Journals: Blessing or burden?

I recently stumbled upon a journal entry from FORTY YEARS AGO:

1/6/85--Jesus, I pray that my pain can be another's reason to look for and find you.

I sat and stared at it. Whoa, if I could've seen into the future, that I'd one day tell my hard story for the purpose of helping others find hope and healing, I wouldn't have believed it was possible.

God heard my prayer, but it didn't come to fruition until 2023, when Heartmending was published...thirty-eight years after that prayer. I'm reminded, again, that God operates outside of earthly time. Do you get impatient, like I do, for His answers?

Journaling our deepest thoughts, earnest prayers, and honest struggles provides a record of our growth in both healing and faith, which can leave an encouraging legacy to those who come after you. Such journals become treasures to future generations who'll never meet you.

Four decades of my journals, which doesn't include digital ones

Then there's a different kind of journal. The one where I screamed my rage and hatred, page after page, in the year following my father's abuse of me. I didn't know Jesus then, so an avalanche of profanity and hateful mudslinging poured forth. The tear-stained pages dripped with grief and heartbreak. I had tucked that journal in the back of my closet and forgotten about it.

When I rediscovered it years later, I had been walking with Jesus and working through my healing journey. The words shocked me. I had nearly forgotten how deep my hopelessness was then. I had young children and I recoiled in horror at the thought of them reading my scorching narrative, so full of despair.

I built a roaring fire in the fireplace and tore out one page at a time, reading it and thanking God for how far He'd brought me, then tossed it into the flames and watched as my emotional hell turned to ashes. 

How fitting that God made beauty from THOSE ashes.

Why do I tell you this story?

Because although I heartily endorse journaling your way through life, consider your legacy. Leave your progeny the story of how your trauma led you to Jesus, or how your suffering taught you lifelong lessons. Your journals aren't just for you, are they? (if you don't want anyone to ever read them, make a plan for their destruction!)

Don't spew darkness without light that dawns. Like David's Psalms, go ahead and give full vent to your sorrow, but wrap it up with your trust in God and the hope and comfort He offers.

Tell your descendants who you were, and how Jesus changed all that.

They need to learn the way forward.

From you.

Long after you're gone.

Give your great-great-grandchildren your testimony. Help them seek something higher, something good, something beautiful that can come from evil, ugliness, suffering, and darkness.

Leave behind a blessing for them, not a burden.

Give them hope in the only thing that matters.