to see how I have evolved, and quickly recognize the hand of God in my life as He’s shepherded me through that long chrysalis and made me into, well, me. 

He really does hear and answer our heartfelt prayers.

Here are a few suggestions for journaling that I wish I’d known early on:

  • It’s never too late to start. If you haven’t kept a journal, start now!
  • Date each page (or at the very least, each entry) and include a note about where you are, e.g.:  March 20, 2015 Morning, at home.  Or March 22, 2015, redeye flight to JFK for work. Etc.
  • In a rush? Bullet lists can be really effective for just getting major points recorded since your last entry
  • Quality paper make the process of writing much more enjoyable. It’s not a bad idea to spend a little more on a book for the ages. 
  • Use a dark ink pen that writes smoothly that doesn’t bleed through your paper (no horrible bad ink pens!).  Avoid red, orange, pink etc. ink (they fade in time).  Pencil can smear over the years, but is better than nothing.
  • Don’t bother including minutia from your day. This is probably obvious, but honestly, it won’t matter that you wore your plaid shirt and had eggs for breakfast twenty years from now. 
  • That said, if you want to write a sample “Day In The Life” entry to capture a snapshot of your life, that’s awesome.
  • Be honest. It will mean a lot to you to have a place where you can record your true feelings and thoughts.
  • What will be most interesting to you one day is the state of your heart, spiritual experiences, your fears, your struggles, your joys, your relationships, your testimony, your hobbies, your talents, your accomplishments, your failures.
  • Reading my whole history in a chunk, I noticed that I tended to write when I was struggling and weighed down. Writing is therapeutic and a journal is a great place to work through things, but it can give an unbalanced impression of your life if you don’t also make a point of recording the good, happy, wonderful, successful, joyful things, too.  So remember, highlights and lowlights.
  • Quality matters more than quantity.  If you’re pressed for time, don’t worry about writing every day, week, month etc.  But DO make it count when you do write.  You won’t mind gaps in your history as long as what you do write is meaningful to you.
  • There are many different kinds of journals: a daily Hand of God journal is a wonderful habit to make. Or a Gratitude journal, where you jot down three good things about your day or week. Some people keep Prayer Journals, etc. Personal histories are also fantastic and can be a one-time project to just record your life history, almost like a memoir. Your stories matter. You matter.
  • Sometimes in lieu of specific journal entries, I’ve included letters or email messages that I’ve written which include a lot of information about my life at the time. It’s all part of the record.
  • If you type your journal, print it out and put the pages in a binder. Trust me on this one! Computers crash. Technology changes. Typing is so much easier than hand-writing that I typed a lot of my journal entries in the 1990s when floppy disks were the thing.  But I didn’t print out what I wrote and now those entries are lost. Typing can be a great system if you back it up in The Cloud or elsewhere, but there’s nothing like a printed copy.
  • Something is better than nothing at all. Even if you just do a bullet-list of items once a year, that summary of your experiences will matter. Memories fade. Time passes. Jotting down a few thoughts about your one wild, precious life is a worthwhile endeavor.

What are your suggestions or methods for writing? Do you write on a set schedule (e.g.: first Sunday of the month, or once a week) or randomly?  How have you benefited from journaling? Does anything surprise you when you re-read your journal?


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