Records of a Somewhat Ordinary Life

Good reasons to journal 

by Gordon MacDonald

Forty years ago I committed myself to the discipline of journaling. I've never counted, but I probably have about 70 volumes of writing, which chronicle something about each of the days that make up those many years.
I wrote my first reflective words on a Saturday evening. Earlier in the day, I reached a moment when I felt overwhelmed by physical exhaustion, emotional depletion, and spiritual emptiness. Leaving the breakfast table, I lurched to our living room where I spent several hours sobbing, flushing myself of pent up frustration that must have been piling up for a long, long time. I have often compared that hitting-the-wall morning to the experience one reads about in the life of Elijah when he went to wilderness and informed God of his intention to resign.
When, several hours later, there were no tears left, I continued to muse quietly on what had happened. The catharsis that morning had never happened to me before. What had it meant? If Heaven has ever spoken directly to me, it happened then. I heard, "Now you know what it's like to live out of an empty soul."
An empty soul! That was it. I'd neglected my interior life for far too long. In fact, I'd probably never seriously cultivated it before. I depended on the relatively superficial energies of natural ability, visionary idealism, and youthful strength to do ministry. And, for the most part, I'd made it work … until that Saturday morning. Now it was as if God was saying (as I think he said to Elijah), "This far, but no farther."
Somewhere during the brooding process of that Saturday afternoon, I came to the realization that I needed to write down the thoughts that were surging within me. I recalled that many of the great saints had done similarly, and their journals were of inestimable value to people who wanted to understand more completely the ways of spiritually guided people.
I drove to an office supplies store where I purchased a spiral bound notebook. Back in our living room, I started writing. The words from that day fairly flew out of me and onto the page. It was the first time I ever tried to describe myself to myself. But it was a satisfying experience as I forced into words the feelings that had been boiling in me. The writing seemed to take on a life of its own; I felt like a spectator to the writing event. Each day that followed, I began a fresh entry in that notebook until, two or three months later, it was filled. And then I bought another and continued what became a daily habit.
That original journal lies in a safe in our basement with several dozen others that I have filled with daily reflections over these forty years. I should mention that when I purchased my first computer in the early 1980s, I switched from handwritten notebooks to printed ones.
From that first day until now, there has hardly been a day that I have not written at least a few paragraphs describing the condition of my heart and the activity of my days.
These journals contain the record of events, of people I have been with, of my present feelings, of my sense of God's voice in my life. Often I write about the things I'm learning through my reading and what others are teaching me. Occasionally, I write my prayers when concentration is difficult. I regularly write out Scripture verses, impressive quotes, even bits of poetry that I've written. The journal is a good place to confess anger, disappointment, and disagreement. It's also a good place to record blessings and strong senses of satisfaction.
Over the years, I have built disciplines of personal worship around my journal entries. Writing (or typing) things down helped me to be more concrete in my attempts to have communion with Jesus. If I felt nudged by the Holy Spirit or if I felt rebuked, I wrote it down. If I wanted to test the sensibility of my thoughts, I put them into written words. In the journal I tested my dreams and my intentions about this and that. More than a few times, confiding to my journal caused me to realize how silly or childish my moods and attitudes were.
As time passed, I took the time to look back and assemble the story of my life. It helped me to see how utterly faithful God has been to me. The journal helped me to see the mountain-high stack of blessings that have come to me, the grace that has been poured out upon me.
In all of these ways, my journal has become a best-friend.
A few years after I began doing all of this, my wife, Gail, caught the journaling bug and began her own process of personal writing. She has far surpassed me, I think, in the discipline. Now, given our mutual efforts, there is not much about our journey together that isn't a matter of record. What our children are going to do with all this stuff when we die is beyond me.
But if they wish, our children and grandchildren will be able to get rather deep inside the lives of two somewhat ordinary parents who have shared a life together and, for the most part, made a go of it. Here and there in the pages they'll find the stories of much of their lives as children, teenagers, and adults as their parents have seen it. They'll read about our affection for them, our hopes, and our concerns. But most importantly, they'll find in our journals the record of the favor of God even when one or both of us stumbled and went off the tracks. Realizing the other day that I was in my fortieth year of journaling, I went to the safe in the basement and retrieved that first journal and turned to page one, written late on that Saturday when it appeared to me as if everything in my life was falling apart. Down a few lines on the first page were these words: "It seems presumptuous to think that my life's notes will have any value once I am gone. Yet perhaps the greatest contribution one might leave for his children would be a personal chronicle of living—unbridled, unglossed, real to the core …"

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