Journal for the Journey

This past weekend I served at a women's retreat.  One thing that is done occasionally, is that journals are given out to the participants and those serving.  These are not ordinary blank pages sewn between cardboard covers.  I know because I have seen them being made, and I know what happens to them in the months before they reach the recipient.  I know because I have prayed over, and anointed a set of them myself.  They are special.

I pause here to ask you to suspend any formulated opinions.  I can only tell you the story.  I can not tell you what to allow your cognitive processes to hold as 'belief'.  That is okay.  I'm only asked to 'tell the story'.

I received one other of these journals before, and while I didn't necessarily 'get' any kind of understanding from it, it is unreal how these journals 'find' their owners.  I have heard stories of these journals speaking peace and direction to seeking souls. Yet they are randomly (divinely) given out.   There is no system for getting certain ones to certain people.  They just find their way.  Here is my first one and it is 'wild' how it seems 'just for me':

Top left corner is Colossians 3:12-15

See the books?!  The stacks and stacks of reading material?  Do you see in it my dream to write one of my own one day?  Then there's the antique china on the right - I collect teacups and saucers.  Above the china are the words 'STRENGTH' and the question: "The Real Me?"  This couldn't be more profound for the time I received this.  Then there's the 'heart' made out of apples.  You're going to think I'm off my rocker, but God sends me hearts all the time.  Yes, hearts.  He loves me, that's why.  I find them everywhere, like this.

The way these journals are made, several women spend months and months clipping things from magazines.  They also begin the process of praying over them.  As they put them together, they pray.  Random?  Consequence?  I personally do not believe in consequence.  They spend more months creating collages of word and picture on the cover.  As they finish, more prayer.  They write a message on the first page.  Again, more prayer.  Before they are given out, they are prayed over again, and each one is anointed.

So this past weekend, I gingerly anticipated the possibility of another journal.  I was guarded because up until the weekend, I had gone through months of silence from the echoes of heaven.  Cold, gray silence. An inkling that I would get a journal that resonated a dissonance tiptoed through my conscience.

The day the journals were wheeled into our dorm and carted between the rows of bunks, I waited.  The girl handing them out looked as tired as my body felt, and she reached into the boxes of stacked journals without looking at them.  She passed bed by bed, tossing a journal onto each one.  She did not know where any of us slept.  She probably didn't know many of us at all.  We were a team of 90 from all walks of life and many corners of the state.  She had no way to know what she was giving to whom.

I only looked at it later, in the darkness of the room by the light of my ipod:

I held my breath.

There is the word 'watch' that couples with another word that has been coming my way with increasing frequency (more on that later).  There is the word 'try'.  And a door.  So many meanings could be gleaned from that but I do not construct any meaning at all on my own.  That is not the intent.  There is a child, deep in thought (that is 'so' me).

And look -an obviously sandy shore.....

And sand castles, but look closer.....

what do you see?

They are candles.  See the wicks on each one?

Then there's the word 'enjoy' again but this time - 'ENJOY THE PURE'.

Here's what was written inside and I fully understand it.  Deeply.

You may be able to see the faint scrawling pencil on the top that shows through the page from the other side.  When I got this journal, I decided I would ask this time - "what do You want to show me in this?"  I asked and He answered.

Lately, I've been awakened with thoughts that aren't my own, usually during the still darkness of the wee morning hours.  On the 28th, I wrote what I understood about part of the cover of this journal.

I will have a life at the beach, living/building there -(Nicaragua) would be for a season - not necessarily permanent.


I will watch and I will wait.

Anticipating.