Reading Through My Journals

Every year it's the same. I smile as I look at the clean blank pages in my journal and my planning calendar. In my journal I write my hopes and my dreams for the coming year. In my planner I write the goals I want to accomplish. Each year begins the same--but I do something else as well; I read through my journals from the year that has just passed.

In retrospect I am reminded, "A man's heart plans his way, but the Lord determines his steps" (Proverbs 16:9). As I closed my journal and calendar for this past year, I sighed. Last year was a hard year for me. I watched as my granddaughter took her final breath so soon after her birth. My heart ached with the grief as I stood at her graveside beside my daughter and her husband. I woke from brain surgery with half my face paralyzed and a total and unnatural silence from the ear whose auditory nerve had been severed. The steps that the Lord had determined for me to walk last year were difficult.

When I was a teenager I learned, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; think about Him in all your ways, and He will guide you on the right paths" (Proverbs 3:5,6). As a young person I was quite sure what those "right paths" were. I thought surely they had to do with my own fame and prosperity. Trusting in a God who is going to lead me into a bright and glorious future isn't very hard.

I now have a bookshelf full of journals from my past. Many of the pages are tear-stained. I found through the years that trust was something I had to learn, and often it was learned best when the path the Lord had chosen for me to walk was difficult. When I look back over the years represented in the pages of those books, I don't see any bad years; but I do see many that were perplexing. If I had only had my own understanding I would have been lost in the labyrinth. However, when I turned my mind to think about the Lord, my mind was filled with light and peace even though my eyes were filled with tears.

"Lord, You are my portion and my cup of blessing; You hold my future. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance" (Psalms 16:5,6). Today if I looked at the blank pages of both my journal and my planning calendar with only my earthly understanding, I would not be smiling. But I have learned to surrendered my confusion to the Lord. And because I trust the one who holds my future I approach the unknown with a smile.