Just One Added Thing Journal

So the idea I wrote about yesterday… I implemented it and added one more thing to the idea:  Journal it!  Make an account of that next thing — every day — that one thing I added.  Accountability is a powerful tool.

So is follow-through and accomplishment!

So I have this notebook and will just keep writing the day/date and the item and I’ll keep a running number — honestly, I truly hope to see 266 things added.  Using this method *and* my This Beautiful Life planner journal, I will have a very tangible accountability tool/marker for this year.  I marvel at the ways of the Lord in my life and see that had I not had so many failures, I’d not have so many fixes or solutions for correcting failures.  Not that I advocate failure or carelessness, I just see how God uses our shortcomings, our failings, our missed marks, our losses.  He uses them for His glory and our good.  Strange, this.  Really, it’s strange, isn’t it?  That God, Creator of the Universe, loves me (and you!!) so much that He watches over me (and you!!) day by day, gently leading us along.  But sometimes I don’t even know that in the moment I am being led along.  But i am.  He sees. He knows. He cares.  Incredible, yes?

So when I come to the place of having to have all these crutches—the planner journal, the Bible journaling, the just one thing added journal, I have to realize that His ways are higher than mine and His Word — every day — lights my path.  Whether I recognize it or not.  When He frequently gave instruction to make an account of what He’d done, heap up a pile of stones for a memorial, write a book of remembrance, He had a purpose:  it for was for His glory and for the good of each one who saw, heard or read the accounts.  This speaks to my heart today as I have written so many accounts of His doings and dealings in our family and in my life.  It’s for me to remember.  Maybe it’s for others, to see as well, I don’t know.  I do know this:  all His ways are good.

As I write in the journal(s) I see (often later) so much more than had I not recorded things—-I remember so many more details later, details I’d never have remembered had I not written just a note about something at the time.   I so often think that I could not possibly forget different things, events, provisions for their magnitude or miraculous nature.  But I forget — even though I know I don’t want to forget.

Journals help me to not forget to remember.