Why I write. . .

This summer I’ve had the opportunity to team teach the Family History class in our Singles ward. It’s been fun learning about a subject that I have very little knowledge about. As with previous teaching experiences I've had, every time that I teach I learn so much more. This past Sunday I taught about Journal keeping. I was fascinated and intrigued by all that I came across as I researched this particular lesson and excited to share what I learned with anyone who cared to listen. Here’s a summarized list of things that I learned and new incentives for why I write:

* Journals are important tools to keep us humble, and grateful as we recognize our blessings and God's hand in our lives.

*Keeping a journal will be a help for our posterity, as they study our accomplishments and also, our failures; to learn from our experiences.

*Writing in a journal can help us to better analyze our lives in multiple perspectives.

*It's important to have recorded our testimonies, to help strengthen our own and also so our posterity can know what was important to us.

*Recording a journal helps us to articulate our own feelings and helps us to know ourselves better. We can better evaluate our lives, and the essential changes that we need to perform to help us to become the people that we were foreordained to be.

*Sometimes the things that we feel inspired to write aren't actually for us. Recording our lives may be able to help others in the future, where the principles recorded weren't particularly worth as much significance to us in our life, (perhaps a subject that you may have a stronger rooted testimony in.)

Journal keeping, just like Anne Frank said, “. . . can help us to relieve all the things that we have buried deep in our hearts.” We can lighten the load of our burdens, by bringing those troubles to the surface. By acknowledging them, bringing them to our attention, we can take advantage of the blessing of the Atonement and allow our Savior to carry those burdens for us.