A Journ-al of the Journ-ey

I am a pretty regular journaler, not as frequent as I usually set out to be, but my journal entries tend to be usually at least a page typed and fairly in-depth. My journal is not so much a place to vent as a place for me to state what's going on in my life and what I feel about it and what insights I've gained from it and what I'm doing about it. It's also a place to record all the things I'm grateful for, all the blessings and miracles that take place in my life, and how I'm progressing on any goals that I am currently working on.

My journal has been a huge blessing itself because I get to go back and read through it to remind myself of where I've been and where I'm going. It's fascinating how remembering where I've been can be both a testimony to how far I've come and also a testimony of how many good things I've experienced and can continue to experience if I allow myself to.

That was the blessing of my journal this week. I found myself staying up later than I intended last night because of some concerns I had with some situations in my life. I ended up pulling out (or pulling up, since it's all digitized now) my journal from last year and reading several pages worth of entries. It did so much to remind me that I've had a hand in creating miracles in the past and I get to keep right on creating miracles as long as I choose to. It pulled me through my rough spot last night and now tonight I feel so much more peaceful and really just grounded in my convictions and faith. All because I took a little time last year to record what was going on around me.

It also brought to mind the stories and teachings that I've been reading in the Book of Mormon the last little while. I just read the end of the Book of Omni, which contains the record of the people of Nephi leaving the land of Nephi under the leadership of King Mosiah the first and happening across Zarahemla and his people. If you are familiar with the Book of Mormon, you are aware that Mosiah and his people were descendants of Nephi, Sam, Zoram, Jacob, and Joseph, who had a record called the brass plates that had a history of their people and a lot of doctrine, as well as the gold plates which their people had used to keep a record of their current history and teachings. The people of Zarahemla were descendants of Mulek, and they had no such writings. The Book of Omni indicates that the Nephite people were grounded in their knowledge of God, Christ, and the gospel, as well as their ancestral language and their ancestral heritage. The Mulekites hadn't had this advantage and had really fallen apart as a society. They lived without the blessings of the gospel and the blessings of knowing where they had come from and why they had been brought there by the Lord.

I have found that the more conscious I am of what I do with my life, the easier it is to direct myself on a clear path in the direction that I desire. And it never ceases to amaze me how enhanced my memory is by the aid of my journal. The more clear I am about where I've been and what I've already experienced, the more clear I am about where I am going. What a great tool for good my journal can be.