An Old Journal

My first journal wasn't really a journal at all. It was a leather bound inventory book they used at the pre-trial correctional facility where my step-father worked. The book had about 1000 lined sheets inside. Kiven (my step-dad) used to use them to keep an inventory of his movies and music. I used them for poems and songs. So, it really was a journal. Those poems and songs could take me back to exact moments in my life, they show me what I was thinking, feeling, hurting over or finding joy in... I don't have any of those books anymore though. When I was 16 my youth group had bonfire party where we were supposed to bring something that was getting in the way of our relationship with the Lord and burn it. My books had secular poems and songs and represented a life before I was taught that anything that wasn't in direct praise of God, was against Him. So I burned them. I think there were about six of them. I thought I was doing the right thing. Purging my life of those memories, songs and poems that weren't about God. I believed they were keeping me from a relationship with Him. Teenagers and their pliable minds.

I found a journal today that I started in 2001. I wrote in it every day for a year. Then I packed it away and every time I've moved, or just re-arranged things, I find it. I read the old entries and I write a new one, I try to re-cap the major events since the last time I made an entry. Always inevitably there are milestones, major changes.. moves, new loves, loss of friends, changes in family relationships etc. Today in the journal I found I read the entry that I made on 09/11. It was quite literally like reading something someone else wrote. I was gulping down FOX's information and regurgitating it into my journal. I wanted to have the "facts" down. To read the journal you can tell I considered myself "informed" on the topic. My how things change. I am grateful to be able to see such a transformation in who I am today, right there in black and white.

I read about a time not so long ago when my relationship with my Dad and Mom (step mom Debbie) was strained and uncomfortable. I read words and lines from my own bitter pen. I read the searing pain bubbling up from inside and spilling over onto the paper. I read the tear stains between the lines. I read the helplessness, I can hear the victim. I remember the depression, I remember being that girl. I remember suffocating, with my own hands around my throat, and my feet pulling me down farther and farther until I knew there was no way I could get to the top in time to get air. But even in those words of a victim, I can read the desire for something different. That girl didn't have the tools, but she did have the strength to fight.

I am such a different person now. I wont lie, it makes me a little sad to read the words I've written in the past and know that If I had only known what I know now.. I could have lived that part of my life to such a different degree and outcome. But, I understand that maybe if I hadn't been that girl then, I wouldn't be this woman now. I embrace everything about me... my past, my pain, my triumphs, my flaws, and my qualities that make me an amazing person. I know the good, the bad and the ugly ...and everything in between. I am so grateful to everyone along the way who helped me get to where I am now... but specifically to a few key players. You know who you are..

I know I will continue to grow and change, and so I'm making a journal entry in this old journal a quick re-cap of the past seven years (the last entry was in 2004) and I hope to look back at is someday and realize I've come even farther, and know that as long as I am self-aware and objective and always searching for knowledge and truth that I will undoubtedly achieve this.

~ this is dedicated to Cheri ~ I will be forever thankful for the tools you gave me and I promise to pass them to others :)