X-ray Soul

We have this friend, Jonathan, he's from North Carolina and he's an arborist. Doesn't that just sound so interesting? It kind of rolls off your tongue in a nice, smooth way... arborist. Arborist. For those of you who like saying that word too but don't know what it means, I'll give you the definition a la Lisa: a guy that knows tonnes about the care and maintenance of trees and who can "safely" trim, prune, and/or cut down a tree without it landing in your living room. (Think I could get a job with them there dictionary people?) Anyway, Jonathan is coming over in a little while to cut down two huge poplar trees in our yard. One is completly dead and the other looks healthy but is rotting on the inside. That is the tree that intrigues me. It looks so healthy with baby spring leaves all over it but soon it will be dead and crashing into our house! How can something that appears to be thriving on the outside be dying on the inside?

If you could somehow get a hold of Superman's x-ray vision for a day and look deep into people's souls, I am pretty sure that you would see soul "rot". Soul "rot" being the things that people carry around on the inside that is sucking the life right out of them. Anger, sadness, lonliness, bitterness, hatred, and rejection are all signs of this condition. Yet people appear healthy on the outside. They go about life but it's just hollow. They don't smile much. They don't sing in the shower. The sunset is just another sunset. The glass is half empty. Nights are long and sleepless. Everything is stressful. Being with people often aggravates the symptoms. I know this disease afflicts everyone, myself included, at times. But what's the treatment?

Something I have learned is that sometimes the simplest things can be the best medicine. Soul "rot", for the most part, is a selfish disease. Somehow I think that I deserve to feel the way I do and that I can take out my frustrations on those around me. The cure is to serve, to think about someone else and get my mind off my own junk! When we can see someone else's struggle and think of things we can do to alleviate it, we are getting rid of our own soul "rot" too. Funny how that works.