Today I want to use the phone conversation in my post earlier this week to highlight the difference between regular truth journaling and list truth journaling. If you’re new to truth journaling, click here for a post on list truth journaling and click here for a post on regular truth journaling.
With regular truth journaling you just spill out your thoughts, number them, and write the truth for each lie. With the list method of truth journaling you go looking for lies.
Let’s assume I’m married to the guy on the phone (we’ll call him Brian), and that he’s not a Christian. If I were to go looking for lies (or possible lies) this is what I would come up with:
|
Lies |
Truth |
| Brian is a jerk. | Brian is a beautiful creation of God who just happens to have a sin problem that spills out and hurts me from time to time. |
| He doesn’t love me. | He loves me as much as he’s capable of loving me at this point in time. |
| If he loved me, he wouldn’t say those things to me. | That’s like saying, If he loved me, he wouldn’t sin. Saying insensitive things is one of his faults. It will show up in all of his relationships – whether he loves people or not. It’s not a sign of how much he loves or doesn’t love me. It’s a sign of who he is as a person. |
| He’ll never change. | This is possible. There’s no way I can know if he’ll change or not. But if he doesn’t, God will meet my needs and use this situation for my good. He doesn’t have to change in order for me to be happy and have a good life. |
| I should have married Benjamin. | It’s a lie to believe I would have been happy if I’d married Benjamin. If I’m the type of person who dwells on the faults of others, I’ll find faults regardless of who I’m married to. This situation is the perfect opportunity to work on my own sin of always dwelling on the faults of others. |
| If I had married a Christian, I wouldn’t have had this problem. | This would be true if Christians didn’t sin, but of course they do. I know plenty of women with Christian husbands who are annoyed with them. It’s not the magic answer to having a perfect marriage. |
Do you see how the first lie showed up in both of my truth journals? I’m guessing you would uncover slightly different lies depending on your truth journal method, but either way, you’ll probably come to a point of loving and accepting the other person.
If you don’t, you’ve either a) missed a lie, or b) the truth is so unpleasant you can’t stand the idea of living with it.
In my next post, I’ll talk about what to do when the truth is unpleasant.
What a big difference between the lies and truth. You can tell the “truths” are coming from a God perspective. Good thoughts.
Huh, I like this idea. Thanks for the clarification between normal journaling and truth journaling.
I think those concepts are great to use, even if they’re not in the context of writing things out in the journal. I know I’ve found it helpful to just verbally remind myself of the truth – or to pray truth to answer the lies that I believe sometimes.
So true! Loved reading this. (((HUGS)))