Not So Diary Girl
I was cleaning up my bedroom the other day when I unearthed some ancient artifacts: elementary and middle school diaries. Now I don’t know about anyone else but, when I was a young girl, all I wanted was to be a diary girl. I wanted a cute journal that matched my personality, maybe with a lock on it so my secrets would stay safe. I wanted to have pretty handwriting and use sparkly gel pens. I wanted to record interesting reflections, deep insights, and lots of exciting stories. And most importantly, I wanted to write in it every day.
That was the dream, anyway. In reality though, I had well over a dozen notebooks filled with blank, unused pages. It turns out past-me was far more interested in the idea of having a perfect diary rather than maintaining an everyday one. Physically writing, documenting the mundane events, switching back and forth between pretty pens, and taking time to write every single day wasn’t nearly as cool or fun as it looked in my head.
In my walk with God, sometimes I find myself in a similar place. I can have this idea of what my Christianity should look like, but the day-to-day elements can be difficult to maintain. Have you ever found yourself there, caught up in the attempt to perfectly perform your walk with God? Just like with my struggling diary attempts, I’ve realized these moments in my walk with God are usually because I’ve focused on the wrong things.
The point of a diary is to document your life. To keep records in a more organized way so that you can look back on them later. If I had taken that approach rather than trying to make it look as perfect and polished as possible, I probably would have successfully kept a diary. The internal pressure that I was placing on myself would have been let off.
While I like to dream of the perfect walk with God–the kind of walk you post about on Instagram with your “coffee and Jesus” mug and your Bible, and your caption about the way God is always blessing you that makes you look like a super Christian–that isn’t the goal. The point of our faith is to “grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). The goal is to grow closer to God, and that means buckling in and doing the “mundane” elements of maintaining my relationship with Him. And by consistently pursuing God, even when it’s challenging, mundane or you simply don’t want to. You’ll be able to look back and see how much you’ve grown because of the ways God has moved in your life.
I’ll leave you with this verse from Hebrews 12: “Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”
Today, may you find the perseverance to press through the distractions, grow in grace and knowledge, and stay focused on Jesus. He doesn’t want the perfectly polished version; he simply wants YOU.
By Maya Galindo