Keeping Journals

I wish my ancestors would have left journals for their posterity. I would have loved to hear their stories about the challenges and decisions they had to make. But, my ancestors were oral story tellers not the kind that write things down. It's sad that most of those stories are gone now with their owners.

I use to think I have nothing to leave to my posterity because my life was dull but I was wrong. I have experienced so many things in my life and I know I can pass those things down to my children, and generations to come afterward, so they can benefit from something I had experienced and over came, that was my plan.

What is sad is I love to write, always have, and I did keep journals for a long time. But most of those journals are lost to my children because they were destroyed from years of storage or just misplaced. So I have to take my already worn memories and rewrite those stories somehow. I'm sure with some prayer the most important ones will come to mind.

I can site a time that a journal was very useful to me. I use to keep a journal for my children when they were too young to keep their own. My oldest child had health issues caused by an immunization shot. My then husband had created a law suit a few years after this happened to her. It took a long time for this case to settle so exact memories had became faint. When time came for a deposition to be taken by the other side I was able to go back to her journals and give them the information they needed. 

So there is some benefit for those thing, even today. One day I was at the temple, waiting in the chapel, so I picked up the scriptures and opened to 1 Nephi chapter 7, he was talking about 2 records that he kept. It made me think about keeping 2 records. So now I have my journal for spiritual things and a journal for family history. I add things like wedding info, new baby info, and death info. I also add accomplishments like graduations from school, awards and promotions. I can always go back and find what I need when people want to remember exact dates.

I will admit though that I am not as good at my spiritual record keeping as I should be so I will have to challenge myself to do better. I also have to get started on my personal life before I forget anything else. I have seen some really cool ways to create an annual journal through all the family pictures for the year. They have created a family year book. I love that idea and wish I could start over with my kids younger. But I guess I can go back to my old pictures and still create those kinds of things, just might be a little challenging remembering everything.

Anyway, journal keeping is very important to our lives and those who are to come. I want to challenge you today to work on this area of your life to leave a legacy to your posterity in writing. This is one of my most important goals before I leave this earth, and with God's help, I will accomplish this goal.