Voice your thoughts, featuring Conversion Diary

One thing which I have been developing since the start of this blog is a stronger sense of voice that detaches from the constraints of a formal essay and takes on a personality on its own. A method suggested to me was to read and analyze other bloggers who write with voice that are livelier than I am in real life.

Jennifer Fulwiler, the author of a Catholic and personal blog “Conversion Diary,” writes with humor, thoughtfulness, and individuality. She welcomes readers to take a glimpse into her life by sharing reflections of her spiritual journey and daily shenanigans. Her voice is lighthearted, funny, and insightful in the post “Notes from beneaththe veil,” while it is solemn, earnest, and personal in the post “Explainingwhere God is when we suffer, when there are no words.” Through her choice of words and expressions of emotions, Jennifer’s personality and voice on her blog is engaging and unique. 

In “Notes from beneath the veil,” a comical story with a sincere message, Jennifer presents herself as a devoted Catholic mother who has learned to live life with sense of humor. 

And then Fr. Uche … he mused, “What did Jesus go up the mountain to do?” I jumped when a voice beside me shouted at the loudest possible volume:

“TO PWAY!!!!!”

That would be my sweet daughter’s pronunciation of “pray.” She’s so excited about Jesus and was so delighted to know the answer that she just had to scream it at the very top of her lungs — and, wow, who knew that a young child’s voice could fill an entire huge building like that? The church was packed with about 1,100 people, and I am pretty sure that every single one of them looked over at us in that moment. I had already felt like THE WOMAN IN THE CHAPEL VEIL!!!!, and now I felt like THE WOMAN IN THE CHAPEL VEIL WHOM WE’RE ALL NOW STARING AT BECAUSE HER KID YELLS AT THE PRIEST DURING MASS!!!!

Anyway.

In this blocked quote, Jennifer presents a comical scenario in a very story-telling manner. By choosing the words like “loudest possible volume,” emphasizing the “1,100 people,” and italicizing “every single one,” Jennifer describes her interior state of insecurity about wearing THE CHAPEL VEIL!!!! The long capitalized phrase with many exclamation points creatively depicts the frantic panic and anxiety of stage-fright which we have all experienced at some embarrassing point in our life. At the same time, the phrases “my sweet daughter” and “TO PWAY!!!!!,” “wow, who knew…” show her love and forgiveness towards her daughter despite the minor freak-out session she had at the moment when the entire church turned to stare at them. The single-word paragraph “Anyway” adds to the story-telling manner because it creates the feeling that she had paused in her writing to relive the moment and dwell in that memory a little bit longer before moving on in her blog post.  

Even when she is slightly more serious about what she had learned by wearing the chapel veil, Jennifer maintains a lighthearted tone: “To my great surprise, it seemed to me that the people around me were (wait for it…this is going to be shocking…) focused more on the Mass than they were on me. I know, amazing.” By using some playful sarcasm to joke about what she learned about her inaccurate assumptions, she presents herself as a friend sharing her thoughts rather than a didactic teacher.

 

Her honesty, humbled, and reflective character is revealed through the sentences “Waves of shame rushed through me when I realized: these are the people whom I assumed would be judging me.” The italics of “these” emphasize the lovely people she described in the preceding paragraph and her own realization of how absurd her worries are. 

Jennifer’s references to Dr. Phil, and double parenthetical comments “(… I do not get all my life wisdom from daytime talk shows anymore.) (Now it mostly comes from Pinterest.)” are funny and relate to the modern culture which many of her readers are familiar with. I laughed!

In her more serious post, such as “Explaining where God is when we suffer, when there are no words,” Jennifer’s voice and tone of writing shifts to be more reverent. It’s amazing how powerful just some of the simplest short paragraphs can be. Even though this post does not contain any jokes or sarcasm, Jennifer still expresses strong emotion with consecutive questions “What to do..? Where can we turn..? How can we ponder..?”. Readers can relate to pain of “raw human agony” and “rail[ing] against God” which was described, but Jennifer points her readers to her “only one source of comfort.” Contrasting the concise and blunt “The crucifix” paragraph, Jennifer beautifully elaborates on why the crucifix is the answer she embraces in moments of suffering with parallel structure: “To ponder.., To gaze.., To behold…” Within these sentences, she explores the significance of God – the creator of “each molecule… in all the billions of galaxies…” – dying on the cross to save “creatures who introduced misery into their world… through their own free will,” in order to reunite his children “in an eternity of peace.” The following concluding paragraph, short and simple once again, provides a concise message that contrasts our “scream” to the crucifix’s constant “wordless response.” 

Jennifer’s voice in her writing engages her readers and creates almost an interactive way by causing them to respond to her writing (smiles, laughter, comments, inspired thoughts). Through both carefree and heartfelt tones, Jennifer provides thought-provoking messages in each post – even the casual posts on her life point back to the theme of living out the Catholic faith.