I’ve journaled on and off through my life. More consistent has been the encouragement to journal from wise people who say it helps your soul release pain and understand your journey. Journaling is for the journey, Dwight said today. Not a blog, not for public consumption – but for you.
King David’s journals became public, to say the least. And they have helped me more than any other writings. Just yesterday while pouring out my heart to God in prayer, He led me to this is Psalm 121: “I lift up my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” My heart was deeply comforted knowing that though I may have difficulties, the One Who created everything helps me.
Our souls hold on to so much. What if you carved out time, what if I carved out time to turn off the TV, to prioritize our needs, to silence the distractions for just 30 minutes, and to sit before the Lord with a pen and paper.
Here are some interesting quotes Dwight sent me. #muchlove
“This is what you do when you journal. You are recording God’s grand, epoch-spanning redemptive story as it unfolds in your limited, temporal sphere of existence here on earth. Your journal has the potential to record the continuation of the Holy Spirit’s work in our world!” ― Adam L. Feldman, Journaling: Catalyzing Spiritual Growth Through Reflection
“Advice to Young Journal Keepers. Be lenient with yourself. Conceal your worst faults, leave out your most shameful thoughts, actions, and temptations. Give yourself all the good and interesting qualities you want and haven’t got. If you should die young, what comfort would it be to your relatives to read the truth and have to say: It is not a pearl we have lost, but a swine?” ― Rosamond Lehmann
Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself. – Pat Conroy, “My Reading Life”
I pretty much drink a cup of coffee, write in my journal for a while, and then sit at a computer in my office and torture the keys. My one saving grace as a writer is that, if I’m having trouble with the novel I’m writing, I write something else, a poem or a short story. I try to avoid writer’s block by always writing something. – Jess Walter
After my husband died, I could not write much – I could not concentrate. I was too exhausted most of the time even to contemplate writing. But I did take notes – not for fiction, but for a journal, or diary, of this terrible time. I did not think that I would ever survive this interlude. – Joyce Carol Oates
I write journals and would recommend journal writing to anyone who wishes to pursue a writing career. You learn a lot. You also remember a lot… and memory is important.- Judy Collins
One of the few things that will remain of this time is what artists are doing. They are the journal and the diary of our time. – Robert Wilson
I have obsessed about my weight in some sort of way all my life. I used to write in my journal what I weighed every day. – Valerie Bertinelli
Hoping they’d been inspired by the examples of Anne Frank and other teens who had turned negative experiences into something positive by writing about them, I handed out notebooks for my students to journal about their lives. There was some initial resistance. But then the stories poured out of them, full of anger and sadness. – Erin Gruwell, teacher
My comedy notebooks are filled with random journal entries. It’s all the same. I can look back on old joke notebooks, and know exactly what was going on in my life.- Sarah Silverman
I carry around a little journal with me and just write all the time. Not necessarily actually sitting down and writing lyrics – just freeform writing, whatever’s going on in my mind. I write a lot on airplanes, actually, because it’s completely isolating. – Mandy Moore
I love playing. The keyboard is my journal.- Pharrell Williams
There are certain things that make me relax, like writing my journal. That’s the only time that I’m relaxing. It’s the only time I really get to examine myself. – Jessica Simpson
“Once a day, especially in the early years of life and study, call yourselves to an account what new ideas, what new proposition or truth you have gained, what further confirmation of known truths, and what advances you have made in any part of knowledge.”
― Isaac Watts, The Improvement of the Mind to Which Are Added a Discourse on the Education of Children