Write Your Way Closer to Godনমুনা

Discover New Insight

We write to think. We don’t just write to record what we already know. Our thinking develops as we write—we generate new thoughts and extend our knowledge in new ways as we put our words on paper. Typically, our minds are full of feelings, perceptions, images, and prejudices that are not specifically named or categorized. Writing forces us to define our feelings with words. Once we do, we can then work to understand them. While the chaos swirls without words or logic inside our heads, confusion remains. We write to find insight into ourselves, to generate new thoughts, and to order the chaos. In essence, we write to discover what we think.

This process of writing generates new insight as we think about ourselves as well as other topics. Our journal writing is a first draft. We don’t know what it all adds up to, but we will, if we allow it to develop. As we write in our journal, it’s important that we keep writing, exploring, discovering, and seeking to understand because eventually we will.

Assigning words to our feelings is the beginning of understanding them. The vast majority of them may not add up to anything of significance, but as we consider what we’ve written, something of great significance may begin to take shape. As it develops before our eyes, we sense that there is something there. Maybe tomorrow we’ll begin with the emerging image, asking the Lord to show us the way. This generative aspect of journal writing is like an adventure. A good question is often the starting point for a journey.

How’s my walk with God? I write out this question in my journal, then seek to honestly answer it. On a scale of 1-10, how’s my walk? I wonder How close do I feel to the Lord today? Why? A number will come to mind, and I’ll write it down. Then I begin to write about reasons I think I feel like a “5” instead of a “10” or an “8” instead of a “3.” Do I feel like God is mad at me? What’s keeping me from saying my walk with God is a 10? Have I been hurt? Am I angry? Why do I feel so close to the Lord?

What question might you need to ask and answer in your journal today? How close do you feel to the Lord?