I should be sleeping but wanted to post this before heading to bed.
A few months ago, I bought The Journals of Jim Elliot. At 475 pages, it's significantly longer than most books I buy, but his life so fascinates me that I wanted to read his raw words. I'm reading very slowly, as his thoughts are full of meaning that I want to absorb and appreciate.
Because I know he and I think along the same wavelength, I bought the book for my brother-in-law for his birthday. We chat about it now and then...about what we're learning and how we're being challenged from words scrawled in a notebook years ago.
I love journaling and do it in a variety of ways. My scrapbooks are journals of sorts. I have actual journal books. Even the Bible studies I write become journals when I share details of my life events and how they relate to the topic at hand.
This week has drained my heart...and by tonight it had sapped much of my spirit, too. I was the girl out on the running path who occasionally could be seen swatting bugs and wiping a random tear. Interesting and maddening how the words of someone I don't even know in real life could affect me so profoundly. How I can hear them echoing in my mind as I run...as I cook...as I try to fall asleep at night. How his opinion of me, which I will not repeat in polite company but can assure you is less than favorable, has caused me to question everything about who I am.
It makes the moments profoundly lonely when I am caught up in those thoughts and have no one to pull me away from them or refute them.
When I came home from my run tonight, defeated by the thoughts, I sat down with some journal entries I wrote a few years back after a deeply moving seven-week encounter with God. I shook my head at my own words, hardly able to believe they were coming back to encourage me. I hadn't intended to be my own audience, but I found comfort in the lessons I learned in a little prayer chapel. I am so thankful I took time (on the spot) to document that time in my life, as I'd forgotten much of the detail. But God is a God of detail and faithfulness.
And for that, I am thankful.
1 hour ago
5 comments:
Awesome post, Bekah! That's so neat how God used a past journal to encourage and uplift you! It sounds like you've found so many outlets for your writing and God has his hand in each of them!
Thanks Jody! I just want you to know (this is for real!!) that last night when I was in bed trying NOT to think about this situation, I remembered a card you wrote me waayyyyyyyyyyyyyy back in the day. I still have it in my "keep forever" stack. Some kid visited youth group...don't even remember who he was...and said something very hurtful to me. I don't remember now (praise the Lord!) what it was, but that week, you sent me such an encouraging card about how rude he had been and how you wanted me to know my true worth. I have read that over and over again throughout the years, and last night I thought of it again. THANK YOU!!!!!
That's happened to me before. I've read back over something I wrote years before and found inspiration in it. Perhaps God led you to read them, knowing you'd find comfort there.
Stephanie - I am quite sure He did - AND I'm quite sure I'm not done learning from that set of writings!!!
Bekah: HUGS!
One person's OPINION of you is overshadowed and minaturized in the TRUTH of our most awesome Father G-d.
I mean, you did say this person was a GUY, didn't you?
The only GUYS whose opinion I'd listen to, other than the Lord, is your father, and Chris (I can NOT believe I'm saying THAT! ;-D )
Chris many times has surprised me in his honesty and his humor. If you were a dweeb, he'd in no way hesitate to tell you. Since he hasn't, and your dad hasn't, then, the person who said negative stuff about you is just one fry short of a happy meal.
G-d's truth is the best.
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