Did Any Of You Keep Journals?

[mick]

When I first was discipled by Campus Cruscade for Christ I was taught to have "devotional" journals, where I would would write the date, some scripture, whatever, some prayers etc, worhsip.

 

Anyway, I just found one for 2 years ago. My wife actually left it for me to find, turned to a certain page, I think. I was reading it and I just couldn't believe the stuff I wrote. I tell you it really was amazing. (It also, spoke to myself, when I question whether I ever believed it. Reading that thing was downright scary, if I meant the things I wrote at the time. It was literally worship in writing. It's like written proof that you really did believe it)

 

Man, what a trip.

[trashy]

I found journaling to be overly introspective and navel-gazing. I hate reading my old stuff.

[Piprus]

Whew! That's really heavy stuff. Certain evidence of your brainwashed state at the time. I was already long-gone from xianity by the time I was in college, so I can't imagine what CCC must have been like.

[truth]

Sort of. I would try to keep notes on sermons and stuff like that... or when I was really involved in the womens prayer group, I would often write down scriptures and the message of teachings. I would also write down any visions or epinanys that I or someone in the group may have had. My journals are sitting closed gathering dust. I do not plan on re- reading them. I about a yr ago when I was still a xian but totally depressed then that I had become so far away from the lord..

 

I would rather just move on with my life, I spent too long trying to figure out how I could believe what I believe and be a xian at the same time. It was a painful decesion to decide that I was not being true to myself by trying to be a xian. I do not wish to go back and re read, of a time when I was just following what other believers were doing.

 

Maybe at some point in my life, I will re read the journals, I do have other just regular journals too but mostly I used them as an exercise to vent and process my feelings and life journey.

 

In the fall I started a new journal, which I haven't felt the need to write anything in for a while. And there are no prayers or xian babble in this one. This is the journal that I really don't want my mother reading.

[Scarlett]

Well I wouldn't have called them devotional journals, they were more akin to notebooks of my studies. Yes, it can be very scary looking back on what you used to believe (at least it is for me). I used to come up with all sorts of crackpot 'theories' to try to make the bible and science & history fit. I had one notebook was just on the laws and punishments according to the bible.

[Megara]

I kept a devotional/prayer/religious thought journal when I was in my more "liberal" stage (liberal to the point of believing in Christian goddesses) of Christianity. I've read over it a few times. I would read over it and shake my head. I recently threw it out.

 

I do, however, keep general journals. At first it was a hobby, but then it became sort of a "psychological assignment/suggestion" from my psychiatrist... Lately I haven't been writing. Maybe I should get back into it again.

[ThinkingForMyself]

Can't say that I did. I wasn't very good at keeping up daily routines like that for long. I guess I was too lazy at the time. Actually I would try to. It was always a new years resolution. It would last for 2 weeks. Then I'd put it on my shelf and a few months later I would read it, wonder "what was I thinking?" and toss it out.

[smellincoffee]

I've been keeping journals for almost ten years (in March). If you read through them, there's practically no mention of God.

[godlessgrrl]

I've been an inveterate journal-keeper since the age of 11, when a Language Arts teacher included regular journaling as part of her class assignments. I'm 34 now and I value every single entry, as a slice of memory that might otherwise have been lost. (Having been told endlessly that I "just imagined" a lot of my life, I cling to my journals with ferocity: they're proof I didn't "imagine" anything.)

 

I've never kept journals with a specific purpose, so I don't have any devotional journals to speak of. But I can certainly see plenty of entries from my days as a Xian, which more or less served as devotional or prayer-based entries. They're really weird.

 

Apparently I used to look for signs of God in a lot of things that I'd now look at as being random occurrences. Thank dog I'm out of the meme; I sounded like a nutjob.

[Friendly Misanthrope]

Thank dog I'm out of the meme; I sounded like a nutjob.

 

To quote the Cheshire Cat, "We're all mad here!"

 

edit: I meant "mad", not "made!" NB I fixed the typo already.

[Llwellyn]

Yeah, I use to journal a lot. I have several books full of entries. Most of my entries are my recorded prayers to God. Most of the stuff expresses severe neurosis, self-hatred and morbid introspection. If you remove the prayers that were driven by sexual anxiety, then about 50% of the material in the journals would be gone. It was pretty unhealthy to say the least.

[trashy]

Gordon MacDonald wrote a book called "Ordering Your Private World" which talks a lot about journaling. This book was what primarily got me started journaling in the early days of my marriage. I stopped when I discovered he had had an affair. It didn't seem that journaling had helped him hear God's voice, unless God had told him the affair was OK. But ol' Gordon's doing fine these days, back to pastoring the church he left after the initial revelation, plus lots of other leadership ministry stuff.

 

Someone remind me again why ministers are supposed to be examples of virtue and ethics?