by Cory Kemp

Created on: February 19, 2008

Journaling Our Thoughts, Feelings and Faith

Contemplate for a moment how you felt the instant you laid eyes on your very first love. Is that how you feel about this person today? What do you think about this person, if you even think about them at all anymore? Remembering back to that moment, are you able to articulate your faith experience from that time? How would you describe your faith now? Where our thoughts, feelings and faith fit into our journaling process are as crucial as every other element, if not more so. Recognizing them as the main ingredients of the whole of life is about as simple, and as complicated, as as it gets. If you are able to clarify your thoughts, feelings and faith around an earlier or present experience through journaling them, you have the capacity to transform your life.

Undisturbed and unexamined, old thoughts can continue to direct us down unusable, personally destructive paths, leaving us wondering why our lives are miserable and frustrating. Perhaps your organizational skills are a challenge for you, and each time you are in a position to plan an event, personal or professional, you become frustrated and are not sure where to begin. Your mind goes in three different directions at once, you are unable to focus on a set of steps to put together the theme, the activities, the refreshments and the guest list. Journaling this process in the present can help you focus your energy, understand where your thoughts are taking you, and, over time, help you redirect your thoughts down more productive avenues.

Negative feelings, set in emotional concrete and stroked fervently over the years, scrape away at our souls until, turning to hardened calluses, we no longer remember to feel anything other than bitterness and resentment. Left unexamined, unchallenged, life passes us by. All the positive energy in the world bounces off the solid boundaries of someone determined to remain mired in disillusionment and denial. Writing down how we feel about whatever is happening in our lives mainly gives us perspective. From heart, to pen, to paper, we are creating a channel for our feelings, and a little bit of space that gives us breathing room, and an opportunity to make different feeling choices for ourselves. When we have become so intimate with a pattern of feelings that we can only sense the trench deepening beneath us, we need to create a new pattern. Journaling can help us create that new, potentially life-altering pattern by first giving us the

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