Browsing Category: Creativity

Journaling: My Process

Do you journal?

I’ve journaled on and off since I was a kid. Some of my journals I still have, and some I have no idea where they are, others I started and never filled. I started this year with wanting a returning to journaling.

Much of my journaling over the past decade has been online via my blogs, and I’m grateful for those. I’d love to figure out how to get them printed, because those are my records of motherhood and my kids growing up.

With attempting a new foray into journaling I had to prepare myself with all the things. Wait, What? What things you ask. A journal and pens.

I have an old Mead 5 Star 5 subject notebook, college ruled, that’s about 6×9″ and I love that for notes and keeping track of things, when I used to have things to keep track of…before this pandemic. But I wanted something more “official”.

It needed to be pretty, college ruled lines, durable, lots of pages, and preferably spiral bound (because it’s so much easier to write in). That’s not what I ended up with.

I had seen one at Target that I kind of liked, but it wasn’t just right (not spiral bound), so I didn’t get it. Then I never saw another one even remotely close.

I ordered several from Amazon, but ended up returning them. I went back to Target and they were gone, I checked several Targets and finally found something similar. Sold!

That was last Summer…it sat, and sat, and sat…waiting. I don’t know what I was waiting for. Then it was 2020 and I felt like it’s now or never, but the whole idea was so built up in my mind that I was still terrified. What if I screwed this whole thing up? *eye roll*

It’s a journal, MY journal. It’s not a leather bound first edition of some classical work. I forced myself to write in it. But before I did, I had to figure out the next most important part of journaling: The Pen.

I’m a bit of a pen snob. I’m particular to how a pen feels in my hand, how it drags on the paper, what shade the ink is, and a variety of other idiosyncrasies that I can’t put to words to explain.

I’ve always used Pentel RSVP pens…it’s been my favorite since high school, and I buy them in the huge boxes…black ink, of course. Everyone kept saying to get Gel pens; I’ve tried them and never liked how they dragged on the paper, spit inky blotches, or smeared.

Then someone suggested Energel Needle Tip pens (0.7mm), so I splurged on them. Surprisingly I liked them. They wrote nicely, the colors were dark, there was no spitting or smudging. Works for me! Depending on what I’m doing I actually prefer them now to my RSVPs.

But I was still leary of doing something so *permanent* in a journal…wasn’t there an option for a pen that was colorful and wrote nice, but was still erasable. I mean, we had erasable pens back in the 80s, don’t they still exist?!

Not only did I find erasable pens, but erasable gel pens in 14 different colors. Yes! I tested them out before and they’re pretty cool. It’s a heat thing; the friction of the “eraser” makes the ink invisible. If you put it in the freezer the ink shows back up in a few minutes. Kind of cool for secret messages.

What did I end up actually using in my journal though? It wasn’t the erasable pens, I actually started writing with the purple EnerGel. I liked they way it wrote, I can kind of make it thicker or thinner depending on how I hold the pen. I also liked how the purple accented the turquoise cover of the journal.

I went to put my colored gel pens in my bedroom desk and opened the drawer to find ANOTHER pack of gel pens (not erasable) that I couldn’t remember when I bought. I looked on Amazon….the end of last summer. Not that long ago. Now they all sit on my desk looking pretty. I don’t write with them very often, usually only in notecards.

I want to hear from you: Do you journal? Do you have favorite pens or notebooks that you use? What are they?

The Year I Found Me

The Year I found Me: Daughter of the King

My birthday is this week, Friday to be precise. I turn 35. Goodness that sounds so old, 35. I remember when my mom was 35, I was 13…I think I planned a birthday party for her. I was always planning parties for people, still do. It’s taken me a few years to be OK with this new age…fortunately, it’s just in time. I feel like at 35 I’m finally willing to live my life on my terms, that I’ve finally found myself.

The Year I found Me: Daughter of the King

So much, too much, of my life has been lived in fear. I never really lived my teens or early 20s, I was too responsible. Too scared of pissing off my parents. And I did nothing. Now, I sit and think about all the things I didn’t do, all the things I wish I had done. The girl I wish I would’ve been, rather than the girl who was too scared to do anything.

Those few risks I took, the limbs I went out on, all turned out pretty good…and yes, Matthew was one of them.

A couple of years ago I realized something: That while I am a wife and mother, I am first myself.

I existed as Me, long before any of those other titles came to be. I was created as a Daughter of the King; Only to Him do I owe any explanation. That moment, that realization, has set me on the course of living my life with less fear. I had to STOP ignoring who I was or in 20 years I was going to wake up to an empty house and wonder what I was supposed to do with my life now.

The only title I have had for all eternity is Daughter of the King, and it is only to Him and for Him, that I am bound to live my life.

Can I tell you what a freeing concept that is?! That I don’t have to sacrifice who I am for what other people think I should be. God created me just as He wanted and needed me to be; the talents, the interests, all of it. All that is me was created solely for the purpose of bring Him glory.

What does that even mean?! It means I can stop stuffing down who I am and what I like and what my interests are. It means that I am free to be WHO I AM in my roles as a wife and mother. It means that I am not JUST A MOM, but an individual, created uniquely to live this life for him.

A friend was recently chided for writing a book, that somehow as a wife and mother it was not “good” for her to take time away from her husband and children to write a book, and I loved her response:

I smiled and told them that way back when, God reached in and tugged at my heart. I chose to live my life for Jesus and not for my children. Any legacy left here for them, is because He has my heart and gives me my focus. My children are just living in my surrender. Wholly and completely given to God.
When my children leave, God is still my first love.September McC.

Before I belonged to anyone, I belonged to Him. When everyone is gone, I will still belong to Him.

God is the only one who has the final word on who and what I am. No one else in this world has any right to tell me that they think my energies are better spent a certain way, that I’m not permitted to be who He created me to be. If I am right with God, that is all that matters. If I am following His lead, that is all that matters.

That weekend trip to Dublin…it was something I desperately wanted (and needed). It was crazy, I knew people would think I was crazy, irresponsible even, but I knew it was a GOOD THING. I knew it was something that God had put together just for me, to learn that I was His, and the He had freed me to live the life that He planned for me.

So, these next few years, I’m hoping you don’t think I’ve gone off the deep-end or that I must’ve lost my mind. I haven’t. I am just living the life God has for me, pursuing the interests and paths He has laid out, and BOY! do I have a lot of time to make up for.