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Saturday Confession: The Leprosy Inside Me

As I write this, I’m looking at the clock, wishing for time to move faster. I have a doctor’s appointment and for once, I can’t wait to get there.

I have poison ivy.

With a new house and lots of landscaping and woods comes stuff I can’t identify. My gloves get hot and sometimes things were so solid in the ground I needed bare hands to get a grip. When I first started getting bumps and itching I thought honestly it was from the cat and his fleas.

Yeah, this is an attractive post.

That story is the cat ran off into the woods and brought back a horrible flea infestation. Room by room I cleared it up but the cat still had fleas. Until I bathed him. I figured it was the cat getting revenge on me.

But at the chiropractor he saw my arm and told me I had poison ivy. It all made sense. I used creams, Benadryl and allergy meds and in time, they faded away.

Until I went back to landscaping. I thought I missed anything itchy, but apparently not. It’s back with a vengeance and spreading.

I looked at the map of bumps and realized how ugly it is. Our daughter, not one to mince words, let me know how scary my arm looks and I should basically hide in a closet until it passes. She was nicer than that, but it got me thinking.

About people with leprosy. I’ve never met anyone, but I know people who traveled on missions trips who served with those affected. I’ve seen the pictures. And I get why in Biblical times they were shunned. People didn’t understand, and what they saw wasn’t pretty. They figured they must have sinned and this was their lot in life.

That hurts more than my poison ivy.

And I kept thinking. What if people could read my thoughts? You want to talk ugly. The world has us trained to circle around the pretty people and pay no mind to their brokenness. A wounded life is an ugly problem, so the world doesn’t want us to see that. But when my arm is clear from poison ivy, I have to be real—

My mind is as ugly as poison ivy. As a tumor. As leprosy.

I’ve been extra vulnerable this year. Mid life crisis, spiritual warfare, or what I suspect, God growing me through a season, there were times my mind wandered into some dangerous what if’s.

But I didn’t have poison ivy on the outside so I continued to be  accepted.poisonivy_edited

The worst thing we could do is keep those thoughts churning. I realized pretty fast I had to take each and every thought to Christ. I dove harder into the Bible and started taking Bible studies on my own. The last thing I needed was for my thoughts to spread into action. I’ve seen that tragedy play out too many times.

Just like with the poison ivy, I know when to admit I need help and call in for a master on the subject.

My challenge question is, do you?

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Julie

Kingdom minded. Wife. Mom. Author. Reader. Fan of chocolate. Learn more at http://linktr.ee/JulieArduini.
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