Journals

Every once in a while, an all-consuming urge fills me to clean, organize or purge some part of my home. Yesterday the target of this urge was my bookshelf. It has been the target two or three times in the last year of my married life. So the only thing left to clean, organize, or purge  is the shelf of journals: every journal since freshmen year of college. The goal was to put them in chronological order.

God spoke to me as I looked through these journals, which was unexpected as I was merely looking for a date to put in order. There were some years represented by three or four different journals. Even the covers of some of the journals brought  back feelings of nostalgia and a fragrance of sweet memories. Inside them were notes of encouragement from others and for others. There were pictures of visions or dreams I had had. There were printed out emails. There were dried flowers from Egypt and a song book from a church I had visited. Most importantly though, there were conversations with God. My heart was on the pages of those journals. His heart for me was on the pages of those journals.

I was struck with a sadness as I realized that the last year and half only took up one journal, and it was more filled with sermon notes than an ongoing conversation with my Creator. The vibrancy I once had has changed and settled into an everyday kind of pace. I want it back. I want to know His heart for me and speak it back to him on the lined pages of a journal once more. So I finished my organizing, cleaning, purging endeavor, not by purging anything, but by adding this last years journal to the end of the row. I went out and bought a new one, for in faith, I believe a new season is also coming.