The other day my three daughters and I were rummaging through all the mementos and keepsakes in my daughter’s room to decide what to keep and what to throw out. I ran across a few journals, so I opened them up to see if they had been written in. Sure enough, in both journals, the first few pages had some entries, but after that, the rest was blank. 

I started to laugh, almost uncontrollably. My daughter’s waited for me to gain some composure to explain why I was having a fit of laughter over a journal. I finally was able to say, “Have you ever found this in your room before? A journal that was started with the best of intentions and then falls by the wayside?” For me, the journal usually stays 90 percent empty forever. And then, a little later down the road, I see another beautiful journal, full of promise, and I repeat the cycle. Why?

I believe the journal is a little bit like life. It’s a brand new, pristine “slate.” We want what goes on these pages to worthy of the book. This isn’t scrap paper. This book is filled with possibility. We want what we put in the book to be perfect! And when it can’t be perfect, we stop writing. And there’s the rub. Life is exactly like this journal. We want our next move, our next “journal entry,” to be perfect. We don’t want it to look like an old science notebook from high school, with worn edges, things misspelled and crossed out, and maybe even some good, old-fashioned doodling! That’s what life is supposed to look like—a “book” filled with everything from the pristine to the mistake, along with the wandering and aimless thought of the doodle. Remember that as you go about life, it was never meant to be pristine nor perfect.

Let’s GO! WE GOT THIS!
Beth