Express Yourself

Trust the Lord with all your heart. Don’t rely on your own understanding of things; instead, submit everything to his authority and he will show you the way (Prov. 3.5,6). I learned these verses as a child. Later in life they have become my guiding principle. The philosophy is so simple, yet so profound, and so endearing – a loving God who desires acknowledgement and relation from those made in his image, who loves his children to come to him for advice and instruction.

We have forgotten (or have never learned) the import of time spent in isolation, in reflection, in quietitude. The reasons are myriad, I suppose, but mainly they stem from a social mindset of busy-ness, ‘work ethic’, chasing success, getting stuff – most of which can be umbrellaed under the term ‘materialism’. We have traded living for getting, maturing for perpetual childhood, knowledge for entertainment, wisdom for imitation … and on and on. Sad, that. This descent into mindless inhumanity is tragic - it speaks to a misunderstanding of what human means. In the final analysis, it reflects an unacknowledged mindset that produces escapism, getting away from ‘me’, pretense, an impression-istic lifestyle to convince people I am ok, in the groove … while all the while I don’t even know who I am.

When we hide from ourselves, we fool ourselves, and make fools of ourselves.  Better to acknowledge who we are and move from there, in this or that direction, with some guiding principles that serve to take us somewhere, hopefully somewhere better.

Although we were not designed to live lives of isolation, we cannot truly live unless we know ourselves, and that requires introspection and consideration of the heart; those things require time spent apart, alone, quiet, tranquilled, blood pressure and pulse leveled, stress-less.

Until I know my heart, I am playing life.

The Psalmists often mention ‘meditation’. They refer not to the mindless practice of emptying the mind and embracing the universal energy, but to the practice of focusing on the Divine. And where better to go, for in the words of the Proverber, ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’. True.

That leads me to this: a good practice to advance that mindset is journaling. Used to be called ‘keeping a diary’. Used to be a woman thing. Some years ago I began writing. As that progressed, there were thoughts I had that I didn’t want to (or couldn’t) share. That led me to private notes, which I soon found out was termed ‘journaling’. And I have never stopped. I have accumulated several journals over the years, all intensely personal and private; all go to the grave with this body.

There are some presuppositions, some ground rules, some things you need to have set in mind in order for you to achieve the benefits of journaling.

One such thing is the understanding that your journal is strictly private. It belongs to you, no one else will ever read it, and what you say there will remain unspoken to everyone else. This is the basic rule, and apart from it you will not be able to express yourself to yourself in utter frankness.

Another rule: say exactly what’s on your mind, in exactly the way you’re thinking it at the time. You’re big enough to take it, and so is God. If you tone it down or dress it up you are defeating the whole purpose of being honest with yourself, and will never really get to know your own heart.

Understand that, as a Christian (and I’m speaking, I suppose, primarily to those who are), you are on a God-radar, and what you think, say, do, feel, etc. are monitored by him. Not that he’s looking to catch you in some wickedness so he can punish you, but because you are his child and he’s intensely aware of you and concerned with you and your wellbeing, your shalom. He watches out for you.

This understanding translates into, ‘what I write here is between me and God’. That’s a significant mindset. 

The danger arises out of telling yourself that since it’s between you and God, there are things you cannot say, cannot express, or maybe cannot say in the way you otherwise would have said, lest he should hear … Think about that. That means you suppose that God doesn’t know what you’re thinking if you don’t write it in your journal, that you have things in your heart God is not aware of. I beg to differ. ‘Man looks on the outside, but God looks on the heart’, friends. Point is you have to bring that admission to your own attention, and not escape from it; only then will you be able to be totally honest when you talk to yourself.

This phenomenal realization brings me to the place where I realize that when I journal, I’m actually praying. I’m communicating with God from the recesses of my heart, the place where the real me lives, and moves and has my being. It is precisely there that God wants to meet me. That is precisely the person God wants to talk with, to hear from, the real me. Journaling helps to achieve this.

Lastly, be sure to have your journal secreted such that no one will ever find it, ever.

From the previous comments you can tell that journaling has been a huge part of my life. It has given me the freedom to admit, to repent, to relish, to remember, to complain, to curse, to vent, to question, to beg, to reminisce, to search, to praise, to worship, to adore … and maybe to die - to be me, in all my unglorious, utterly human, dreadful, insecure, ugly nakedness, unashamed, secure in the knowledge that this is the only me my God wants. And maybe bold enough to believe that he will hear me when I speak, and that he wants to.

That, my good friend, is freedom.

That is the kind of God I serve. He is marvelous beyond human description, loving me in all my ugliness, and wanting to relate to me in all my ugliness so that he can have root to change me into the image of his Son, as a son. That rocks! I’m in. I’m so in!

Please get in. Know yourself so that you can know the God who loves you intensely, and wants to make you into his favourite child.

Journal. You’ll relish every moment.

shalom