Journaling is back in vogue. Instagram feeds, facebook ads, apps, stationers and bookshops pepper browsers with beautifully designed journals and hail the advantages of keeping a diary. Whether it’s a five year diary, a free-writing notebook, a page-a-day journal, a gratitude journal, a goal-setting, motivational journal, a gardening diary, a reading diary, or some other variant, many will admit to having kept some sort of daily account at some point in their life. The practice is widely recognised as one with potential mental as well as physical benefits. Books like James W Pennebaker’s book Opening Up by Writing It Down, or Cathy Rentzenbrink’s Write It All Down suggest that journaling can help with pain management of certain chronic health conditions as well as being instrumental in the grieving process.

I started keeping a diary when I was 11 years old.

My father kept a diary from the age of 16. He guards these hardback, ink-blot-edged notebooks preciously as the key to his fast-fading memories. His mother’s diaries were faithfully written until the sudden death of her husband leaving her with eight young children. I’ve been typing these up for the wider family. Indeed both her family (Ellices) and her husband’s family (Greys) were keen diarists as far back as the early 1800s. Two of her brothers, killed in the ‘14-‘18 war both kept diaries as did Sir Edward Grey, their brother-in-law’s cousin and Britain’s longest serving Foreign Secretary who held office from 1905-1916. His ‘Cottage Book‘ sits amongst other published diaries in our downstairs loo.

Reading published diaries can provide enormous entertainment, insight and inspiration. From Adrian Mole’s well-known observation: “I am an intellectual, but at the same time I am not very clever” to the virtually unheard of W.P.N. Barbellion’s humorously and poignantly honest admission in The Journal of a Disappointed Man:

I fall back on this diary as some other poor devil takes to drink.

Diary writing has provided me with a place of refuge from the slings and arrows of some of the more outrageous days of my existence; somewhere to pour out the heart, disclose the troubles and joys of the mind, wrestle with decisions or anxieties and practise the craft of writing through describing the events of a day (or lack thereof).

There are dangers in such a practice. Unless written and then immediately burned, or typed behind a strong password or fingerprint there is always the danger that what has been written might be read by the wrong person, or indeed, read by anyone at all. Unless a diary is purely an account of each day’s comings and goings, potentially tedious both to reader and writer, it has the power to hurt or shock another at best and destroy lives at worst (if it is honest anyway). The writer may additionally fall into introspection and navel-gazing self-pity writing themselves round and round in circles to no good effect. Ergo, their writing may damage not only others but themselves as well.

A recent reading of Kirsten Birkett’s Imperfect Reflections – The Art of Christian Journaling and Donald S Whitney’s chapter on journaling in his book, Spiritual Discplines for the Christian Life, reminded me that followers of Jesus can benefit enormously from a journaling habit. The Christian’s journal is intended for an audience of One – The Lord Himself, Our Heavenly Father.

Birkett’s short 101 page book certainly recalibrated my own erratic journaling habit. It’s a wonderfully honest account of her time in Australia on a fully-funded writing fellowship where she discovered, through her research, that the journaling she had begun in childhood was fully endorsed by the Puritans who made it their regular, deliberate practice. Under their influence, her journaling became more thoughtful and focussed and her thinking on the subject gradually became a book. Her purpose is clear from the start:

I want to encourage you about the fruitfulness of keeping a journal, not just as an excellent practice in itself, but for its spiritual benefits

I enjoy writing, and it helps me. It helps me emotionally, but much more than that, it helps me know God better and to grow in godliness. I want it to help you, too.

Encouraging a hand-written practice she showed me how the Puritans wrote their spiritual journals and how I could try this out for myself by anchoring my writing in the following principles:

• Write Wisdom – by writing with scripture at the forefront of my reflections they will be informed by the Spirit of God and His purposes for my life.
• Write Forgiveness – by writing to process difficult relationships or experiences, I may reach a point of forgiveness;
• Write Thankfulness – by expressing my thankfulness for what God has given me rather than bemoaning a perceived lack of what He has not, I am obeying and enjoying Him more.
• Write Payer – by writing my prayers out, I can reflect back and see the faithfulness of God over time.
• Write Witness – by first doing my thinking in a journal, I may share my faith through writing for others through a blog, an article, in a letter or even a book.
• Write Bible – by copying out, annotating and thereby meditating on verses of scripture, my walk with God is more alive than when I shoot through a longer reading plan only half concentrating.

Following these guidelines takes discipline but has helped me to avoid the pitfalls of rambling entries instead channelling them and keeping them from spiralling off into deep ditches of self-sabotage.

Donald S Whitney’s book Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life devotes a whole chapter to journaling:

More than almost any other Discipline, journaling has a fascinating appeal for nearly all who hear about it. One reason is the way journaling blends the Bible and daily living, like the confluence of two great rivers into one. And since each believer’s adventure down life’s river involves bends and hazards previously unexplored by him or her on the way to the Celestial City, something about journaling this journey appeals to the adventuresome spirit of Christian growth.

Whitney says that for the Christian, ‘your journal is a place to document the works and ways of God in your life.’ Herein lies the defining feature of Christian journaling. It is God-oriented rather than self-oriented. It might include the usual record of daily happenings but will also explore scriptual insights, include prayer lists, theological wranglings or devotional musings. Whitney sets the discipline of journaling within the context of the other disciplines addressed in the book which include prayer, worship, evangelism and fasting, amongst others. The Christian journal is a place where growth or struggle in the other disciplines can be charted though it is by no means an obligatory practice nor commanded in scripture. Whitney’s concern, like Birkett’s is that taking up journaling should be for the purpose of godliness.

Remember, the goal of becoming more like Jesus should be the main reason for beginning any spiritual discipline, including this one.

Inspired by both these books to make more time for my own journaling, I am also looking forward to reading William Wilberforce’s Spiritual Journals edited by Michael D McMullen which have also been condensed into a book of Daily Readings.

Sometimes, the work of self-examination can be painful as honest diarists will know. Reading others’ spiritual journals is not only encouraging but gives me a break! I relate very much to a journal entry of W.N.P. Barbellion whose Journal of a Disappointed Man was cited earlier. When struggling with his journal, he writes:

I went on reading because I was afraid to be alone with myself.

The great privilege and comfort of being a Christian is that even when we are by ourselves, in all our rawness and vulnerability, we are never, in fact, alone.

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
Ps 34:18

• Exploring Christian Journaling
• Disentangled -Taming your thoughts and feelings to live freely for Jesus – Jo Johnson
• Back to the present: Reflections from ‘Faithfully Present’ and ‘Dream Small’
• Likeable – How I broke free from the need to please – Ferne Cotton
• Mr Palomar – ‘Incorporeal dot’ or ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’?