Food, Friends & Growing Up
I’d always thought journaling meant recording your day. What happened, what you did, what you thought. Every time I tried, it felt incomplete — like I could never be comprehensive enough. So I’d give up.
Still, the idea had been planted for years. After our trip to New Zealand I listened to Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey — the audiobook is fantastic, narrated by him. He retells his story through a series of greenlights drawn from a lifetime of journaling. That stuck with me.
Yet the action of writing down your thoughts and actions every day sounded painful — a static log, an almost pretentious attempt to remember everything without curation.
At some point I started writing differently. Not recording, but searching. Essays with no conclusion yet — just a premise I was trying to find. A way to think through problems I couldn’t solve by talking them out.
When I mentioned this to a friend, they said: “That’s what I do with journaling — processing and reflecting.”
Oh. Journaling isn’t what I thought it was.
And through this process, I’ve started to grow up a bit. To actually be present with people instead of just unloading on them.
When I was diagnosed with celiac disease a few years ago, I could talk it through with friends and family. Answers could be found — hard to achieve, but achievable: don’t eat gluten. External processing worked because there was an answer to find.
But looking back, that was still a crutch. I was focused on my problems, not maturing into someone who could handle them. Every challenge became a conversation. Every conversation became about me.
Then I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.
Unlike celiac, there was no solution to land on. I couldn’t just describe the problem, get empathy, and move on. This was here to stay — and if anything, it was going to get harder to manage, not easier.
My friends were more than empathetic. But talking it through just went in circles. I’d find myself having a low blood sugar — shaky, needing to stop and eat — while doing something I’d always done, like walking from the car to the shops. I was as perplexed as they were.
For a while I was stuck. Having the same conversations — “it’s hard” — wasn’t working. Frustrating me, and I’m sure frustrating them.
The shift came late one night when I was trying to write out how I was feeling.
I thought: what if I wrote this down, but with a different ending?
It was like reading a choose-your-own-adventure book, getting to an ending I didn’t like, and deciding to write my own instead.
In that moment, writing stopped being a way to recount and observe. It became a vehicle for transformation. Not like some self-help book — but a concrete way to speak to the mountain and see it moved. First in my heart and mind, then in the world.
Writing is thinking. But it’s also deciding — what do I actually believe here? What am I going to try?
At times I felt stuck — limited more by my thoughts than by my ailments.
God has been gracious to bring a great group of friends and family around me through these challenging times. Without their support and encouragement, I wouldn’t have been able to grow in these areas. But I also knew I couldn’t keep leaning on them without doing some of the work myself.
Without a way to process what I was going through, every catch-up risked becoming external processing. Like having friends over when the house is a mess — my choices were to throw everything in the closet and pretend it was fine, or dump the mess on everyone as they walked in.
Writing gave me a way to slow down and make room — not just for my own reflection, but for perspective beyond my own. Scripture. God’s view of things. Thoughts higher than mine.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” — Isaiah 55:8-9
The essay isn’t the transformation. It’s the vehicle — a space to bring perspective and scripture into my thought life, to let someone greater in. And through that process, my mind starts to change.
“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” — Romans 12:2
Now when I catch up with friends, I’m not processing live — I’m giving them a summary of where I’m at. Showing them a garden of thoughts I’ve been tending, not a mess I haven’t touched.
Maybe there’s still a weed or two. No one’s perfect. But I can give them a guided tour — here’s what I’ve been thinking about, here’s what I’ve been working on, here’s what’s growing. Health might be the soil, but it’s not the whole picture anymore.
Through wrestling with my challenges this way, I’ve actually started to enjoy it. Writing has made me think more deeply about who I want to become, how I can be a better friend to the people around me. It all starts with my own state of mind — and whose thoughts I’m letting shape it.
And here’s the thing — it hasn’t just been survival. I’ve actually enjoyed it. What started as a way to process hard stuff has become something I look forward to. I’ve got a whole list of topics I’m excited to unpack this year: a series tracing the Boyens line all the way back to the royal family (with some twists along the way), another on covenants, bread and white chocolate, a deep dive on the French mathematical revolution and how it connects to my dryer at home, and essays on the various side quests I’m taking this year — including a visit to real-life Mario Kart and the Star Wars senate.
Health was the catalyst. But by God’s grace the garden’s grown far beyond it.
Continue the side quest
Turns out I’m not alone in this realisation. I’ve got some authors to look up: Joan Didion, E. M. Forster, and Anais Nin.
“I write to find out what I think.” — Joan Didion
“How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” — E. M. Forster
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” — Anais Nin