Devotional journals tend to be written for a person who is doing reasonably well. The prompts assume you can find something to be grateful for, that you have words, and that you want to use them. In a genuinely hard season none of that may be true, and a guide that assumes otherwise starts to feel like an accusation.
So this is about what to do with a journal when things are difficult — and about when a journal is not the help you need.
You are allowed to complain in writing
There is a strong instinct, especially among people who take faith seriously, to tidy up before praying — to convert the raw thing into something more acceptable before writing it down. It is worth noticing that the Scriptures themselves do not do this. The Psalms are full of complaint, confusion, anger and unanswered questions, preserved exactly as they were and not smoothed over. Lament is not a failure of faith; it is one of its oldest forms. Your journal can hold the unedited version.
When gratitude prompts feel dishonest
Forced gratitude is corrosive. If a prompt asks for three things you are thankful for and you cannot honestly produce them, writing three lies is worse than writing nothing. Some alternatives that stay truthful:
- Write what is true instead. “Today was hard and I do not know why” is a real entry.
- Shrink the question. Not what you are grateful for, but what got you through the day — a phone call, a meal someone else cooked, the fact that it ended.
- Note it without resolving it. You are not obliged to end an entry on an upward note.
- Skip the prompt. A prompt is a tool, not an examination question.
Write badly, briefly, and without an audience
In a hard season the entries get shorter, and that is correct rather than a problem. Three words on a bad day is a practice continuing. Full paragraphs on a bad day are usually a sign of performing rather than processing. Cross things out. Leave sentences unfinished. Nobody is reading this.
A few things that help when nothing else does
- Keep the time slot even when you have nothing to say. Open the book, write the date, close it. The habit survives the season that way.
- Write the same sentence repeatedly if that is what comes. It is more honest than manufacturing variety.
- Write down what other people said to you. On days when your own words will not come, someone else’s can be a place to start.
- Keep a list of what you are asking for. Not to check up on God, but so that in six months you can read it — which is often where the perspective actually arrives.
- Date everything. Hard seasons compress time, and the record of how long something lasted is worth having later.
Keeping it private
A journal that might be read is a journal you will censor, and a censored journal in a hard season is not much use. If privacy is a real concern, keep it somewhere specific, use a separate book from the one you share with a group, and consider tearing out and destroying pages you needed to write but do not want to keep. Writing something and then getting rid of it is a perfectly legitimate use of a journal.
When a journal is not the right help
This matters more than everything above it. Journalling is a good practice, but it is not treatment and it is not a substitute for a person. If you are struggling with your mental health, if you cannot function day to day, if the low place is not lifting, or if you are having thoughts of harming yourself, please speak to someone — your doctor, a counsellor, your pastor, or a mental health helpline. Reaching out is not a failure of faith or of discipline. Some things need another human being, and a book on a table cannot be that.
And afterwards
Seasons do change, usually more slowly than anyone wants. When it lifts, the record of what you wrote through it becomes one of the more valuable things you own — not because it was profound, but because it was true. That is worth keeping the book for, even on the days it holds three words.
If you want us to pray for something, say so when you contact us and we will.