Reflections by the Lake: Journaling Life's Journey

In Reflections by the Lake, the author has replicated some of the jottings from five of the many dozens of journals she has written over a lifetime. No effort was made to correct grammar or sentence structure, or even to put her thoughts in a more readable form. They appear in this book exactly as she wrote them, except for some deletions made because of their personal nature. Because her life has been built around an active meditation and prayer life, she has interspersed the journal entries with chapters on various aspects of meditation. These meditations contain poems, quotations, and real helps for allowing you to find peace and contentment. To expose one's self by revealing things from those secret places in the mind can present a real challenge. Jan has accepted that challenge in an attempt to help others as she has helped herself. She has contributed much to her own happiness by simply recording events and reactions, then later reading and reviewing them. As a result of reading, meditation, and reviewing her own journal entries, she is better qualified to face life's every day assaults. Jan has kept journals not only to record events, experiences, and issues currently active in her life, but also to analyze them. Journaling explores thought processes and provides a reference point for future thoughts. A journal also involves study and analysis of the writer's life and the direction that life is taking. It provides reflections and observations to which the writer can return to examine and interpret experiences and observations in order to better understand them. The journal becomes a check-list for life's goals and enables those goals to be fulfilled to a greater degree. In reviewing what was previously written, the author may develop a much clearer view of the events that were recorded. She may then be in a better position to analyze what her real goal was, what really happened,