My grandmother kept a diary. A page for every day of her life. The day I found the boxes of diaries, I was excited to be able to get to know her all over again. She passed away when I was 4 or 5 years old yet she had such a presence and I spent so much time with her, I never forgot her. As I started reading the pages of the life of this grandmother, mother, wife, and nurse I realized it was just the daily happenings. The weather, who came to visit, where she went that day and just a record of basic life in Windsor, CT. I really wasn’t able to get any more insight into how she felt about things or what made her happy or sad, just the daily grind. Even when I got to the part about her getting breast cancer, there was no anger, sadness, hope. Nothing.
I also keep a journal. Maybe its genetic. I use my journal to write thoughts, stories, bible studies, revelations and things I’ve learned in my life. A record of my ups and downs of how I made it to this day. When I was in my 20s, my husband approached me one day with one of my journals. It’s never been a secret and sometimes I just leave it out so I remember to write. The question he asked me was.. ”why are there a bunch of torn out pages in your journal?” My response was that I have no idea what I wrote on them except that they weren’t going to be part of my story anymore.
I will tell you though, what was on those pages. They were secret pages. Pages of anger and frustration. Pages of a broken stomped on heart or pages of extreme emotion that is sociably unacceptable. Part of life is dealing with things that we don’t like, places we don’t want to be or thinking things we shouldn’t think. These are things that need to be brought out into the light so they can be dealt with. My way of dealing them when I was younger was that I would write all these things down in my journal until I either couldn’t write anymore or tears would flow through the pages. When I finished, I would tear out the pages and say to them, “I’m done with you. You cant hurt/effect or have power over me anymore. I am the daughter of a King and unconditionally loved. Then I would grab a lighter and set the pages on fire. It was gone and I let it go. I would always feel better with my act of confession. This gave me my peace back and now, in between those torn out shreds, are still pages of my life that bring joy and sadness, hope and healing.
As I got older, I didn’t need those torn out pages anymore. When life throws me curve balls, I would find a place by myself, hit my knees and pour out my heart to my heavenly Father. I could never have done that unless I first learned to pour it out on paper. There is nothing hidden from God. He knows the depths of your heart that even you don’t know about. Jesus, being fully God and fully man, knows what its like to feel everything we do. He is our advocate before our Father. If you’ve never done this, you can today. Write your secret, your struggle or the thing that makes your life hard. Write how you feel about it and what its doing in your life. Just start writing and the rest will come. When you’re done, tear out the page and overcome that secret or emotion. Tell it that it has no power over you and all things brought to light can be brought under the authority of God and He will deal with it now. This is what it means to let go and let God. Then set it on fire. Please do that outside and don’t burn your house down. <wink emoji>
Luke 8:17
