#2: A Stone of Remembrance
I’ve never had nice handwriting.
Well, I can have nice handwriting, but I’ve never had the patience to get there.
When I want to write something down, I am most concerned about capturing the thought before it escapes me. The neatness in which it is captured has very little priority.
But a few summers ago, I started slowing down and taking the time to dutifully put thoughts to paper. It became a very helpful tool in properly thinking all the thoughts I had.
I was not the kind of kid that kept a diary, though I’ve always loved writing. I just wasn’t eager to devote daily time to writing about what I did that day. So I found it surprising to fall into the practice of journaling as an adult. And even more surprising was the structure of writing that I found most helpful: essay writing.
If high school Madison was told she’d keep on writing essays well into her twenties, she would not have been happy about it.
Essay writing is helpful because it’s more than just pouring your momentary emotions onto a tear-stained page. I like structure. I like formats. I like debates and thesis statements. So as I was facing some big questions and struggles in life, I found it useful to slow down by writing out my thoughts in a structured way. I started filling up the pages with halfway legible writing.
Before I put down any chord progressions or lyrics of music, I had already begun writing this album without knowing it. To tell the story of these songs is to start in the journals.
There was one particularly big, looming question that became the main theme of my journals, which has then become the main theme of this album:
How do we suffer well?
We all suffer. To be human is to experience suffering, because sin has effected every corner of this world. Romans 8 says that all of creation, even we ourselves, groan underneath the weight of sin’s curse. We long to be set free from the suffering.
I felt the groans. I was acutely familiar with ongoing physical suffering. Since I was young, I’ve had chronic health issues. That’s a different chapter of the story, but its thesis statement is simple: like everyone else, I too have suffered.
A friend had once been sitting with me in my suffering, and he prayed that I would suffer well. It was a phrase that stuck long after the moment it was spoken.
How do we suffer well?
Suffering poorly is easy. Who isn’t prone to throw a little tantrum when struck with inconvenience? Who isn’t ready to pull out the sad kazoos and throw their own pity party?
I’m still working the question over in my mind even now, but I’ve started to put some pieces of the puzzle together. Suffering well is suffering with remembrance and perspective:
“For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” (2 Corinthians 4:17)
In the day-to-day, my physical suffering does not feel like a ‘light momentary affliction.’ It feels like an all-consuming, debilitating, never-ending and completely unfair situation.
But the journaling started to redefine the words I was using. I wrote things down to work through the doubts, the questions, the frustrations. And then I started to look back on them. Now, even further removed from the circumstances that put shaking pen to paper, I have more to remember. I have more perspective.
To suffer well is to remember God’s goodness in the midst of suffering. Like the pillars the Israelites were instructed to build, we too should have our stones of remembrance. For me, my pillars were built through writing in a spiral-bound journal. God used those scribbles and granted me the opportunity to turn them into proper songs. Looking back, I can see how He was working things out for His glory and my good.
My hope is that my stones of remembrance help other people remember. Maybe they’ll help other people suffer well. I started to see that possibility when I shared my first song…
But more on that later.
The best is yet to come.
Madison Marlyn
8.12.2025
