Where is your life story? - Scheduled Post #1

I remember those days shortly before fourth grade began. I saw a beautiful purple notebook with yellow stars on it, and I fell in love for the first time. An hour later, I held the notebook tight to my chest as we drove home. A few days later, when we went to the aquarium, I saw another tiny notebook, as big as my hand, that I fell in love with as well. In that small notebook covered in dolphins, I kept barely five entries. The purple one grew with me all the way to... well, its very last entry is waiting for this fall when exactly ten years will have elapsed.

In the purple journal, I have entries from late 2002 all the way through 2012, with entries describing big events. With any of the journals I kept, I enjoy rereading through the entries. It's very neat to go back through and see the kinds of things that were important to me. It's like... going back in time. Occasionally I would write down interesting dreams, so I can go back and remember the dream as it happened.

Writing has been part of me even before I started writing stories. The first story I wrote (with the exception of those horrid stories I wrote for school) was in 2005, when I read and fell in love with A Wrinkle in Time. I'm not sure why I decided to write, but I'm sure glad I did!

This picture is of the shelf in my room dedicated to my journals. There are a lot, but these were collected over a period of ten years. The first one is the journal I got at the aquarium. The first entry in there is from September 1, 2002, eleven days before the first entry in the purple journal. The last journal is my current journal, with the latest entry being just a few days ago - May 13, 2012. It's really crazy to think of filling all of these up with my thoughts or stories. Of course, some of those journals have only a couple entries in them, but many of them are filled to the brim with my thoughts or prayers. Yes, many of the later journals have written prayers in them. I believe I started writing my prayers in 2007, when a leader at youth group talked about how she wrote prayer requests down to see later when they had been answered. As a result of writing those prayers, I can now go back and see things I was struggling with when I was thirteen. I can trace my spiritual journey as well as my life journey. It's really neat.

Sometimes I feel a bit self-conscious about the journals, as I think about the future, and how someday my children or grandchildren might find an old box of my journals, and read through them to find out how life was like in my days. There's a ton of personal stuff in there, not to mention the fact that I sound extremely silly in many entries. I'm not going to expound on that.... heh heh.

Because I have been writing for over half my life (now THAT is a scary thought), I can watch myself grow and develop from the strange little eight-year-old that I was, to the confident young woman I am now. It's neat. And I know I'm not the only one with such a time capsule as this.

Are any of you artists? Compare your first sketch with your last masterpiece. Compile the pictures together and see what themes arise. I know, it sounds like the English classes in high school that you dreaded, but it is true! Look closely enough, and a story will arise from between the threads of a colored pencil to the arc of an oil paint.

Usually, a pattern can be seen in those who do arts. But what about the sciences? I would hope that any chemist or doctor would record in some way their growth from making baking soda volcanoes or dissecting worms to exploding gasses and surgeries. There is a story to tell in everyone's life.

For some reason, I have been spending an inordinate amount of time reminiscing about my life thus far. I'm not quite sure why, but I've enjoyed it to an extent. Sure, it's not fun to drudge up painful memories, but I do enjoy seeing how I grew through those experiences. Where did you grow? It's often the last thing on our minds when we are in a difficult situation, but adversity makes us grow. There is no denying it.

So where do you see your life story? Take a moment and think about it. What would you change? Then go and make your life so you wouldn't change anything about it now.