A collection of love letters to my readers, The Journal captures all the hard and beautiful moments that intersect yours. Let’s navigate life together—Janene Kraft

Search The Journal by subject or title and then read the entries below

Janene Kraft Janene Kraft

HEALING REDEFINED

Healing is something the body does when we align with the holy work of transformation in our lives. What are the things that heal you?

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Janene Kraft Janene Kraft

THEN THERE WAS BALTIMORE

It was this relentless whisper, “Write about Baltimore,” that came to me like a long-lost friend past this week. That it has been ten years wasn’t even on my radar, until I noticed the date stamp when I went searching for the images—July 28, 2014.

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Janene Kraft Janene Kraft

SOUNDS OF HEALING

We seek after the things we can explain or easily comprehend. But what of the mysteries that are an endless marvel, the wonders that can never be fully understood?

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Janene Kraft Janene Kraft

NOT A GREAT DANE

He doesn’t have a name. After four days with his long muzzle and grey/green eyes pressed against my cheek, I am still waiting for him to tell me who he is.

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Janene Kraft Janene Kraft

INTERVENTIONS

The sitting down to write this comes with revelation that I have had a surprising number of encounters with the supernatural. This one, above all the others, lives in me like some permanent alteration of my being, like a facelift on the inside.

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Janene Kraft Janene Kraft

PLAYTIME

As you can see by my expression, catching a football off a diving board is serious business. There are the calculations. The intense concentration. And the ability to balance until the timing is just right.

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NEVER GIVING UP

I awoke with this image in my head, of a lawn mower tied to a rope and hoisted down a steep slope. But it wasn’t some inexplicable dream. It was a scene from my past.

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Janene Kraft Janene Kraft

THE RITUALS OF LIFE

If there were trips to Paris or road trips through the winding roads that lead to Provence, these will not be what I remember in my last days. Only that he held my hand and guided me in cadence to some seemingly far-away music, surrounded by an invisible crowd.

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Janene Kraft Janene Kraft

WHAT COMES OUT

This is the image my heart draws when my doubting mind asks what is it that I have done with my life.

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Janene Kraft Janene Kraft

PRESSING IN

I am a designer who has fallen more in love with transforming the interiors within us, than with those that surround.

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Janene Kraft Janene Kraft

LUXURY VINYL

Luxury is not something created for our convenience. It is a pasture of green grass where the cattle graze.

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Janene Kraft Janene Kraft

HUCKLEBERRY

This week I am filled with musings of life and death, of our comings and goings and all the juicy living in between.

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THAT WENT WELL

Before she leaves, I notice a primitive tattoo in a kindred bluish hue across the artery made popular by those who attempt to take all of it, even breath away—“Just Survive.”

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Janene Kraft Janene Kraft

MAY I?

This is the month my second grandbaby will leave the safety of a solitary liquid realm of heartbeat rhythms and mama’s sweet coos and kisses to join me and my own mama as the third generation in a row of May babies.

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Janene Kraft Janene Kraft

NECESSARY THINGS

More than once I’ve checked my luggage, boarded the aircraft and nestled into my seat only to bolt through the open cockpit door and onto the jetway before realizing all the implications of what I had done.

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Janene Kraft Janene Kraft

BREAKTHROUGH

When we pray into another’s situation, the forcefield of stagnancy is pierced. And through the hole created, a life-renewing energy moves in. This energy begins to devour the unhealthiness; first there is this subtle, curious difference, then an otherworldly lightheartedness is felt.

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Janene Kraft Janene Kraft

THE PROCESS OF YES

I think I stopped wanting something. At least something big. Maybe even something as necessary as breath.

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SILENT CONVERSATIONS

Getting to know ourselves better is an extraordinary mission. The knowledge we seek is so often already within us. So, why do we hide it from ourselves?

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Janene Kraft Janene Kraft

HOLD FAST

The secret to life is to undertake something bold enough to make you pause, and necessary enough to do it anyway.

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