What to Write and How to Keep Writing in Journals

Writing and drawing in journals has grown me as a woman, spiritually and emotionally.  I have disciplined myself to only write things in my journal that will edify me, or anyone else who will ever discover them after I am gone.  When I began these Omers of Manna 15 years ago, I gave myself some rules to keep them beautiful.  After all, these were to be my "stones of remembrance" of all the great things the Lord had done for me.

Here are my personal guidelines.  Personalize your own guidelines if you decide to start writing your own Omers of Manna.  Make it meaningful to you.

Guidelines

1. No negative rambling.  If I must write about a negative experience, stick to the facts and give the rest to God in prayer. Negativity about myself would be limited to regrets in my prayers of repentance.


2. 50% of my journaling would be what the Lord was teaching me through writing out scripture and prayers.  25% would be "this is what is happening in my life right now". and 25% would be artwork or items I glued into the books.


3. No talk about others--not their lives, not their sin, unless it is written in my prayers, and those people would feel loved if they happened upon that entry by chance.


4. Create these books to be "stones of remembrance".  Keep in mind who will be reading them when I am long gone.


I wrote out the verse of Exodus 16:32 in the cover of every journal; the start date of the journal and the end date.  And then I just began to write, and draw, and glue. 

Motivation

1.  Small goals.  My goal has always been to make an entry in my journals every 10 days.  I always try to write more entries...everyday would be my ultimate goal one day...but every 10 days has been very do-able for me for the past decade.

2.  Remember this will be a "gift" to those you leave behind one day...a niece, the child of a cousin, or maybe the general public.  I doubt if Anne Frank ever imagined her journals would become so precious or so universally read and appreciated.

3. Make them beautiful and meaningful with "scraps" and notes glued into them.  I've glued in the scrap of paper my husband gave me with his phone number on it the day we met.  I've printed and glued in several love-emails (instead of love letters which may actually be extinct) from my husband as well.  These precious additions keep me motivated to complete the volume.


The library of my life that I now hold in a plastic tub has been well worth the effort.  

Add Beauty to Your Journals

Having an outlet for in-the-moment art and scrapbooking creation has been part of the fun of creating my Omers of Manna (journals) for the past 15 years.  I don't over-think what I will draw or paint.  I glue down any little paper thing that has significance to me.  I don't worry about layouts or brads, double sided tape or sticker letters.  My journal is a free place to just scratch out a little something pretty for just me to see (and maybe my children and grandchildren one day).

The artwork and scraps you glue in your journal hugely increased your attachment to it.  All of the sudden, it is a part of you; a volume of your experiences and feelings that could be captured in no other way.  Start with doodling a border on an entry.  I use crayons to underline and highlight.  Watercolor paint always looks romantic over flowers drawn with pen. Glue in (Aleene's Tacky glue keeps things from getting all wrinkled) meaningful notes or birthday cards; movie tickets or photographs.  These little things take your Omer from a journal to a treasure.

Why Make An Omer?

If the house is on fire, and there is no time to save anything, my husband knows we grab my box of Omers and the kids, and that's it.  I have a plastic tub filled with volume after volume of these journals that tell the story of my life over the past 15 years : the ending of my first engagement to a cheating scoundrel, my mother's battle with cancer, my first time studying the book of Daniel, meeting Joel, the love of my life, and every detail of our courtship, my four pregnancies and two harrowing deliveries.  I could go on listing the hundreds of monumental moments my volumes of journals hold.  I need them.  My mind is fuzzy on the details of things in the past.

But more important than the details of the events of my past, is the beauty with which the Lord brought me through each one with swift discipline and love. Page after page, I wrote about the strength He gave me.  I wrote about my faith growing larger, and my need for anyone or anything other than Him, dissipating.  In 1 Samuel 7:12 it says, 'Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, "Thus far has the LORD helped us."'  The Israelites would set up stones as a remembrance of the Lord's help and victories.  My journals are my stones.  I will give them to my children to show them what the Lord has done.  They will give them to their children, and so on.

In the book of Joel 1:3 it says of the Lord's help:

 Tell it to your children,
and let your children tell it to their children,
and their children to the next generation.

In Deuteronomy 11:1-7 it says:

¹ Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always. ² Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the LORD your God: his majesty, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm; ³ the signs he performed and the things he did in the heart of Egypt, both to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his whole country; ⁴ what he did to the Egyptian army, to its horses and chariots, how he overwhelmed them with the waters of the Red Sea^[a] as they were pursuing you, and how the LORD brought lasting ruin on them. ⁵ It was not your children who saw what he did for you in the wilderness until you arrived at this place, ⁶ and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab the Reubenite, when the earth opened its mouth right in the middle of all Israel and swallowed them up with their households, their tents and every living thing that belonged to them. ⁷ But it was your own eyes that saw all these great things the LORD has done.

Never stop telling your children the great things the Lord has done in your life.  It will continually build their faith.  I encourage you to start a collection of your very own Omers for the generations to come, so they can see the "bread" the Lord gave you to eat in the wilderness when He brought you out of your "Egypt".