Post-it Heaven

You all have stories you could tell.

Your spouse gets laid off. A child becomes very sick. Someone has to have surgery. A hurricane hits hard.

If you sat down to start the process of journaling or writing your story, where would you start?

I know. Overwhelming.

Most life stories span years. Mine do.

I asked God, “How do I tell this?”

His words, “Start at the beginning. Tell your story.”

Ugh. From the beginning to now, covers ten or more journals, full of daily rantings and puke-it-out-entries. Pages and pages. And pages.

I gathered them all–tricky since we just moved and stashed anything we didn't immediately need in a storage building. Boxes and boxes of … yeah. Of stuff we don't need. (That's another chapter! Or another book!)

I began to go back and figure out what years I needed and gathered them in, along with a stack of post-its. If you have ever journaled and gone back to read those scribblings, you know that sometimes your “I'm gonna get this done today” voice is slowed or stopped altogether. You land on an entry that is so profound … or painful that you read it over and over, the memory washing over you.

One such entry is from January 2001 about a dream I had. Without telling you the whole thing, at the end of the dream I was caught up in grief so deep that I was sobbing, apparently for my daughter. When I woke, I could still hear the sobs. I asked the Lord what it meant. He said, “She won't die, but she has to go through it and learn to move on.” I had written the Bible verse, “I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me.” Phil. 4:13.

Easy to say then. Before.

In September 2002, a year and a half later, my daughter, Jenn, got very sick.

Prophetic? Maybe.

I hadn't read that entry from back then. Sometimes I go back and read a journal but I hadn't gone back to this one.

Until now.