Value in a Journal

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

I have been a very sporadic journalist...as in, one who records thoughts and feelings and events in a journal, not as a published writer...for nearly 30 years.  Much of the early journaling was really pitiful childish whining that makes me cringe now to read it...all the more that I was a married adult when I was writing it.

But over time, something changed  Now, there are journal entries that I read fresh, since I can not remember writing them, and they speak to me now.  I guess it's because it's not enough for me to hear the lesson one time; I have to hear it and hear it and hear it and HEAR IT before it gets lodged into who I am and actually begins to take root and make a difference.

So, there are times when I am in a dry patch, feeling dull of ear and spirit.  I sit down and almost don't even have the gumption to go to God and ask for a revelation; weighed down with busy-ness, or weariness or woundedness or just plain laziness...but I can flip open a journal or read an old blog entry and suddenly the revelation that came however long ago breaks on me once more and cuts through the sludgey muck and brings a fresh touch from the Father.

Oh, there is still much whiney mush in the mix, but every now and then there is something that is worth reading.  And I find myself thinking, 'Wow, I'm not writing anything nearly this good now. Have I slipped?  Am I losing my discipline?'

But today I found just such a passage, written when I was at a very low point but on a retreat where I *had* to face the pain and deal with it.  And I remember feeling then that I had not been writing up to my previous standard.

Yet those very words written then jumped off the page and spoke to me today.  It WAS worth writing...even though I didn't recognize it at the time...

...If you truly come into fullness of fellowship with [the Father], the accidental -- even the intentional-- wounds inflicted upon you by others will be in dead flesh that feels nothing.  Part of the reason for crucifying the flesh  is so that it no longer has the ability to feel pain.

Crucifixion is a long, painful death.  Too many times you nail the flesh to the cross, but take it down before it is fully dead.  IT doesn't revive on its own...YOU revive it.

...the fit your flesh is throwing is because it wants off the cross and back in control. You have a choice: Will you let if off of the cross or will you renounce it?

Will I let my flesh off of the cross or will I renounce it?  Wow...yes, that's definitely a challenge and a question for the moment...