Hope Can Be Found in Journaling

September 11, 2014

Have you ever kept a journal? What did you decide to write in it?

I confess, I’ve never been a regular journal-er. However, I have often written poetry to express my feelings. I think that counts. The object is simply to solidify thoughts and feelings by making a record. Some people keep prayer journals with needs and answers documented. Some write deep explorations of their feelings.

If you are going through a healing journey, it’s important to document feelings and personal development. When you have that evidence, you can go back and read your entries when you are struggling. This is a great source of hope, because inevitably you find that your current status shows improvement. Even if you are experiencing the same type of challenge you can bet your responses are now more mature. Growth will be evident, even if it’s only a little.

I learned as a child how to repress emotion and memories. Until recent years, if a particularly traumatic event occurred, I buried the memory until it was inaccessible. But God knew it was there.

While in my mid-twenties, I visited an ex-pastor and his family. I thought we were close, but that night he wanted to get a lot closer. To an outsider it might have looked like an attempted seduction, but it was a serious personal violation. I froze.

Poetry had always been my emotional outlet, my journaling. In burying the memory, I also buried my inner poet. At a conference ten years later, God released her.

(If you want to save this poem’s image, right click it. There will be a drop down menu, so choose “save image as.” Then paste it into your “favorites” program.)

Here’s what I wrote.