Today, a guest post by Robin Swift, the Duke Clergy Health Initiative’s health programs director:

I have been able to keep a journal only sporadically in my lifetime.  I gave up altogether when I married, after my husband confessed that he loved to open medicine cabinets at homes where he was a guest just to see what people were keeping in them.  Somehow this knowledge did not fill me with confidence that my journal entries would remain secret forever.

Journaling is a wonderful technique for finding out how your mind, heart, gut, and soul really feel about what’s happening in your life.  Journals can be a form of therapy that keeps you connected to your whole self in your ongoing work of formation.  So I was delighted today when a friend shared a new technique for safe journaling: write all you want, read it to make sure you’ve “got it,” then shred the paper.  Or, if you are journaling on a computer or tablet, delete the entry immediately when you’re done.  You have to give up the wonderful development-over-time sensibility that journaling can offer, but you gain the security that your thoughts will never be shared.

I was further delighted to hear of a perfect revenge developed by a clergy spouse who was tired of having people peer in her family’s medicine cabinet during parsonage open houses.

She filled the cabinet with ping-pong balls.

Yours in mischief,

Robin Swift

(Photo by Flickr user JoelMontes via Creative Commons)