Preserving Memories

I have been a writer for as long as I can remember. I got my first diary when I was 7 years old. What is so great about having saved so many of my old journals is that now I have the benefit of looking back and reading about things I went through, seeing what was important enough to me to write about that I had long since forgotten and being able to now clearly see the hand of God working in my life from a young age.

I still have the keys to my first diaries but I fully admit there’s nothing really secret about what I chose to write about when I was 7. 😂. My spelling was horrible too! My first attempts at keeping a diary essentially only recorded the things I did each day but not how I felt about what happened. And that could also be because in my very first entry I mention that my Mom wanted to have one of the keys to my diary.😉

I didn’t fill up all the pages in this diary. I was kind of surprised to see that I had written a verse (Philippians 2:14) in the opening pages of my diary that had been in my Sunday School lesson. But that was the only verse in that diary. The most important things to me at age 7 were my stuffed animals. I created a “Stuffed Animal Club” and every time there was a new “member” added, I wrote the name in my diary.

I got a new diary for Christmas when I was 10. Apparently I had started noticing boys at this point because my first entry is about a boy in my class. I wrote “I love him because he is nice, very entertaining and likes to talk about old times.”😂 This particular boy is still someone I keep in contact with. We went to school together from preschool through 12th grade and were in choir together. We had a history already by the time we were 10 years old.

My handwriting and spelling had gotten much better - the writing at the beginning of THIS diary was in cursive. The ink is purple which was my favorite color back then. I remember that pen - I loved it, it had grape-scented ink too! 😁

5 months after my first entry in this diary my love interest had changed. I decided the first boy was too much of a “show off” so I moved on to someone new. A year later there was yet another boy who I don’t even remember! He apparently used to buy me things and was really sweet. Who WAS that guy? I have zero memory of him and I even wrote his full name in my diary! 🤷🏻‍♀️

By the time I was 12 I had stopped writing in cursive but was still writing with that purple pen.😁. I recorded some family dispute and was feeling like I was being treated unfairly.

It’s interesting to me that I baked a cake just a couple of weeks before my 12th birthday. I don’t remember baking cakes at random but apparently I did! And now I am kind of amazed by how similar my daughter is to me in that regard. She went through a phase where she just wanted to bake cakes at random for people and it started right around that age!

The last entry in this diary that I didn’t even come close to filling was about yet another boy that I decided was cute and I “sort of” liked. Oh dear me… was I really THAT boy crazy?😣

I started another diary when I was 14. I had a flare for the dramatic and my entries in THIS diary are hilarious to me now although I know I took them more seriously back then.

Big surprise, my first entry after this opening page is about “my first love in 9th grade” who was someone completely different from my previous infatuations. In my mind I could see myself marrying this boy. But there was another girl competing for his attention. Reading through my thoughts on this matter I see that I asked God for 3 signs that this boy would ever ask me on a date but received not a single one of the signs I asked for and was devastated when the boy chose the other girl over me.

Apparently I still held out hope that he would ditch his new girlfriend for me because I wrote him letters that he apparently answered and he even called me a time or two. It’s funny to read about these things that happened that I have NO recollection of! I mean, I remember really liking this guy but I don’t remember any phone calls or letters being exchanged.

And just like that, I moved on to the boy next door - literally. He was 2 years older than me but I had suddenly noticed him and decided he could make a good boyfriend. Sheesh!

Thankfully, not every entry is about boys. I apparently started feeling convicted about not being involved in Christian service. I also talked about how much I loved thunder storms and power outages - more things that my daughter and I have in common! And then, there’s this phrase that I feel has been a constant struggle for me: “I have too many problems, too much work and too little time.” I was 14 - I had NO IDEA what real problems were or how much work was going to burden me as an adult. It felt crushing to me at 14 though.

I think we are given these small trials to build up our strength as we age. It’s spiritual strength training. Little by little burdens are added onto our shoulders but we build spiritual muscle by relying on the Lord through each trial along the way.

I laughed when I read this next entry but upon further reflection I realize that I was looking for purpose. I wanted to be somebody special, to be loved and noticed.

In the wake of my Grandpa’s death, my Grandma used to come over to our side of the mountains (she lived in Eastern Washington about 3 hours away from us) and spend time at our house. She even went on a vacation to California with us. But she was not an easy person to be around. She was a Christian but she didn’t live a joyful life. I learned a lot from growing up around her about how NOT to be. I learned early about how harmful careless words and gossip can be.

Apparently I met another guy while our family was helping my Grandma prepare to sell her house and move. I have no memory of meeting this guy who was a neighbor of my Grandmother. But, as I pointed out in my diary, I wasn’t allowed to date until age 16 and I was still only 15 years old.

On the very next page I had a new infatuation with a boy who was a senior in high school while I was only a sophomore. I pointed out in my diary that there was a 6 year age difference between my parents so was justifying a relationship with a guy only 2 years older than me. The truth is though that in high school there's a bigger difference in maturity level than there is once you have reached adulthood. I was babysitting a lot and here’s another similarity between my daughter and I - we both love kids and especially babies.😊. At 15 I was babysitting for a family with a 2 year old boy and a 4 month old girl.

In the very next entry which is actually a few months later (I wasn’t a consistent writer yet), I had decided that all the previous guys I had mentioned liking were “slime” and I liked someone new. And 2 pages later I was back to liking a guy I liked in 5th grade who left our school after that year but suddenly started attending my church! I will say this, THAT guy did end up going on to become a missionary and he and his wife currently serve the Lord as missionaries in Sweden. So this guy was most definitely NOT “slime”. 😉

Back then we had to wait until age 15 1/2 to get a drivers’ permit and start a drivers’ed program. Of course I got my permit as soon as I could and got done with drivers’ ed almost 3 months before my 16th birthday. Guess what my daughter did? Yup, she got her permit and enrolled in drivers’ ed as soon as she was able and completed her course, driving hours and testing a few months before her 16th birthday!

I really WAS busy and there was a lot of drama. I wasn’t sleeping well either. I think sometimes as adults we look at teenagers and compare their lives with ours and criticize them for being stressed out and thinking they have such difficult lives. But we forget what it was like for us to experience everything for the first time. School gets progressively harder, we go through puberty and have all these strong emotions we never experienced at that level before, we start developing interests outside of the 4 walls of our family homes, we meet people our parents don’t know, we have decisions set before us we don’t have the life experience yet to understand and we aren’t yet equipped with the tools necessary to make wise choices. We were guessing our way through our teens and learning hard lessons that ultimately made us stronger as adults but as teens we struggled! Things really ARE hard for kids who are learning how to prioritize their time and organize their ever-increasing responsibilities. That is why they have parents to be their safety nets - to help provide a safe environment to make mistakes, fail and gain the experience necessary to grow up and become independent.

I actually filled this diary all the way up. I read all the way through it and found my younger self making poor choices and continuing to throw my heart at any guy who smiled and showed an interest in me. At the end of the diary I finally got asked out on a date and I ended up in a relationship with my first boyfriend at age 16 1/2. This guy was a Christian from a good family. He was a genuinely nice guy and I am glad I had my first dating experience with him because I had been so unwise in my choices as a teen. I liked guys who were not Christians and, even though I said in my diary that I wouldn’t date them and I knew what the Bible taught about being unequally yolked in marriage with an unbeliever, I know now that I was being led by my feelings and I would have dated them unless my parents stepped in to prevent me from making that mistake. I see in my diary how often my Dad stepped in to save me from myself and my unwise choices. I didn’t think my parents understood me but with the benefit of hindsight I can see that they understood things about me that even I didn’t understand.

I have looked through countless pages of journal entries and I must admit that not much changed in the years following my junior year in high school. My first boyfriend and I broke up less than 6 months after our relationship started and I continued to jump from infatuation to infatuation but, unrestrained by a dating restriction, I was free to date anyone who asked - and I DID do a lot of dating. I had a lot of crushes that didn’t go anywhere too and there were a number of guys who wanted to date me that I turned down due to lack of interest on my part.

But there are a number of journal entries that show that I was going through very real emotional struggles and suffering from spiritual attacks. There are entries like this one - this is the last page of a 3-page journal entry from December 14, 1991. I was 19 years old:

I made many, many unwise choices in almost every area of my life. And it’s kind of scary to look back and see how quickly I went from that 14 year old girl who was excited about life and looking for a way to stand up and be counted to this 19 year old young woman who was afraid of everything and could hardly motivate herself to get out of bed.

But what is really fascinating to me now as I look back on all my written accounts of the circumstances of my life, how I felt and what I was thinking, is the number of times I went back to the Lord to confess and to ask for help. This is such a great reminder of how quickly our feelings can change when our circumstances change. How easy it is to lay our burdens down one moment and pick them right back up the next. I was the same person at 19 that I was at 14 but my circumstances were very different and I let my feelings control the way I responded to those changes. At 14 I was still in school, still under my parents’ authority. My needs were provided for and I had very few concerns outside of relationship drama whether it be with family, friends or boys. I had my stressful days when I felt overwhelmed by my limited responsibilities but on the whole I was living confidently and enthusiastically. At 19, I had spent only 1 year in college and decided to leave because I lacked focus and felt I was wasting my time and my parents’ money on college when I still had no idea what I wanted a degree in. I decided to start looking for work to support myself but the economy was in a recession and jobs were hard to come by - especially for someone with no experience and no college degree. I was feeling very low about myself and Satan used it to drag me even lower. He tried to take me out of the game because He knew God wanted to use my story to encourage others and to bring glory to His name by testifying to His amazing love!

At 20 years old I was still threatening harm to anyone reading my personal journals. Don’t worry, I wont tell if you read these.😉

And yet, just a few months after this I wrote the following that shows real growth and maturity that I don’t remember having at age 20. I think this kind of honest reflection and clarity came and went throughout my early 20’s.

I also found poems I wrote sprinkled in with the journal entries too! Not great poems but they are heartfelt and you can see where my mind was. Poems like this one from June 4, 1996:

Savor every drawn-in breath

As each one sustains life

And keeps you from the jaws of death

Like armor against the knife.

Devour every moment awake

Tasting every pleasant thought

For momentary thoughts are the food

That life has always sought.

Bathe in every joyous heartbeat

For, as with breath, heartbeats are few

And life, with each beating of the heart,

Brings experiences incredible, astounding and new.

Thank you for taking a trip down memory lane and bearing with me as I took a peek into my history as narrated by my younger self. It has been revealing and fascinating. I learned a lot and I have enjoyed every minute. I really cringed at all the hours I wasted agonizing over my love life and who my future husband would be. I almost didn’t share that here but that wouldn’t be honest and God can use even that ridiculousness in my life to help someone.

Obviously I still write! I do more than just blog posts though. I have a daily thankfulness journal and I fill a page per day with things I’m thankful for, I have a journal I write verses in that touch me and speak to me as I am doing my devotions and studying my Bible each morning and I still maintain a sporadic personal journal when circumstances start to overwhelm me and I need to organize and clarify my thoughts. I can’t help myself - it’s a habit I developed at a young age that helps me see where I’ve been so I can evaluate how far I’ve come and determine how much further I still need to go.