Put out of your mind “dear diary…” and replace it with Augustine’s “Bear with me, O my God, while I speak a little of those talents, thy gifts, and of the follies on which I wasted them. For a lesson was given to me that sufficiently disturbed my soul, for in it there was both hope of praise and fear of shame.”
I have avidly kept a journal (NOT a diary) since the 7th grade. Captured initially by a romantic notion of passing on thoughts and life lessons to daughters and granddaughters, I have now fallen into the heavily marketed self-help trend and accumulated quite a saga of embarrassing stories. However, as a lover of books and poetry and as a follower of Christ, there have been some fruits of this labor. While I have seen the value in keeping records of one’s daily experiences, I would also like to argue for a more prayer-centered approach to journaling.
Sylvia Plath caught my attention not long after I started writing, somewhere in the dark age of junior year; I had picked up her Abridged Journals and The Bell Jar in the Strand Bookstore. I was captivated by her visceral use of language, her nods to Eliot and Joyce, her tragic feminine edge, and her yearning to experience the world to its sensical fullest. My writing about my daily experiences was soon framed by vignettes of conversations and moody environments that struck me. Perhaps my writing was introspective, but it was nothing spiritual. What came most naturally to me, and what comes naturally for many, was a kind of negative emotional dumping aimed at capturing personal experiences with as much visceral accuracy as I could. This kind of therapeutic journaling is usually promoted as thoughtful introspection and healthy self-awareness. However, the therapeutic goal of this sort of writing centers on an inner darkness rather than focusing on real truth and the light. Plath in all her literary brilliance captures life vividly and with brutal honesty, but at the end of the day, what does intimate and artistically drawn-out navel-gazing do for the soul? When we take away the prose, what are we left with?
I frequent bookstores and I find it interesting to see what book-tok influences end up on front tables. I have frequently been seeing Joan Didion in windows and popping up on social media, which piqued my curiosity. She was an American journalist, novelist, and screenwriter, writing prominently in California in the 60-70s. She takes this position on journaling in her essay On Keeping a Notebook,
“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise, they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be.”
This idea of keeping in contact with the past version of yourself might seem kitschy, but I think it ties in well to a valuable Christian perspective: the importance of gratitude via remembering. Journaling is often prescribed as a therapeutic practice, but how often do we end up aimlessly ruminating? Is it not a bad sign if we worry about who will read our secret thoughts? Confronting our mental aches and pains is critical for growth, and I am by no means arguing that we avoid honesty in our writing. However, we must be cautious. There is a line between rumination and introspection, and that line is prayer.
A component of writing is a kind of dwelling. The writer sits within her thoughts, pouring them out through a pen into the physical world, and then revisiting those thoughts over and over again as they are reread. Writing is staying present with ideas. How edifying are these thoughts we spend such intimate time with? How much more fulfilling would it be to take those same experiences and surrender them to God? By addressing our contemplations to God, we let him into our hearts and invite our broken selves into his presence.
Kierkegaard writes in his Provocations, “The all-knowing one does not get to know something new about the one who confesses, rather those who confess find out something about themselves.” And at the same time, as Augustine exemplified in his Confessions, to reflect on one’s life in the presence of God as an act of prayer brings the soul first to repentance and then to gratitude. Self-reflection has the ability to bring us to so much more than sitting and staring at the facts of our discomfort. We may learn something about God. Like Augustine’s quote at the beginning of this article reminds, we daily experience lessons that reflect both hope of praise and fear of shame, and while we wrestle with them, we can still say, “Bear with me, oh my God.” Prayer allows us to keep in contact not only with ourselves, as Didion affirmed, but also with God.
Confessional journaling provides a practical way to “examine your life and live it worthily”, as Socrates would say. Perhaps writing about your life and rereading it might strike some as somewhat narcissistic. However, pride can go so far as making us forget our wretchedness, and insecurity so far as making us forget God’s gifts. Introspective writing both humbles us in our needs and gives space and time for gratitude. If introspection turns our eyes to the throne of God rather than to ourselves, it reminds us of the subtle ways God works continually in us. In keeping in touch with the ordinary beauty of routines we don’t have anymore, or with former versions of ourselves in all their discomfort, we can remember the mercies of God and His handiwork throughout our days. We may realize we are living in answered prayers we’ve forgotten we used to hope for.
