A la Neil Diamond.

When I was in Middle School and High School I loved to journal. I’d write faithfully for a week or two and then miss a few days. They were always really busy days, or I would have written in the first place. So, being the recorder I was, I felt a desperate need to catch my “Dear Diary” up with all the latest and greatest happenings. In fact, so great was my desire to record life’s great daily happenings that I would feel guilty for not writing and that would actually keep me from starting the next entry at all. Somewhere around my senior year of high school (shortly after I’d given my life to Christ) I started journaling. Not as a way to record life’s daily events-though surely I do that too, but rather I began writing to my Heavenly Father as a prayer. Not with “thee’s or thou’s or even bless so and so’s or even me, rather I just began to assume (rightly) that He had been with me through the day, no need to recount the day unless I wanted to talk to Him about parts of it.

This change was wonderful for me.

Another great step in this journey happened at Moody. I became fascinated with a guy on my brother floor (Mike’s floor) named Brad. Brad was a writer, actually now he’s a chaplain, but that’s neither here nor there. I watched him write during chapel from nearly start to finish. He couldn’t possibly be taking notes because sometimes he’d write through the worship. He didn’t seem disconnected from the world like some wierdo as he was just as personable as the next. He just seemed to enjoy this little book he carried from here to there.

To make a long story shorter, Brad and I sat next to each other on occasion and I asked him to explain to me the method to his writing madness. I can remember two or things he said to me that day, but the one that is pertinent to today was that I should feel no OBLIGATION to my journal. If I made it there that day to write, GREAT! But if my heart wasn’t connecting with the pen and paper before me, then to move on. I didn’t need to catch up my journal with all the great events, I could just enjoy recounting right where I was. This obviously is true of writing to my Father. I don’t need to catch Him up as if He wasn’t right there with me, He was and is a part of every breath.

So, just like my journal. Let’s start from today. Its been a busy few months, I’ll try to catch you up as we go, but let’s enjoy the journey from here,

Dear Friend.