“Dear Diary…”
It’s the cheesy introduction of countless films, television shows, and books spoken by starry-eyed yet misguided youth. The opening line has become a cliché of eye-rolling proportions, often setting up a coming-of-age story we’ve all heard before. In my own personal experience, I can remember a handful of times where I, endeared by the romantic, insightful musings courtesy of Hilary Duff in A Cinderella Story, began keeping a diary of my own as a child before eventually and inevitably giving up and tossing it aside, lost to time for a decade before uncovering it as an adult and cringing at the lackluster writing, horrendous grammar, and downright humiliating content. The very idea of a diary or journal today has twisted into something juvenile, mildly amusing, and overall pointless.
There’s more to the idea and practice of keeping a journal, though. A greater purpose beyond our shallow desires to read our own thoughts again and again. Historically, journals kept by those living in eras long past have provided us with a snapshot into the past. Practically, they allow us to organize our thoughts, actions, and, yes, even emotions into a clearer structure than we find in our prone-to-wander minds. Spiritually, they slow down our so-often harried and rushed prayers and give us time and clarity to truly marvel at God’s word.
“She took all the words she wished to speak in her muted voice and put them to paper.”
There are many examples of historical figures who kept journals. Perhaps the most well-known of all is that of Anne Frank. Subverting expectations and redeeming the disparaged connotation of “Dear Diary,” a teenaged, Jewish girl has provided our modern world with perhaps the greatest view of what life was truly like in Nazi Germany for those demonized and persecuted during Hitler’s dictatorship. While we cannot ask her today, it stands to reason Anne never realized the impact her diary would have or for how long her words would continue to ring in our consciousness. At the time, she was just a girl, trapped in a chaotic, dangerous, and wicked world she couldn’t entirely understand. Like so many other Jewish people of the time, Anne Frank had seen everything she knew about her life stolen. Her home, her rights, her comfort, her freedom, and what small bit of a voice she had as a young girl. She stared into the eyes of unbridled hatred, witnessed and was victim to atrocities—and she could say nothing outside of her hiding place at Prinsengracht 236. She no doubt wanted to stand on the highest building and scream out the evils she bore witness to every day until the world would not, could not ignore them any longer. But that was not an option. So, she settled instead for the lofty attic of the home where she hid, inhaling the closest she’d ever come again to fresh air, and she took all the words she wished to speak in her muted voice and put them to paper. The world was not ready to listen while she wrote, but, in time, millions of people, children and adults alike, would be informed, moved, and inspired by the diary of a young girl. Her first entry echoes the undying sentiment of human beings to record their thoughts, hopes, and prayers: “I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support,” written on June 12, 1942, her thirteenth birthday.
Countless other famous figures come to mind in terms of journaling. Leonardo Da Vinci, Marie Curie, Ernest Hemingway—even Theodore Roosevelt walked softly with a big stick in one hand and his diary in the other. If you will indulge me a moment, however, I’d like to mention someone else—a name that will never grace the pages of textbooks or monuments.
Betty Townsend was born in 1932 and was raised through the height of the Great Depression in a small, poor, rural town. Her life, from the moment of birth, was never easy. Born out of wedlock, she would never know her biological father outside of a shadowy, drunken figure who disappeared before she took her first breath. She excelled in school as a student and athlete and graduated as the valedictorian, but that mattered little in adulthood. She would never see an education beyond high school as she immediately began working in a textile factory to help pay for her five half-siblings. She did so dutifully, handing her earnings over to a callous stepfather at the end of every week. Because of her hard work and generosity, she would even put her younger sister through nursing school, hoping to see her succeed in ways she was not able. At the ripe age of 24, she would fall in love with and marry a young man of whom her stepfather did not approve, running to an out-of-state courthouse in an unprecedented act of defiance. She would have and raise three children and see four grandchildren born. She would become a widow at only 57, burying her beloved husband prematurely. She would suffer a massive stroke a decade later, one from which she was never meant to recover but fought tenaciously until she did. She would lose a daughter-in-law and bury one son far too soon. And yet, through grief and sickness and heartache, she would echo the same words to all those around her: “The Lord is good.” In her community, she would be remembered as a great woman, working hard until she couldn’t any longer and serving her church faithfully as a Sunday School teacher and maternal figure to any and every child she came across. Her family would call her the strongest woman they’d ever known—a loving and firm mother, a gracious and kindhearted grandmother.
Yet, as the years passed her by, she would remember very little at all. Nearly fifteen years of dementia would steal those memories along with her own identity. She would lose herself to time, the cruelest of all thieves. A life full of hardship, tragedies, and yet faithfulness to Christ—lost. Until a devotional journal, held over decades and decades of life, would be opened. Until verses and hymns would be read aloud. Until the prayers of a woman who suffered far more than most were recited into a small, not-quite-cozy nursing room with wilted flowers on the windowsill. There, she would look at the faces of her family with dimming eyes. She would peer at her youngest and only remaining son whom she’d called by the wrong name just minutes before. She would turn to view her three granddaughters, names and faces long escaping her. She would place her hand on her husband’s picture on the nightstand.
And then my grandmother would tell us stories. Stories about her childhood. Stories about her marriage and children. She would reminisce about teaching my sisters and I about nature, coloring white flower petals to rainbows with just a Mason jar and some food dye. She would ask to sing hymns that she had not heard in years and would never miss a note. She would laugh and cry, and she would remember again. Each time, she would squeeze our hands, smile, and tell us she loved us before eventually fading away again. As painful as watching the light leave her eyes always was, it was a pain we would all bear a thousand times over to know that, by God’s grace, there were still pieces of the woman we knew and loved left.
A journal is much more than a pass time or a hobby. It isn’t a cheap tool used by a screenwriter to drive the narrative of a storyline. It is the narrative. Your narrative.
A journal is much more than a pass time or a hobby. It isn’t a cheap tool used by a screenwriter to drive the narrative of a storyline. It is the narrative. Your narrative. Our world and our lives are unpredictable. They are chaotic, overwhelming, and often sorrowful. In fact, the only thing they are not promised to be is easy. Hopefully, you and I will never live through a totalitarian government. I’m sure I will never discover a cure for any disease or take an oath of presidential office. The words that I write may never go beyond the pages they are printed on. But they are my words spoken in the voice that God gave me. He gave us all a mind, a voice, and a life full of opportunities to praise Him. If my grandmother taught me anything, it was that, whatever circumstances may fall, I want more than anything to use all of those in His service and to His glory. As she would say over and over again, even on her worst of days, “Thank God for that; thank god for that!”
