Journal keeping

Hello, Companion Mustard Seed Library book readers,

The author of the book we are reading writes of an example of the benefits of journal writing in one person's life, whom he was counselling. After the woman's life was back on track, she relayed to him that keeping a journal "was most helpful. It was there that she learned how to be herself and how to accept herself, even and especially when no one else would."

Here are the woman's problems. As you read, maybe you would like to try to predict what her outcome of praying and journal keeping would result in, in her life. What she would discover as to being able to be "her true self."

"She was not able to communicate with her husband and felt totally unsupported and unloved. She was under constant pressure from her mother-in-law, who lived nearby. She felt out of place in her small town since she was of a different national extraction from everyone else there, including her husband's family. She had left the church of her childhood for her husband's when she married him, only to feel condemned by this church's teachings. And when her husband more or less demanded that she actively participate in this church's weekly activities, she felt no community support for the religious ideas that were most dear to her heart. Finally, she was raising all her children alone while also functioning as secretary for her husband's business--without a salary".

With that mess of problems, it's sort of interesting to think what solutions for her might be best for her. The author of the book suggests that, when we write a journal, we ask ourselves, "What are the significant thoughts and feelings of this day? What are my responses to them? Did they come from any particular events? And then we write our answers. He suggests we take 15 to 30 minutes several days a week to write these important things in our journals and especially that honesty is most important--not to write with the idea someone else will read, don't write for posterity.

After this woman got in touch with her "true self"
"What is she doing now? Many things she was not doing before. For example, both she and her husband have secretaries and she counsels and prays with people herself. She has a renewed and loving relationship with her husband, her mother-in-law has become her best friend; and, in accepting the fact that her husband's church is different from the church of her youth, she has accepted the giftedness of their view of life without thinking she has to become like them or a part of them. Because she has learned to love herself as Jesus loves her, she is not only healed but is also a healing person for others."

Any surprises you folks out there in e-mail land see? Does it sound like she has come much closer to God and His Will for her life? The author writes that her main problem was that "She had lost her identity by living almost entirely by other people's values, needs, and demands in family and in church, and she no longer knew who she was." Personally, it was amazing to me that especially all her family relationships were reconciled and that her church relationships were reconciled in the way that they were. That she has become a companion for people seeking a closer walk with God, praying with them and so forth, but that she hasn't had to become like the people in her husband's church, while "accepting the giftedness of their view of life." All of our own problems are different from each others and our own solutions will be different from each others and, this woman's story, just makes me wonder about the priorities of it all--in God's sight and would any of us be surprised also at the outcomes as we grow closer and closer to God's Will in our own lives? As we know more and more truly that we, each of us, are born in God's image and that our reason and purpose in life is to complete this image through our free yes to God.

Tomorrow starts Chapter 4: Integrating and Balancing Opposites.

God bless,
Sharon