How do you process when big things happen? Do you let your feelings out? Do you stuff them down deep? Do you do your best to ignore them? Do you yell at your friends and family for no apparent reason? What if there was another option? Journaling is the act of writing out your thoughts, ideas, and emotions. As you seek to put them down on the page you are forced to slow down to think at the same pace that you write.
Journaling is a circular way of finding answers and slowing down enough that you can hear from God. This isn’t like school where you must meet a page requirement or use a bunch of sources. Or, even correct; punctuation.
Journaling is writing between you and yourself, or you and God. These words can be kept private, you don’t need to show them to anyone else. However, as you write you create a personal history for yourself. You can see where you once were, you can see how far you’ve come, and you can see the patterns in your life that might need to be addressed.
Psalm 105:5-7 reminds us,
5 Remember the wonders God has done,
his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced,
6 you his servants, the descendants of Abraham,
his chosen ones, the children of Jacob.
7 He is the Lord our God;
his judgments are in all the earth.
The shortest pencil can remember longer than the best brain. When we write it down, we can recall it more accurately. This is when it happened, this is how I felt, this is what happened next. When you journal, you can write about your hopes, you can write about your dreams, you can even write about your fears, you can write out your prayers to God. It doesn’t need to be long it just needs to be honest.
Write that down.