Spiritual Growth

My Journaling Journey

by David Herin

My frame was not hidden from you
  when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together
  in the depths of the earth,
  your eyes saw my unformed body.

All the days ordained for me
  were written in your book
  before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
  they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake,
  I am still with you.

— Ps 139:15–18

Introduction

On June 19, 1980 I began a process that has followed me until now. I had just turned 23 years old then and was living in Titusville, Florida, learning to minister to youth. I don’t remember what prompted me to begin that night, but now 25 years later, I have such a love for expressing my thoughts in writing that my journal is like an old friend.

I think this desire to write, to express what we love and feel and think, is God-given. The psalm recorded above says that even God Himself loves to put his thoughts about us in a book – “how great is the sum of them!...they would outnumber the grains of sand!” Each thought is worth capturing and preserving. Why? Apparently because God cherishes us, sort of like our mothers cherished each new step in our first years of life: our first smile, first word, first step – all in a baby book. The biggest difference is that God’s ‘baby book’ was written before we were born! Such is divine journaling!

Questions and Answers

So what is journaling? What is it that we should write about? How often should we write? Should we share our journals? Why should I journal? Is journaling for everyone? These and many other questions probably have more than one valid answer. But since a journal is a personal chronicle I can only say what has been my story and what has worked for me. In this article, I will define journaling and describe some of its benefits and its pitfalls. If you haven’t tried journaling, I hope you will give it try.

What is journaling?

I think journaling is more than just writing about what happened today, although that’s certainly part of it. Journaling is expressing in our own words (and even sketches), our thoughts and feelings and our walk with God. Praises, muses, stories, prayers, complaints are all welcome. It includes both the ordinary and the extraordinary and everywhere in between. If done well, journaling will help us understand ourselves and others, and help us to grow in our walk with God.

What should I write about?

Anything! everything — nothing is off limits! My life is full of questions and activities and conflicts and ideas and...how great is the sum of them! I write about questions and try to answer them. I also write about personal conflicts, what’s happening with my children, funny or sad things that happened, and what I read that is interesting or moving.

How often should I write?

I write frequently, but not every day, although there are consecutive days I write. But once journaling becomes a habit, it’s like eating: after I’ve not eaten for a while I get very hungry, and only one thing will satisfy me – the nourishment of writing.

Should we share our journals?

I have never given my journal to anyone, and I wouldn’t expect anyone to let me see theirs either. I did lose one of my journals once – I was horrified that someone out there could be reading all of my deep, dark secrets! Then, about three weeks later, it unceremoniously, mysteriously reappeared in my church mailbox! There was never an explanation, and I certainly didn’t care to probe. Journals are private; otherwise, they will cease to be written personally.

Is journaling for everyone?

I don’t think so, at least not journaling as I conceive it. But everyone does need to be able to freely express her inmost thoughts and feelings, whether that’s in a journal, an epistle, a poem, a pilgrimage, a prayer, or a practical work. All of us need and even must share. Why? Because we’re made in the image of a God who shares his joys and thoughts and feelings – and his love for us and for our lives.

Benefits of Journaling

So what – you say – are the benefits of writing in a journal? What do you ‘get out of it?’

For me there are at least three:

Facility of thought

Often the reason that I start writing in my journal is that I’m confused. Sadly many people live most of their lives in this fog, thinking that muddled brains are the lot we’ve all been served. Of course we’ll never receive perfect understanding on all questions that come knocking, but we can be a whole lot clearer.

Journaling or simply writing down our thoughts or feelings or both, forces us to reflect on the questions that are unclear to us. It makes us put into concrete words and phrases what we could not form by thoughts alone.

So journaling is forced or deliberate reflection. One of the best things about journaling is that it forces us to bring to the surface the thoughts that would otherwise remain muddled in our brain. Thoughts that would languish half-formed must be created whole, or at least birthed as baby thoughts. This runs to the heart of who the Lord is – he is the Word, the perfect expression of the Father’s heart. Aren’t you glad that the Lord didn’t just ‘mean well,’ that he actually expressed it? I’m convinced that we have a dearth today of clear thinkers. So much action today is based on thin sentiments that are devoid of clear thinking. We need to be able to think through to a conclusion, and to an action.

I’m convinced that many Christians don’t think very clearly, and as a result we continue to make mediocre, timid choices.

Facility of expression

The Psalmist exults in the thoughts of God toward us, that they are more numerous than the grains of sand. This is an astounding statement that shows, not only the depth and breadth of the love of God, but the fertility and facility to express each nuance of his heart. He loves us, but not only does he love us, he cares deeply about our families, but not only that, he thinks about a little girl named Sarah and her cerebral palsy and pities how she’ll react when she’s ridiculed at school today. This is the abundant, overflowing heart of love that our Lord has toward us. It is not general, but specific and nuanced.

Journaling is one way that we can learn to more precisely express our thoughts and feelings. Let’s face it, we all have feelings – that’s part of being in the human family – but we need to be able to identify and discern the shades of our feelings so that we can get at the heart of the matter and truly care.

A dialog with God

I’ve wrestled with what primarily motivates me to journal and it’s hard to put into words, but the best that I can say it is that the journal is a battlefield of my internal conflicts. We are all ‘wired’ differently; I’m wired in such a way that understanding the world is very important to me; it’s how I think I can manage my part of it. This is probably the single-most difficult battle in my life: can I understand the world enough to control it? The short answer is no, but it takes an on-going dialog/conversation/wrestling match with God to realize this and accept it.

The journal draws me to reflect when I hear the self-scolding of ‘DO SOMETHING!’ – when the world overwhelms me with its demands, its dreads...its dailyness.

And, if you read my journal, I generally vacillate between trying to find The Answer and finding the answer in the Lord himself. It’s a wrestling match in the dark, and then finally in the light of morning I see it’s with the Lord himself that I’ve been wrestling. Many of my journal entries end with a prayer, a cry to the Lord and finally a surrender. No matter what blind alley I scuttle down, I find that he’s already there. I simply cannot escape him.

Potential Pitfalls to Be Avoided

Are there any pitfalls to journaling?
Journaling appears to be such a safe and innocent practice, but don’t be fooled – the deeper that we go into the subterranean regions of the heart, the more dangers we find alongside the delights.

I can think of two related dangers that have been pitfalls for me:

Unhealthy introspection

What pushes the otherwise necessary and healthy practice of introspection over the line into unhealthiness? Introspection becomes unhealthy when it tries to achieve perfection all at once. But our transformation into Christlikeness is by degrees. When God gave the Promised Land to the Children of Israel, he said:

“And the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you little by little; you will be unable to destroy them at once, lest the beasts of the field become too numerous for you.” – Deuteronomy 7:22.

God – the understanding and merciful One that he is, knows that if he suddenly revealed all of our sins and forced us to rid ourselves of them, we would plunge overwhelmed into the depths of despair and hopelessness. Rather, like a Good Shepherd, he leads us one step at a time to claim each inch of our soul’s territory. Some preachers have counseled Christians to skim man-made checklists of sins and ‘check all that apply.’ This is supposed to foster repentance and cleansing. My experience, however, is that it only serves to dull and depress and condemn.

Conversely, proper and healthy introspection is a good use of the journal. Here we can freely admit to the Lord the particular area of sin or resistance and thoroughly deal with that – and I really mean struggle with it! Take your complaint to the Lord! Tell him you don’t want to give in, because you really don’t, do you?

Listen to David:

I pour out my complaint before him;
before him I tell my trouble. – Ps 142:2

This is what friends do – they openly express their heart and honestly relate to one another. Of course, we have to remember that this Friend happens to be our God, so we must be careful to maintain an attitude of respect. But anger or hurt or fear can be expressed respectfully; these two are not mutually exclusive. God can handle it! What do you think wrestling looks like? Who wants to wrestle a wimp who lets you win anyway? God certainly doesn’t.

Unincarnational thinking

The second pitfall in journaling is a little more difficult to understand, but no less dangerous. By unincarnational thinking I mean the kind of thinking that lives in a dream world that never comes off ‘cloud nine.’ Don’t misunderstand me, I think it’s good to let our thoughts soar to the heavens; actually this is what they should do when we gaze at the stars. The problem begins when those thoughts don’t fully return to earth. The Space Shuttle Columbia rocketed to orbit, but a tragedy occurred when it didn’t come back as it was designed to do.

We are spiritual beings, but we are also creaturely, earthly. We cannot escape the fact that we walk in both dimensions at the same time. Our Lord modeled this incarnationality to us – He, the Son of God who made the entire creation, became dependent on it. He demonstrated what it would be like to live in both dimensions, and what the gospel writers recorded over and over was the love that he showed to individual, specific needs – real human beings: applying the clay salve to the blind man’s eyes, instructing the lame man to wash in the Pool of Siloam, touching the leper...

Before He accepted the entire weight of the world’s sin and misery, he accepted and cared personally for each soul. He noticed and expertly touched individual hurts.

Now, back to the pitfall of unincarnationality, I have fallen into this pit by forgetting to relate my thoughts to the details of what’s actually happening in my life. You can read my journals, and many times I pontificate and philosophize and navel gaze and after a while it becomes stale and meaningless. Our journal can soar into the heavens and ponder world peace, but unless it relates to what’s happening here and now, to the apparently mundane, we will fall into this black hole and become ‘so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good.’ Soon people may dismiss us as an interesting, but impractical bemusement.

Conclusion

Journaling is one of many spiritual disciplines that can help us walk with God in this world. Use your journal to clear away the fog of confusion. Use your journal to learn how to precisely express each shade of meaning. And use your journal to wrestle with our Lord who’s proven that he’s not too proud to wrestle in the earth and won’t back down in a fight. Hold on to him until you see his expression in the morning light.

 

David Herin is a full-time technical editor and writer and lives in Indianapolis, Indiana, with his wife Jane and their six children. He serves as a pastoring elder at a non-denominational church and enjoys reading, writing and teaching. You can reach him at herins8@aol.com.

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