New Rules

I have started journaling again - attempt number 248, I would estimate, for me. This time, however, it's different. The rules have changed. We're playing a new game with this journalling thing. And I think it might do the trick. 

Notebooks are precious things. Especially new ones. The first time pen touches paper could be disastrous and a waste of goodness-knows-how-many-trees-because-it's-tainted-and-can-Never-be-used-again. I've been working on that in recent years; wilfully ripping pages out, skipping pages in my bullet journal, flat out stapling disastrous notebooking attempts and proceeding to use the rest anyway. Yet, when it comes to a journal journal, I fall backwards. 

You see, I like consistency. I want to take up the same page space each day and write the date identically in style Rightly and use the Right acronyms and the Right brackets and set it out Right. Truthfully, it creates such a bother that it defeats the original intention in the first place. This time? We're embracing the mess. 

In part, as a self-professed writer, I should probably do the writing thing more often, which is a good enough intention in itself. Mainly, though, I've been caught far too many times talking to myself (ridiculously expressively, since I don't do things in halves apparently) in public that we need to have a new processing means. 

Additionally, it's a means of self-accountability, which is perhaps another intention of writing this post in the first place. For years, I kept a gratitude journal with one good thing about my day in it and one thing I was grateful for which was mesmerising to look back on. On the worst days, I noted my gratitude for visitors, for blankets, for fluffy socks, alongside finding little glimmers of good like the unreal tea and toast nurses can make, or even simply the fact that even the worst days only have 24 hours. It's all truth. I became far too pedantic and let getting it Right get in the way, but we have to keep looking to the light by whatever means works (within reason). Ultimately, God is probably not too bothered that my notebook of though and day and life processing is a bit messy; He sees the full mess I am regularly and He still somehow has grace for me, sooooo...

Keeping track of life, like the good things and what we are grateful for, or even just what we have been up to, provides something we can keep running back to when we forget that there ever was light. The shadows can convince you there never was, and never will be light again; your vision and memory are skewed in circumstances. But that is not what is true. It's why Christians have to return to the Gospel time and time again, why we have 1-1 discipleship, and read the Bible; we must keep combatting the lies of the world with what is true. What is true? That this is not the be all and end all. That there is more coming. That He will use this for His good. That He himself is still good. 

Writing is a means for me of processing, too. I love keeping track of snippets of gold people have said through which God's grace has shone, or the funny things Cait comes off with (most recently; 'You would suit that green satchel. Alisha, you're worth more than a brown satchel'). Like any other human, I need reminded of just about everything continuously. Whether that is to redirect my eyes upward to Christ again or that I need to buy milk, I have to write it down - you don't want to see the 488 notes on my phone, I assure you. There is so much value in what people say and do for us that I want to store it somewhere more reliable than my brain, and I trust that God will use that as I return to it over future years. 

So, here's to rule changing and messy journalling. Here's to truth reminding. Here's to processing. Here's to holding onto the light. 

Take care.