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USA250 Journal Project
Personal Chronicle: July 4, 2025 – July 5, 2026
A gift for reflection. A record of now. A story for what’s next.
🖋️ Opening Reflections
To be written in the days or weeks leading up to July 4, 2025.
There is no deadline for knowing yourself. Just begin.
✍️ Rebecca Davis – “Who am I?”
I am a daughter, a wife, a mother, a teacher. That’s what I would have said. That’s what I do say, still, most days.
But beneath all that, I think I am someone who wants to get it right.
I grew up with rules, with Sunday dresses and casseroles for the sick, with memory verses on the fridge. I believed in goodness and order. I believed God gave us a map, and that if we followed it closely enough, everything would turn out okay.
Now I’m not sure.
I still pray. I still believe. But I also wonder—and that wondering doesn’t feel like sin anymore. It feels like something waking up in me that’s been asleep for a long time.
Sometimes I write scripture in this journal and then, just underneath, I write a question. Not to tear it down, just to understand it better.
I believe I am someone in-between. In-between certainty and curiosity. In-between obedience and love.
I carry the names “Mom,” “Honey,” “Mrs. Davis.” But when I am alone, I think of the name Becca, the one Janelle still calls me. The one from before I started folding laundry with one hand and grading worksheets with the other.
Deep down? I believe I am still someone God is working on. And that maybe that means asking harder questions, not fewer.
✍️ “How did I get here?”
I met Mark at a revival meeting. He fixed the air conditioner in the church fellowship hall, and I brought him lemonade before the sermon started. We were both twenty, both looking for someone steady. We married fast.
I got my teaching degree while he built the business—Davis Air & Heat. We had Caleb and then Lilah, and everything made sense. I left the classroom to homeschool when the schools “changed too much,” or at least that’s what we told ourselves.
I told my sister Janelle it was about values. Truth be told, I think I was scared. Scared of what the world was becoming. Scared of not doing enough to keep them safe.
But kids grow. They see things. They ask questions I don’t have answers for.
It was Lilah who cracked something open in me. She asked why the Earth was only 6,000 years old if the rocks in our garden were older. She said it gently, like she knew it might hurt.
And Caleb—he doesn’t say much, but when he does, it’s like holding a bird you’re afraid might fly away. He wants to know about carbon and coral reefs and how long we have. I tell him “God is in control,” but sometimes I say it too fast. Too much like a shield.
I got here by following every rule. But life doesn’t always color inside the lines.
And what has life taught me?
That love is bigger than doctrine.
That silence can be a form of survival.
That maybe doubt isn’t the opposite of faith—it’s what keeps it alive.
Family
Mark Davis – Husband.
Caleb Davis – Son.
Lilah Davis – Daughter.
Janelle Hartman – Sister.
