I wasn’t looking for it. Not really. I had searched through rooms before, digging through the past, but this time was different. I was only reaching for a pair of socks, choosing that time to go deeper in the drawer. 

A simple shift found a tiny book stacked beneath the socks. And there it was—something I had forgotten existed: my poetic journal from a small notebook Debbie gave me on Christmas 1983.

I held it like an old friend, uncertain of how much time had passed since we last met. The pages worn, the writing difficult to read, but the words inside? They were still alive. My words. My thoughts. My prayers. My own Psalms, written over forty years ago while feeling like present realities.

So much has changed. 

While not much has changed. 

I turned the pages slowly, remembering. The entries from early 1984 told stories I had almost forgotten. Would we ever be able to have children? Why do things happen the way they happen? Can’t people just love one another? 

Each poem painted a picture of what I was experiencing, how I was responding, how I was reaching toward God in my own way. There were joys and uncertainties, longings and discoveries, moments of clarity and whispers of doubt.

I read the words as if they belonged to someone else—yet I knew them. I knew the young man who wrote them, the one navigating life, faith, and feelings too deep to explain in conversation. 

Poetry was his language, his way of making sense of it all. 

Poetry was my language, my way of making sense of it all.

Finding the journal was a surprise. Reading it was both informative and inspirational. The emotions I poured onto those pages decades ago still spoke. They reminded me that life is a cycle of endurance and hope, of loss and renewal, of questions and answers that arrive in their own time.

I endured that season. And now, all these years later, I see it with fresh eyes, old eyes, warn eyes. Without the hair I had when I wrote the original poems. Without the I’m-young-and-can-change-the-world-quickly attitude I had then. But hopefully with new view of the ancient concerns. Still hopeful. Still prayerful. Still in need. While choosing to rest amid the storms. 

Maybe that’s the gift of reflection—not just looking back, but learning again. Seeing where I was. Seeing where I am. And remembering that the same God who walked with me then is walking with me still.

If you could read your thoughts from long ago, what would you find? What would you learn? How would you have prayed?

If you wrote your thoughts today, what would you write? What have you learned? How would you pray? 

I haven’t yet placed the tiny book back in its drawer. Maybe I’m not finished. Reading and learning and remembering, maybe I’m not finished.