Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen. Welcome to Bleeding Daylight. Thanks for joining me. I'd love to connect with you on social media through channels like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. Links and contact details for Bleeding Daylight as well as hundreds more episodes are available now at bleedingdaylight.net. Where was the last time you put pen to paper?
Did you know that the simple act of writing can bring huge benefits? You don't have to be a skilled writer to get value from the process and it may provide the shift you've been searching to find. Today's guest helps others find healing, direction and connection to God through journaling. I'll introduce you in a moment. I'm so glad to have Allison Byxbe with me today.
Allison is an author and journaling guide who discovered something powerful in her darkest seasons that putting pen to paper could become a bridge back to God's presence. After years of walking through grief, loss and depression, she found that journaling through Scripture's metaphors didn't just help her process pain, it transformed how she experienced God's nearness.
Now she teaches others this practice, showing how the Bible's imagery of living water, gentle whispers and abiding vines can anchor us when life feels overwhelming. Allison's book, Journaling as a Spiritual Practice, Tracing the Lines to God's Grace, invites others into regular writing rhythms. Allison, welcome to Bleeding Daylight. Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. I know that journaling can be helpful for everyone.
We don't need to be facing the storms of life to reap its benefits, and we'll say more on that in a moment. But for you, it has been part of a journey towards wholeness. Take me back to that time when it felt like life was falling apart. Yeah, so it was when our oldest son, he was a baby at the time, was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder. Suddenly, we were faced with the reality of becoming parents to a child with special needs and with a disability.
It kind of blindsided us and just turned our world upside down and felt very disorienting. So it was just a difficult time, lots of question marks, even just about what this would all mean for our son and his development and future, as well as question marks about what is God doing and why is he allowing this? It was a tough time, for sure. So you were a person of faith at this point. Where would you say your faith was at this stage?
Yeah, I think leading up to this, I would have described my faith as vibrant, filled with joy, just walking closely with God. And then at this point, when we got that diagnosis, it felt like things just went silent in terms of my relationship with God. I found it really difficult to connect because I had so many questions and felt just very disoriented.
We know that the Scripture never promises us an easy ride, and yet so often when it comes to those times, we almost feel like God has done the wrong thing, that we've been doing all the right things all the way along and we somehow deserve God's favor. Is that the way you felt? Oh, that's such a good description of it. I felt like, listen, I've played by the rules, I've done all the right things, which of course is prideful, right?
So why now am I feeling as though I'm being punished and things aren't turning out the way I anticipated? And in some ways, I felt like I was outside of God's blessing. That was tough. And this wasn't an easy turnaround for you either, was it? It wasn't a matter of very quickly turning it around. Tell me about that season.
Yeah, so I would say it was probably a full decade of walking through and processing grief, really having to let go of a life we thought we were going to have and embrace a new one, figuring out what reality was going to be like with our son and working with him and the obstacles he would face. And just regular life on top of that, which can be stressful in and of itself. It was just, I felt like a lot on top of me. And so it took me a long time to really sort through it all, I think.
You said that you felt that God was silent at this time, that you'd had this vibrant faith and then suddenly nothing. When did things eventually start to turn around for you? I think it started turning around for me, honestly, when I began to see a counselor, somebody who could ask me some questions and kind of help me look up to the horizon rather than just inward and down at all of the things that were wrong.
We, of course, were a part of a church community, so we felt we were surrounded and supported by some really good, faith-filled people who were praying for us and coming alongside of us. I think those two things began, and it wasn't an overnight thing, but began to help me reconnect to God and relearn to trust him along the way. And when did this idea of journaling start to figure in all of this?
Yeah, well, I mean, to be honest, I've journaled probably since I was about eight years old because I just enjoy writing. But for a lot of my life, it was just simply recording my daily life, maybe writing down some prayers, kind of a place to put some emotions and whatever. But when I got my son's diagnosis, I looked to journaling like I had most of my life.
But what I noticed is that as I wrote about it, as I named the things that were going on in our life and the difficulties, as I wrote out the questions and the frustrations and just got really honest with God, I noticed that it began to soften my heart. That softening is, I think, really what helped me start reconnecting to God because I was experiencing his presence. Even through writing things down and writing scripture down, it put me back in tune with God.
That was kind of the before and after for me with journaling. It used to just be, well, this is just something I do because I enjoy it. But with my son's diagnosis, it kind of became a lifeline. And there have been studies taken that show that there is cognitive change for us when we're sitting down with a pen and paper. These days, most of the time, we're tapping away at a keyboard and we get our work done. But there is something different.
Have you looked into that, of what it is about actual pen and paper that is making a difference within us? Yes. When I started to notice that journaling was making such a difference, I got really curious, like, what is happening here? First of all, on a very simple level, writing slows us down because we have to think to get the words on the page. And just that slowing down is really effective. But what we also know is that writing involves a lot of the areas of the brain.
And when lots of areas of the brain have to cooperate together, it's what neuroscientists call integration. And that integration of our brain working together to make sense out of what we're experiencing really leads us to peace. Because our brains are designed to all work, all the parts of it to work together. And writing is an act that encourages that. One of the things that many of us would have experienced is the negative side of writing things down.
Because we've come from school where we've written things down only to get a red mark through that paper. And that's one of those things that has made people think, as soon as I leave school, I don't have to write anymore. How do we start to change our mindset to say, no, I'm writing for myself. I'm writing for my connection with God. I'm writing for very different purposes. And there's not going to be a teacher with a red marker at the end of the day. Yeah, I mean, absolutely.
And I think that's a real obstacle for people, particularly who have had those kind of experiences with their grammar school writing or high school writing. And I think it is just that reminder that, you know what, this journal is for me. Nobody else is going to see it. Nobody's grading my grammar. And I'm free to be fully honest here because this is just my space and my conversation between me and God.
What were the first inklings for you when you started to see that turnaround that this journaling has changed from being recording my daily life. And you started to feel that actually God is part of this. This is not just me, a pen and paper anymore, but God is entering into this. I would start to notice that I was having insight and ideas that really weren't previously mine, that the Holy Spirit, I really feel like was guiding and renewing my thinking.
That's when I realized, oh, this is powerful because I'm slowing down. I'm better able to listen. And when I'm listening, I can hear the truth of God and I can hear the whisper and the nudgings of the Holy Spirit. That was kind of an aha moment for me. I guess at that stage, you just wanted to build on that. So did you add any extra practices into what you were doing to heighten that, to say, God, I'm hearing from you and I want to hear from you more?
Yeah, so I think what's interesting is as I was reading scripture, what I started to notice is that God shows up in all kinds of ways in scripture to people at different points. And I got really interested in how he was showing up. And so one of the first places I really noticed this was in the story in 1 Kings 19 with the prophet Elijah and how God shows up to him in a gentle whisper.
And I thought, whoa, if he showed up in that way for Elijah, I wonder what that means for how he might be showing up in my life or how he could be showing up that I just haven't paid attention to or seen yet. So I really just started to get encouraged. And the more I read scripture and the more ways I saw God showing up with different people, I just began to pray like, Lord, can you help me see how you can show up in my life in that way?
Right. Like never presuming on God or just demanding that he show up in a certain way. But we know that he loves and he cares about us. And we know that scripture is showing us things that are true about him and how his presence is available to us. And so I think that was one of the big changes for me. One of the things we see in the New Testament is that Jesus tells stories when he's pressed on what the kingdom of God is about. He doesn't just give a definition. He says it's like.
And he starts to use metaphors. And I know that that has figured a lot for you. Tell me about the scriptures and the use of metaphor. I think I want to say first, you don't have to be a literature aficionado to appreciate metaphor because we actually use metaphor all of the time in our life and in the way we speak, even if we don't realize it. And it really is metaphor at its simplest level. Are these images, are these descriptions of what things are like?
I think the reason they're so powerful is because like we see when Jesus uses it, it takes something very familiar, an object, an experience, then applies it to something that's less familiar. And so it becomes this bridge. And when we can envision when we can say, oh, I don't understand this thing, but I do understand this other thing you're describing. And if these two things are similar, then I can start to gain some footing in some areas that might be difficult.
Or, you know, for me, I'm like this whole experience of being a parent to a kiddo with a disability, I don't really understand what this is. But as I began to gain some language and some ideas to say, oh, it's kind of like this. It gave me the ability to gain insight and to make meaning, to see the meaning in our story. And really, that's what most of us want is just that ability to go, oh, OK, there is something meaningful here. It makes sense when we're talking about an almighty God.
We're talking about some very big concepts that are going to be too big for us to really handle, that we start to look at, well, give me an inkling, give me a bit of an understanding. And really, that's what metaphors do. Tell me about maybe one or two of the metaphors that have really made a difference for you, that have helped you enter into a better understanding of a God. Yeah, I love that. That's a great question.
There's a parable in the New Testament that Jesus gives to talk about the kingdom of God and what the kingdom of God is going to be like now that he's kind of ushering it into their reality. And he uses the wineskin parable and he says, listen, you cannot pour new wine into old wineskins. When I was reading that, it's a parable I encountered pretty soon after my son's diagnosis.
And I thought, oh, I'm not necessarily ushering in the kingdom like Jesus was talking about, but I am living in a new reality with this diagnosis. But I keep trying to put my old life into this new wineskin that God's given me and it doesn't work. But when I had the language to say, oh, that's what I'm trying to do and that's why this is painful and why it doesn't feel like it's working, it just opened up meaning and insight. It gave me that clarity that I was kind of looking for.
So that metaphor really meant a lot to me when I encountered it. I think another one, that gentle whisper one, was really important that God's presence can show up as a gentle whisper. Because sometimes I think we can envision God as an angry, stern parent who's going to just lecture us about all the ways we're getting everything wrong. God certainly does correct us, no doubt. But he's also a loving and a patient and a gentle God.
The thing I love about the whisper imagery is that you have to be close to somebody to hear them whisper. So there's intimacy there. Realizing that through this experience, God was inviting me into a deeper intimacy with him was really meaningful. I know that when we talk about metaphor, we talk about how God is speaking to us, the whole idea of journaling, that's been really helpful for you to come from the place where you were, which was a place of doubt, of depression, of sadness.
And we love watching TV shows where everything is wrapped up within half an hour and it goes from this is where it was and now everything's wonderful. But we're not saying that here. What you're saying is life continues on, there are still difficulties, but you've found tools that whatever storm comes, you've got tools to walk through it. Tell me a little about that. Absolutely. I think it's the value of having regular spiritual rhythms because we know that life is going to keep being life.
And we're always, I think, this side of eternity going to have those difficulties to process. And sometimes they're life-changing difficulties, and sometimes they're just the minor frustrations and daily inconveniences. But when we have that regular rhythm of engaging with God's Word, of engaging with God's presence and the reality of His work in our lives, I think that becomes the anchor. That becomes the thing that keeps us grounded and okay. And I've learned, too, that this is normal.
This is just part of life. And so we have to stay connected to God through those spiritual rhythms that we find. And journaling can be one spiritual rhythm for us. I certainly wouldn't say it's the only one, but it's a way I have found to stay connected to God in the ebb and flow of life. Finding that as a tool is helpful, and that regular use of that tool is also helpful.
There's research that says that if we engage with the Scriptures four days or more a week, it starts to make a big difference. And they've said that if we're doing that one or two days a week, even three days a week, it doesn't really shift much in our lives.
But when we have that regular encountering—and I suppose that that's the thing, that this is not just about reading the Scripture but engaging with it and journaling with the Scripture—how much has that made Scripture come alive that before was just words on a page? I'm going to go back to that idea that writing slows us down.
And so when I'm writing Scripture, when I'm writing about Scripture, when I'm reflecting on it through the words that I'm writing, it is engaging me in a kind of multimodal way, if you will. It's my mind, it's my hands, so I'm actually involving my body in the process. It's my eyes. It's an embodied experience, which we know from neuroscience is really important for processing the things that we experience in life.
I just found that I could understand more and the things that we write down, they stick with us a lot better than even simply the things that we just read. So it's really valuable to write Scripture down and to write our own wrestling with Scripture and questions and insights that God gives us. And I think it's like you said, any amount of reading Scripture, any amount of journaling at all is helpful. But we do know that there are certain markers at which it becomes even more helpful.
And I kind of think of it as like compounding interest. When it's a regular rhythm, when it's happening, like you said, those four days a week, it's really building things into us that are formational and important. A common theme that I find when people are starting to deal with the storms of life well is that they seek ways to help others in their own storm. And that's certainly something you've done. And you've been wanting to tell others about the value of journaling.
When did you first start to say, hey, this is something I can't keep to myself. I need to share with others. I think it was probably about five years ago. I thought I love writing. But most people, if I ask them if they like writing, they're going to be like, no, I don't really have time for it. But I thought anybody can journal because it's not about writing an essay. It's not about having to be super intellectual. It's simply about showing up to the page.
If it's been so transformative for me, I know that it can be transformative for other people. And so I started kind of seeking out ways to figure out how to do that in a meaningful way, in a healthy way, so that I knew that I was going to be leading people well into that process. That led you to write your book, which has just been released. Tell me a little about what people will find within the pages of that book. Yeah. So that book is part story based.
So our story of getting our son's diagnosis, since that was really what was the catalyst for this kind of journaling in my life. It also talks about why journaling can be so impactful. I don't get too nerdy or academic, but a little bit about the research behind why it's so helpful and important. Also, there's some just real practical journaling how-to, because I find a lot of people, when we talk about journaling, that blank page can just be like, what do I even write down?
So I wanted this resource to not just be my story, to not just be, oh, here's why journaling is so great, but also, here's practically what you can do right now. That's really easy to get you started. Is it okay for us to write some things to God that are sometimes not so complimentary when we feel an anger towards Him for something that we're going through and we just let it out on the page? Is that okay?
You know, I think you only have to look at the Psalms to say, yeah, I really do think it's okay. God in all of His bigness can handle the things that we bring to Him. And I think, too, just sometimes being able to release some of that onto the page in a kind of safe way can be very healthy and healing, too. We sometimes forget that the Psalms are there, don't we? That there are stories there of psalmists who are saying, you've forgotten me. I'm in a pit.
And most of the time it resolves by the end of that psalm, but other times it's still left there hanging. And sometimes that is the way that we feel. How important do you think it is that we actually are honest with the way that we're feeling? Because sometimes in churches we're told everything's got to be great. We've got to be living that victory. And we forget that it's not always that way in life. I love that because people often ask me, okay, what's the right way to journal?
What are the rules? Just tell me all the guidelines. And I'm like, there actually aren't very many. There's one, and it's to be honest. The more honestly you show up to the page and write down what you're genuinely thinking, I think the more of an impact it can actually have. And really when we get honest with God, I think that's where intimacy really starts to develop, right? Because that honesty is what can bring us closer to Him.
There is a link to Journaling as a Spiritual Practice, the book, in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net and your website so that people can read the book and get in touch with you. But if you were starting someone out, what are the first few things, the practical things that you would suggest to someone who says, this journaling sounds like a good idea, but I'm not sure where to start? What are the first steps? I love that question because it's so practical.
So I tell people one of the easiest ways to get started is to simply say, you know what, I'm going to journal for five minutes. And I know that doesn't sound like a lot of time, but especially if you're not in the habit of journaling, I think five minutes is a great place to start. Literally set yourself a timer, then write. And you just kind of write continuously the whole time, even if what you have to write is, I don't know what to say next.
What that allows you to do is keep your brain kind of engaged with the writing process. And then what you often will discover is, you can actually get into some pretty interesting and deeper thinking of your thoughts when you stay engaged, even just for five minutes. In fact, that's what people often tell me is, I didn't think I would actually get that far in just five minutes. That practice of setting aside five minutes, I think it's really doable for most people.
You can find five minutes in the cracks of your day somewhere. Also, it gives you just a little bit of structure, right? Like it's not just, I have to write for pages and pages to fill this journal up, but it's, I'm just going to do this for five minutes. We were just talking about being honest with God. I think you can say, okay, I'm just going to be honest with God for these five minutes about how I'm feeling about today or how I'm feeling about this person or this experience.
I think that can be a super meaningful way to begin that journaling practice. It sounds like some of what you're journaling is, these are my feelings. These are the things I need to note down about my day. But some of it is actually prayers directed towards God. Is that something that has changed your prayer life, to be able to write down those things that you're wanting to say to God? Yeah, absolutely. And of course, in the moment, praying part of that is certainly beneficial.
But what I also love is that I can go back and I can read those prayers from a point in the future. Looking back, I can begin to see and trace God's faithfulness through whatever time has intervened. And I think that's one of the things that I've loved the most, because even though just praying silently or maybe even out loud to God, of course, is great and a good thing to do.
Once it's prayed and I've moved on, if I haven't written it down, I don't have that record that I can go back to and say, oh, wow, I see God's fingerprints all over whatever that particular thing was. The process of writing is really helpful in and of itself. Even if we never go back to have a look at it, it actually clarifies our thoughts. It helps us to put down what's going on and process that. But as you mentioned, you can go back.
As you've gone back to some of those earlier days when you first had that diagnosis, what are you noticing there? What are the things that stand out to you? I'll be honest, sometimes going back to those early days and looking back, it can be hard because I was really raw and really, really honest. But I think that's also the gift that pain can sometimes give us. We don't have the emotional bandwidth to be anything but honest.
And so it's sometimes hard, but then to see the pain, to see the disorientation, to know how many years I was going to be walking through all of this as I processed. But it's also an encouragement to go, oh, wow, I can be that honest with God. And on the other side of a lot of that pain and darkness, there is light. And probably for me, just the most significant, profound thing to realize as I look back is God was with me all the way, all that time.
Even when I couldn't sense it, even when things felt silent or I felt incredibly distant or just cut off from God in that relationship, I still can see Him working as I reread and go back to some of those earlier entries. You mentioned that it's been about five years that you've been leading others in this idea of journaling and helping them. Have you had anyone who has said, oh, look, I'd like to give it a go. I don't really think that it's going to work for me, but I'll give it a go.
And then there's been a monumental change for them. There's been that aha moment for them. Yeah, it's so interesting. Almost any time I gather a group of people to do some journaling, there's usually at least one person who's like, this isn't really my thing, but so-and-so brought me, so I'm here and I guess I'll try it out. You know, they're very skeptical and I welcome that because I totally get it.
But yes, so I'm thinking of this one lady in particular at my church who had shown up and I was teaching actually a way of writing an acrostic poem. We call them an alpha poem. You've got letters down the page and nothing super complicated, but I was introducing that and we use that approach to do some journaling about God. And at the end of it, she raised her hand to share with the whole group, which I was so surprised about because she'd kind of been so skeptical.
And she said, I just realized I can do this. This was so easy and it gave me so much to think about and I could literally write one of these every day. So to see that just kind of almost light bulb moment for her, I live for that because I love it when somebody especially goes from, I don't think this is for me to, no, I actually, I can do this. And it's simple but powerful and meaningful at the same time.
There is a myth that there are people who are creative and people who are just not, and yet we're made in the image of a creative God. How much does that help release that sense of I am creative because I've been made in the image of my heavenly father? Absolutely. He calls himself the Word. We have all of scripture, which is a bunch of words, right? So we know that God is a God of words and He is a God who loves words and loves communicating.
And just like you said, we are created in that same image. And because it's journaling, our writing doesn't have to be beautiful. It doesn't have to be fancy, but we really get to reflect part of who God is through that act of writing words down. I know that when we think of journaling, a lot of times we're thinking about women sitting down with pen and paper. And we do know that men find it harder to come out with, hey, this is what I'm feeling.
Is journaling a way for men to really get in touch with those things that they don't often think about? I absolutely think so. I've kind of wrangled my own husband into doing it because it's just such a normal part of my life and he loves it, but he might be a little biased. My husband and I actually just in the fall, this past fall, led a couples retreat, couples journaling retreat. The men were just as engaged with it as their wives and found it meaningful.
I don't know if this would be true for every man because I've certainly found it true about women too, but sometimes the permission to do it digitally, so in a notes app or something along those lines, can free people up to engage in it because they're like, oh, well, I don't really want to write by hand, but if I can do it digitally. And I have found that journaling is no respecter of people or gender. It's available to anybody and is just as meaningful whether you're a man or a woman.
Sometimes there's some obstacles to overcome to get men to actually journal because it often is perceived as more of a woman's thing to do. But I also tell people that if what you envision journaling as is simply sentence after sentence and filling all these pages, I think journaling can be done through making lists. I think it can be done through the things that we might doodle or draw. I think it can be done through short phrases. It doesn't always have to be this long drawn out thing.
We can really kind of custom tailor it to whatever works and makes the most sense for us. I know that we've really only just scratched the surface, but as I mentioned, the book Journaling is a Spiritual Practice, Tracing the Lines to God's Grace. The link is in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net.
It's a beautifully written book, and I'm hoping that a lot of people will grab hold of that because it is something practical that we can do to engage with the way that we're feeling, but more importantly, engage with God. So that's there as well as a link to your website. I just want to say, Allison, thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for taking others on that journey. That is so helpful for them. And thank you for being a part of Bleeding Daylight today.
Thank you so much for having me. I love the conversation and the opportunity to hopefully inspire some other people to pick up a journal and start writing things down. Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight. Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others. For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.