Girl Talk- My Secret Diary

I love to write, but I’ve always despised journals. What a conundrum. I never had a diary when I was young. I couldn’t fathom why someone would pour out their inner most secrets and private thoughts in written form, just begging someone to snoop through it.

In the '90s, wedged between Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Looney Tunes, were fabulously marketed commercials for girls- "My Secret Diary". An abominable chunk of pink and purple plastic containing wide ruled paper that boasted it's top secret-ness with a tacky, frail piece of metal for a lock. In these advertisements, the obnoxious, dweebie little brother would growl in frustration when he discovered the lock that prevented him from discovering his sister's scandalous secrets. Then the camera pans to a cool girl with big hair, smiling smugly while holding up her arm to reveal a bracelet with a tiny key charm.

What these ads taught me were:

1. Everyone (including annoying little boys) was dying to penetrate my thoughts, know what I was thinking, and learn my secrets.

2. That I should be ashamed and fearful of someone knowing the inner me.

Well that's an easy remedy, just don't keep a diary.. duh. I would never put myself in such a vulnerable position as those basic white girls of the 90's. I prided myself on my tom boyish, non-diary owning, superiority.

And yet, I still love to write. I have these words inside of me that beg to be spoken. I have a voice that yearns to be heard, and thoughts that wish to be announced.. just quietly, from the background. I am a rare extroverted introvert, or an introvert with extroverted tendencies. This is why I write instead of speak. I don't want to talk and interact with people about my feelings, I just want them to read about it and admire me.. from afar.

As a teenager I had an online diary under an alias name. As an adult, I have “prayer journals” (still not a diary). People who write in diaries are lame, and cringy. So I have these hidden "journals" all around the house. I buy a pretty, new journal, a pack of delightful gel pens, and write some goals and prayers in it, but I fail in those goals or those prayers went unanswered, so I scrap the whole thing. It’s like a shameful relic, a reminder of my failure so it gets hidden under a couch, in a drawer, behind other books on a bookshelf, never to be written in again. For a snoop, my house is a treasure trove of hidden gems- secret journals waiting to be discovered, with hidden scandals waiting to be uncovered.. just kidding, my life isn't that exciting.

I found one of these ancient journals one morning, while trying to not to wake the kids after an early morning walk. My current journal was in my bedroom, but I would need to walk the path of creaky floors, past two sleeping children's rooms and risk them waking up early, ending my precious quiet time. So instead I found an old journal collecting dust on the bookshelf and opened it up.

I always feel embarrassed reading old journal entries. I’m a future me, reading the inner-most thoughts of a younger, less wise version of me. I’ve learned new things since then, and a lot has changed. Sometimes it’s sad, remembering how different things were just a few years ago.. people we’ve lost, marriages that broke up, people who moved away. People who used to be in my life but no longer are. It’s almost always cringy, because I will inevitably stumble upon a "Day 1" page, detailing the newest diet plan and goals, knowing how those goals turned out (they didn’t). I may as well title my journals, "The Chronicles of Eva's failures."

But I’ve started to enjoy finding these buried treasures. I smile and think “bless her heart”, which is Southern for, “you’re so dumb, it’s actually cute.” I’m learning from these relics of my past. It’s fun seeing how expressed desires and goals panned out, and sometimes I’m happy to see that the thing I was hoping for at the time came to pass. It’s not all failures, there are some accomplishments in there too. I remember things I hoped and dreamed for that actually happened. I see the ways that God has blessed me and answered prayers.

Now I keep a prayer journal and it’s amazing to see prayers that I prayed months ago that God has answered. I wouldn’t have even remembered I prayed for it if I hadn’t written it down. It’s not a journal of failures, but a journal of what I’ve learned, how I’ve grown, and how God has moved and shown up. Reading past journal entries shows me that sometimes God answers my prayers, but not in the way I expected Him to, or that in hindsight, He has protected me from something I thought I wanted, but it turned out to not be in my best interest. They show me that God always sees me and hears me, but sometimes He just doesn't answer me in the way that I want.

It’s encouraging, inspiring, and exciting! I can see things I used to wrestle with and realize that I don’t wrestle with that anymore. It's like a sort of record, bench marking the ways I've grown (or highlighting areas that still need maturity). What would past Eva think of me writing a blog for the world to read about my weaknesses? I would be in disbelief and horribly embarrassed of myself, just like Marty McFly in Back to the Future II, when he arrived in the future, only to find that his life didn't turn out how he envisioned.

But I think I would also be impressed because I would see that I am happy and secure in myself through Christ in me, that I can shout my weaknesses from the rooftops, and encourage others who struggle with the same weaknesses.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.