I just finished reading a YA (young adult) trilogy: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay. To put it mildly, the series was incredibly exciting and rich with images and ideas. I love reading YA literature because it keeps me in touch with my students, and when the books are as good as these, I learn so much.
In the last chapter of Mockingjay, the main character, Katniss, decides that she needs to write things down in a book for the future. She gets the idea from a plant book that her family kept years before, and because so much has happened in the last few years and so many people have been lost, she starts her own book. Katniss says this: "I got the idea from our family's plant book. The place where we recorded those things you cannot trust to memory . . . Then in my most careful handwriting, come all the details it would be a crime to forget." Wow . . . I fell in love with her as a protagonist even more after reading those lines.
In 2006 I attended a Joyce Meyer conference in Winston-Salem, and she compelled her listeners to start a journal. "Write down scriptures in long-hand," she said, and so I began. I bought my first journal that weekend, and I continue to journal to this day. (I think I'm on #9 . . .). I don't write every day, but I do write the things that matter: scriptures I've read that I need to commit to memory, A-ha moments that take my breath away, prayers and answers, joys and pains . . . anything it "would be a crime to forget." The journaling has changed me and grown me as a Christian. It has allowed me to record the things that matter most and watch my own growth, chronicled through the pages of those precious books. I have told my children not to touch them until after I am gone; then they can read them or not, but what they will find in those pages should give them joy. Then will see just how often I thought of them, prayed for them, and how much I loved them.
So my word to you today is this: buy a journal. Get a pretty one! (Wal-Mart has great ones in the stationary section. I just bought two new ones last night.) Start writing down those things that need to be kept for the future. I wish my mom had done this. She died with her memories, her recipes, and her thoughts in her head. What I wouldn't give to see her handwriting again and hear her voice come alive on the pages. I will make sure that my children don't have to have this same wish. And if this seems overwhelming to you, start small. I started with scriptures only. Later, I began to add more, but I started simply, and God has blessed it every step of the way. I know He will do the same for you, too. Have a blessed day and get started with your own story!
