Journaling

During one of my monthly conversations with my spiritual director, she asks about what practices I have to nurture myself. Among other things mentioned, I brought up that I’ve recently gotten into journaling. We went on to talk about other things. But it struck me that some of my story might connect with some of yours.

When I was a girl, it seemed everyone had diaries except me. I’d visit friends, see theirs, and think I was missing out on something. I wanted one of those little books with the tiny lock and key. I’d put it on my Christmas list, but did no more than that.

As a teen, I still hadn’t gotten a cute little diary, so I took a yellow spiral-bound notebook that still had lots of empty pages and I started writing. I quickly found out that I don’t have the … interest in writing about my life every day. As has often been the case, I had “better” things to do than whatever practice I thought I wanted to begin. I believed I had failed at yet another thing. (Yes, there were quite a few.) Still, I kept writing occasionally when I needed the outlet.

I didn’t know I was journaling, but I was. I wrote on and off, junior high through college – about school experiences, life at home, my near-nonexistence social life and about my own responses to what was, or wasn’t, happening. I wrote poems and the beginning of a story. After college, I forgot about writing except when I’d find that notebook. I wrote rarely and only in extreme need.

Until. A few years ago I read a New Year’s blog about journaling, and had two thoughts: "That’s what I used to do!" and "I need to do that!" I told Kay – the real writer of the family – and she decorated a nice notebook she was no longer using, gave it to me, and said she’d get me another when I filled that one.

I’ve been writing ever since, sporadically at first, but when I set a practice to write Sunday afternoons, it became much more regular.

Yes, practice – that’s another thing I’ve learned about myself. Although I never did the daily writing, it’s because it wasn’t important to me to do it. When something’s been important, like reading my bible each evening as a teen, or cleaning the litter box, I’ve generally made time for it. (Disclaimer: Although I read the bible for work, I’d gotten away from spiritual reading the last few years, and am only just getting back into it.)

I am not a failure, which I suppose was the reason I wrote this entry – so that I could assure you that you’re not a failure either. We can each take so many knocks in this life that it would be easy to conclude that there is something wrong with us. There’s not. We just need to keep at it, trusting that the One who made us “doesn’t make junk” (as a favorite toddler-sized t-shirt declares.)

Keep being the person you were made to be. And trust that the things that are important will get done, reassessing now and again if you need to, to make sure they really are the important things.

And may God bless you.