Dear Friends,
Years ago I wrote a short booklet on the art and spiritual discipline of journaling. I decided to reprint it here in serial form for my Rest and Be Thankful readers. One of the fun things I like about the booklet is the short excerpts from my old – very old – diaries.
Other than that, I must admit I would probably write the booklet differently if I tackled the subject today. I think I have “loosened” up and improved a good bit in my writing style in the last 10 years. Nonetheless the booklet has merit and hopefully it can be a blessing to you as you hone your skills in this important area of spiritual processing.

Here is Part 7 of “Journaling: A Meeting With God and Me” by Joan E. Tyvoll.

January 16, 1962
“This morning on the bus
I punched Scotty in the nose
and he got a bloody nose.”

Journaling: A Tool for Healing

Journaling is a valuable tool for those who are seeking healing in any area of life. Journaling can teach them how to listen to themselves and God as they seek to find self-understanding. This discipline can restore self-esteem to men and women who need to gain a sense of their ability and responsibility to have an intimate, personal friendship with God.

So much of formal counseling is helping people get in touch with their past so they can see how it affects their present. Often it is a traumatic past, it is repressed and hidden. Journaling dreams and memories can give counselees keys that will unlock the hidden memories. They can be brought out to be dealt with and healed.

People with compulsive disorders can benefit from seeing how their compulsions fit into patterns. One suggestion is to use a technique called graphing. Using a horizontal time-line and a vertical line which represents the quality of experience, people can graph what they perceive to be the highs and lows of their life experience to the present.

Graphs can represent education, career, the course of a relationship, feelings about one’s body, etc. You can compare graphs to each other, and you can gain insight by seeing the correlations between dips and certain activities, or the connections between events or interaction with certain people and high points on the graphs.

Life is about surviving and coping with the inevitable trials that come our way. After the death of my middle son, I could not even pray or read my Bible, let alone journal. In time however, journaling became part of the healing process I am still going through years later. Our journals can be the non-judgmental listening ear we all need at times to process the trials and experiences that come to us.

To be continued…

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