I used to be an avid journaler. I still journal, but my style and my purpose has shifted. It used to be about recording my comings and goings, sometimes processing those comings and goings, and more seldom than that, it was about recounting those comings and goings in a creative way, for some imaginary audience.

In the crucible of increasing busyness over the years, the creative element of my journal entries became less and less. The recording of some idea and the adjoining bare minimum details to craft into a story later seemed to fill my journal as other activities demanded my time. The ideas remained a skeleton. That was then, sometime in past years.

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While walking after a longer run amidst marathon training, I reflected how much I enjoy long runs because distance – not speed – presents the challenge. I love the steadiness and steadfastness that distance running engrains.

I shared this with my husband, Jake, and cared to only inscribe “Love marathon training because I like slow, steady running” in my journal. Thirteen-year-old Emily would have written then and there, with great urgency after the run, all the reasons why I preferred distance running. I would have tried to make it poetic and suited for an audience I imagined as I hastily wrote and modified my account of why distance running enlivens me.

Twenty-three-year-old Emily elected only to write one, to-the-point sentence. It is not because I don’t enjoy writing – I do. Rather, it is because crafting a story and layering each angle just right carries infinitely more value when you share it with others than when it sits on a dark shelf.

Most of the time, I graft my story into Jake and with Jake. We process together – he asks me questions about my experiences and I comment and he listens and somehow we write the story together in real time; I do the same with his experiences. His story and mine intertwine like sinews cling to bones. Those stories establish who we are as a couple and as individuals. Sometimes those stories make it onto paper, and sometimes not. But it abundantly and deeply satisfies my relational self to share and create stories with him.

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Still, my journal shelf continues to grow. Now though, it is prayers that line the pages of my more recent journals. Prayer journaling embodies the most intimate story-writing possible for it means communing with my creator and One who loves me absolutely unconditionally. It means asking Him to continue to be the author of my story in light of his eternal story

And I blog because I get to share my story with you. That makes the whole creative process, the pen-to-paper process worth it.

Making writing relational, then, I have found, begets value: For a skeleton to transform into a purposeful, capable body, it must take on flesh. Therefore, the audience must take on flesh.