Written.

In the Bible study I lead for those girls they have been astounded a couple times over these handful of months.
Why, you might ask?
Because they would see that I have been writing in a new journal.

“Is that NEW JOURNAL??”

“What happened to the last one?!”

I think I always just smile and say, “Girls. I’m a writer.”

As if that suffices for a 13 year old girl.

So. The other day when they came over I thought I would pull out all the old journals.

 

Wolfies.

There are like 40.
Yeah.
For the last….let’s say ten years.

I don’t make it a habit of reading through them. There have only been probably 4 times in said decade where I have actually picked one, sat down, and read all the way through. Every once in a while I look up something I had written in one, just to jog my memory, but no. I don’t re-read them.

But last week I did a little.

And it’s funny because there are some entries that I know exactly what is being talked about. And then there are others which, although written with the same candor and emphasis, I have no idea what I am talking about.

“What situation was that?!?!”  

“HOW did I feel about that?”

“Why in the world didn’t I learn that lesson when I went through it the FIRST time?!!?!”

It was almost as if I was seeing those things for the first time. As if they had never happened. As if I had never waded through all of that.

Wow.

And I thought, “Those things I prayed for to happen in the early journals, I wrote down how it happened in the later journals; I was walking in the steps of my prayers.”

Isn’t that crazy? Like, all those years ago I had “cast” prayers ahead of me, asking God to prepare the way, feeling like I knew what was coming, asking for mercies as I was terrified my terrible tendencies would be tried. And then, as the journals can tell me, as the years go on I see myself day by day finally catching up with all those long-ago-uttered prayers.

I think in all the early years I assumed that life happens all at once. As in one day, everything would just fall into place or everything would fall apart.

But, apart from tragedies, life isn’t usually like that (and even in tragedy sometime we see it coming). Life doesn’t just happen all at once. It’s cliché to say, but I know it’s true: this whole thing in a process.

I did a photo shoot a number of year ago in which one of the props was a word painting.

Life is always in progress.

I know I have talked about this verse before, but it’s good.

Psalm 139:16 “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

Isn’t that so interesting? Not only have I cast all those prayers forward, but really, what else am I doing? What am I recording in all those journals? I am writing down now all that he wrote down LONG ago.

I’ve said it before, and I will probably say it again, these are my pre-written days.
He knows what comes next. And I can rest in that.

~~~~

I know you all must be so bored with my posting pictures of photo shoots, but, well, winter lives on here…so I’ve got nothing else interesting to show you.
:)