Ultralight hiking is a new way to think about my backcountry life. “I didn’t use this once on my last trip.” “Why is this here and not two inches lower?” “Will this make my life better?” Last night, I took scissors to my beloved backpack. I removed ties, zips, cords, pockets, lids, and so many unused things weighing my pack, and me, closer to the ground. I’m making it fit my life, my needs and it physically hurt to make the first significant cut, the no-going-back-now cut.

If it’s so hard to do that with a blob of nylon and cord, it makes a little more sense as to why I have such a hard time doing the with toxic, harmful people and activities in my life. They weigh me down more than the big bulky extra pocket on the font of my pack.

Snip snip snip.

It’s comparatively easy to scissor away the pocket, while the hate in my life remains.

Hatred and pride stick to my self. I try and peel it away, but there’s always another layer underneath. And like Eustace, needing Aslan to tear away his knobbly dragon skin, I too need help in peeling away my hate.

Love doesn’t peel away the hate; it dissolves it. Love cleanses the rust and beneath appears that beautiful original image. I move freely again, my joints no longer inflamed and stiff from rust and decay. My own hate is not, however, an outside force like bacteria or a virus, breaking my body down. I wish I could blame it on something outside of me, outside of my control. But usually, my affliction is an autoimmune inflammation of hate. I do this to myself. I rust my soul to the bare bones. I allow rigidity to set in by not stretching myself with compassion or exercising practices of kindness.

This hatred, only formed by my own lack of love, is my soul attacking itself, attempting to defend from pain. Hatred is pain, and only causes pain. My soul’s immune system attacking itself, causing more inflammation, rust, and decay.

Thankfully, modern medicine is developing ways to treat autoimmune disease, so there is hope. There is and always was hope. Christ is that hope, that healer. He is the constant, but the healing depends on me. Am I going to regular checkups? Sometimes God is my primary care doctor, prescribing blood pressure meds, exercise, or dietary changes. More prayer, more listening, less gossip. Sometimes unexpected trauma happens like a friend’s suicide, or piercing doubt in my faith. My foundational spiritual health, what my primary care has been prescribing, saves me. And sometimes I don’t care for my soul for longer than I’d like to admit. Sometimes the infection runs deep and God becomes my ER doctor, trying to save me from sepsis.

Whether He is prescribing daily BP meds, or cracking my ribs as He restarts my heart with CPR, God is, and always has been, my healer.
1/10/19