I’m a fan of journaling.
I love buying them, receiving them as gifts, using them.
I write in them about my life, my memories, my fears and desires, my frustrations and my thankfulness. I brainstorm and outline and connect thoughts and put together fragments.
Journals are all over my office, stacked on shelves and bookcases and in bins in a closet and under beds. I might be a little obsessed.
I started journaling when I was 10 years old with a diary that had a lock and a small set of keys. I didn’t have a lot going on in my life but I wrote about my cat dying, school work, vacations, summer fun, and lots of “Today was great. The End.” type entries.
When we moved, journaling was how I documented my sadness and frustrations and new friendships and starting school and hating biology.
My mom encouraged me to keep a journal whenever I traveled so I could write about the culture and adventures and what I saw and experienced. And I’m so glad she did. Through various missions trips and school trips and family travels, I would take a different journal and try to write in it at the end of each day. I was recently reading over some of those and of all the things I remember about those trips, there is so much I forgot. But thanks to my journaling practice, I can relive those forgotten moments again.
Through getting married and starting jobs and moving and becoming a mom I’ve kept journals — not as regularly written in but still precious — and it’s a habit I continue to foster.
The thing about journals is what you record in that moment in what you are feeling, thinking, experiencing. And over years of documenting these things, you can look back at the person you were and marvel at who you are now. Sometimes we change for the better, other times we see ourselves still struggling with the same sins and issues. But we see a picture of who we once were, maybe in a way that we’ve forgotten.
When I look back on certain periods of my journal writing, I notice I only had complaints to write about. I didn’t do this well, someone else got the award, a trip was canceled. I find it hard to believe that for weeks on end nothing good or happy happened to me as a teen-ager. But that’s all my 16 year old self wrote about. But I’ve noticed that — while sometimes sad and discouraging and hard things still happen to me — my more recent entries are focused on gratitude and thankfulness. Maybe it’s my older self realizing that optimism is more enjoyable and things that used to ruin my day aren’t that big of a deal.
I encourage people to journal, even if you don’t enjoy writing, because it’s a interesting lens to see yourself through. No one else has read my journals. I’m not keeping them on the off chance I need material for my autobiography. I’m keeping them to see God’s grace in my life. How experiences and trials have shaped and grown me. How relationships have stretched and challenged and molded me. The things I’ve learned in life and my Bible reading, the prayers lifted and answered.
It’s a habit I plan to continue. I still have empty journals to fill. And I still have lessons to learn and remember.
Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash