Encouragement along the journey.

I've been a fairly consistent journaler for close to 10 years. I don't hold myself to a writing schedule, but instead, write when I need to or want to. It takes me anywhere from a year to two years to fill a journal. I consider the notebooks very personal and wouldn't want to pass them off to be read at some one's leisure. When I don't feel like talking, these pages are my ears to hear my joys, sorrows, frustrations, and conundrums; a place to keep my memories; sometimes even a place to find clarity.
For the past several journals I've chosen a verse or verses to write in the front cover to serve as a reminder of who I am and what Christ has done for me. Sometimes they are words to encourage during a particular phase in life.
Last week I finished up one journal and pulled out the next notebook to be filled. I pondered what verse I wanted to put in the cover. At church on Sunday, I heard/read these words and knew that they needed to serve as the "theme" verses.
For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man; so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:14-19
Spiritually I've been feeling a bit in a dry spell and I see these verses as an encouragement and reminder of the awesome work of God. He is our Creator and Sustainer. Without Him, we are nothing. What a wonderful image to "be filled up to all the fullness of God." I want that! So, this is a prayer for myself and a mile-marker at the start of another journal that will be filled with the life lessons of a girl striving to grow more like Christ through life's ups and downs.