January 2, 2022, will mark 25 years since I began putting pen to paper and chronicling my life. Twenty-four years of documenting, cataloging, recapping, rehashing, lamenting, praying and worshiping my way through life. My journals are without question my most-prized possession. I would be devastated if anything ever happened to them - or if anyone else ever got their hands on them and read them. They are equal parts mortifying, sobering, comical and painful. I've told two of my very dearest friends on numerous occasions - if I should die suddenly, you have strict instructions to immediately burn every single piece of paper in my journals without ever reading them. You light the biggest bonfire possible and you toss them in and you keep watch until every last square inch has been turned to ash and dust. I will haunt you from the grave if you or anyone else reads them before burning. I trust they will honor my request.
Every so many years, I pull out the entire collection of journals and I read them from start to finish, from the very beginning until present day. It allows me to see the arc of my life, the broad strokes, the themes, rather than zeroing in on the details and finer points. It is both an exercise in remembering and forgetting. There are numerous entries I need to remember, where I need the reminder of all that God has carried me through, need the reminder of his illogical faithfulness to me, but also so many entries I wish I could forget - or at the very least take a black marker to them. Those kind of entries mainly related to boys, much to my dismay and embarrassment.
My first entry [enshrined in a brightly colored Lisa Frank* journal] was simply my new year's resolutions for 1997. I was all of twelve years old and I clearly was not the most ambitious child. I was mainly concerned about personal hygiene and somehow seeing to it that my pets' happiness was accounted for. I aimed to set the bar low in life, even at a young age:
January 2, 1997
11:05 a.m.
- Get up earlier
- Brush teeth every morning
- Get shower every night
- Wash hair every night
- Keep room clean
- Read Bible as often as possible
- Work with Bud [my pony] several times a day (patience!)
- Play with Maggie [my dog] more often
- Take care of fish tank often
The sad part is, if I stripped out the pet-related resolutions, this list could likely still be applied to various seasons of my adult life. Let's be honest - in the worst of my mental health crisis, showering felt like attempting to climb Mt. Everest. Washing my hair was icing on the cake. And that was at 33-years old.
Those early years were mainly filled with the mundane reporting out of a kid who lived a pretty simple, uneventful life. Middle school librarian who drove me crazy. Lesson horse who wouldn't cooperate. Friends who ignored me. Class assignments that were bothersome. Brothers who were - well, brothers.
But as the years passed, the entries became laced with much deeper, sometimes darker things. The simple resolutions of childhood were long gone. The complicated resolutions of adulthood were ever-present. Entries became far less about reporting external circumstances and far more about pouring out internal uncertainties and quandaries. The laments and sorrows of the latter years far outpace the optimism and naïveté of the early years.
If I'm not careful, I can linger too long over the past mistakes I've been reliving through these pages. It becomes easy to see the sum total of all my bad choices, regrets, poor discernment and wrong turns. When those moments come, it is there that I have to stop, close the pages and walk away.
And it is there that I have to see the redemptive hand of God in it all.
Jonathan Parnell wrote an article that has been formative for me in recent years, a framework through which I have come to view my past. Parnell exhorted, "The exercise is to read your own history — to pinpoint where you are now and jump backwards, working your way back up to the present. And during this reading, there are some specifics for which we should be on the lookout." He then outlined seven things for which we need to be on the lookout:
- See God's care for you.
- See God's wisdom for you.
- See God's grace for you.
- See God's humility for you.
- See God's goal in all your provisions.
- See God's goodness in comfortable stuff.
- See Jesus Christ as the way of God's mercy to you.
This exercise of re-reading my past is not merely an exercise in resurrecting regrets. It is an exercise in remembering why I need a resurrected Savior. Without his care, wisdom, grace, humility, goodness and mercy, the words that fill all 17 journals spanning 25 years certainly would be nothing but documentation of my foolishness and failings. They would be an archive, a snapshot, of a sinful, broken life.
But through a different lens, through the lens of God's faithfulness, I can see more than that.
I can see his care for me in the very darkest of seasons, when he sent friends I didn't know I needed, family who sat with me even when they felt helpless, and songs that would become my anthems.
I can see his wisdom for me when he shielded me from dating relationships that simply weren't meant to be, despite my longings and desires telling me otherwise. His wisdom told me that opportunity did not equal permission, and that outlook has spared me many a heartache, I imagine.
I can see his grace for me when I sinned against another and spoke cruel, bitter words. His grace came running, even when my sin sent me stumbling.
I can see his humility for me when he stooped low and answered prayers that seemed so trivial, so inconsequential. But those prayers became stakes in the ground, stakes I would use as reminders of his faithfulness, even in the seemingly simple requests.
I can see his goals for me in all my provisions when he transformed dreams and made a way for new beginnings. That riding scholarship I was convinced I would get and would desperately need as a provision to pay for college? Denied. But it turns out I didn't need a riding scholarship because he knew I wouldn't be riding for much longer anyway. His goals and his provisions were greater than I ever dared to dream.
I can see his goodness in comfortable stuff. There is never a physical need I've had that he hasn't provided, from the greatest to the least, including that mouthwatering burger and insanely good milkshake I had in Kenya at
Java House after being so sick of eating beans. A simple delight he chose to bestow out of the simple fact that he delights in caring for his children.
I can see Jesus Christ as the way of God's mercy to me when he disciplined and corrected sin that he simply would not allow to continue, for my sake and his glory.
It's all there - and more - in my past. But I have to look for it.
You have to look for the same in your own. His care, wisdom, grace, humility, goodness and mercy toward you are there in your past, just as they are in mine. Will you choose to see it? You don't need to have chronicled it all through journals like I have; that's not the point. But can you recall and bring to mind the workings of God, the fingerprints of his goodness stamped across the seasons of your life even apart from the written word?
Parnell concluded his piece by saying, "Every detail of God’s goodness to you has come through the blood of Jesus. Look back on these providences and remember that you’ve earned none of them. They come by Jesus, or they don’t come at all. His cross is the most vivid demonstration of God’s love for us, and every little good we’ve seen has flowed from that glorious fountain. It did yesterday, and it will tomorrow."
Every little good I've seen across 17 journals, 25 years and thousands of words has flowed from the blood of Jesus. I can look back on these providences and remember that I've earned none of them. They have come by Christ and Christ alone.
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*I was obsessed with Lisa Frank as a child, and I am seriously considering buying one of these sweatshirts, purely for nostalgia's sake. Oh, the days of Casey and Caymus, Hollywood Bear and Panda Painter! Brings back so many memories.
