Dry Rot

Today I had a handyman come to the house because we are experiencing some leakage when it rains from the roof. We have a wooden roof so it is caused by what is called dry rot. Dry rot is a fungus decay which causes wood to become soft and to fall apart. Obviously if the wood is falling apart, it will leak. I know that you are less than interested in our home improvement situations but either way, I always have a reason for sharing random facts. Today I am going to talk about Dry Rot of our lives.

In a lot of ways our lives are like wood. We are strong and resilient but the more moisture (pain) that we take, the more our wood(life) starts to be damaged and collect fungus. There are ways to resist dry rot of our lives. In a situation with a roof, you want to make sure that the roof is put on correctly as well as sealed with a protective coating that makes water bead up and drip off instead of soak into the wood. Our lives are the same way. We need to make sure that we are protecting our lives and heart with a seal that is going to help the pain, damage, sin, heartache etc...drip off and go somewhere else instead of soak in and cause damage.

In our lives, there is NO way to avoid pain just like with our house, there is no way for the roof to avoid rain. Our lives will consist of a montage of serious heartbreaks, pains, sin consequences and list goes on. When this happens, if you are not prepared for the proverbial rain, your roof will get ruined. Just as there are products to protect the roof, there are ways to protect your heart and life from dry rot. Today I am hoping to share some really awesome ways to protect your heart and repair the dry rot that is already there.

Let's pretend that you have a perfect roof right now with no dry rot. Probably not true, but it's pretend after all. The first thing you want to do is make sure the roof is installed correctly. Now, to make the connection to your heart. You want to make sure that you are living your life correctly. Ask yourself the next few questions and you don't have to email me the answers.

1. Do I do things that I don't approve of?

2. Do I live my life by my own moral code?

3. Am I accomplishing the things I want to accomplish?

4. Are the things I am doing in life moving toward my ultimate goals?

5. What are my ultimate goals?

6. Do I take care of myself?

7. Am I my most important friend?

8. Do I have my priorities in order?

9. What kind of person am I?

10. Am I proud of who I am?

Some of those questions were probably pretty tough for you but they are worth answering anyway. The second thing you do to ensure no dry rot is put a protective coating on the roof. This can be a water seal or something like that (Like Thompson's water seal) *quick commerical* Let's cross apply this to life again...

Are you properly protecting your heart from dry rot. Ask yourself the next few questions and again, these are for your own good...

1. Do I allow people in my life to hurt me?

2. Do I give to my friends more than I receive from them?

3. Do I have friends who are good to me and are there for me?

4. Are there people who genuinely abuse me?

5. Are there people who take me for granted?

6. Do I do harmful things to my own body?

7. Again...do I take care of myself?

8. Do I take precautions against being in bad situations?

9. Do I place myself at the hands of danger either physically or emotionally?

10. Do I have a place to go to get away and rejuvenate?

These are important questions that will tell you if you are properly protecting your "roof" from dry rot!

Now, let's get realistic. Most of you already have some dry rot in your roof right? Let me say this a different way for those of you having a hard time following. Most of you already have some broken places in your heart right? Ok, well now I am going to suggest a few ways to deal with the dry rot that is already there. The first thing the handy man noted was that he was going to have to do a diagnostic so to speak. This means he would have to crawl up into the crawl space and take a light up there and go through and find the stained wood places. This shows where the leak actually has damaged and what part of the roof is really hurt. I would gamble to say this is the first step to healing your heart dry rot too!

You need to get into your crawl space first. This is the area of yourself where noone else can really reach because they don't fit. This is your inner being where only you know the real you. This is where the deepest and darkest secrets of yourself lie. Shine a light around in there and see where the damaged places are. For me the light went directly to family life, cancelled wedding, broken friendships, weight struggle, and losing a long relationship.

Now, you have properly diagnosed the problem but that certainly doesn't fix the issue. Now the way to deal with it is that you can't replace the whole roof or in other terms start your life over. What you can do is deal with those parts of the roof by replacing bad shingles, sealing up leaks, and protecting the wood from here. How you do that in your life is this...

1. Get into your past and start to mend fences with people, grieve things that really need grieved, ask others for help, and really examine those parts that are damaged. Slowly you are replacing your bad shingles with new ones.

2. Now you need to make sure you are sealing up those leaks, which means get out of the old habits that made the roof leak in the first place. This may mean being more assertive and not getting walked on, being more open and sharing your heart more, or dealing with a serious problem like an addiction or anger managment.

3. To protect your wood in the future, start investing in yourself. When you start taking time to be with you, you value you a lot more. You learn the things about yourself that are worthy of protecting and you start to really do damage control. I started by going on a date by myself once a week and it was a great start. Now, I spend about 2 days a week on myself and just do things that I love to do. It makes me remember my worth when someone or something is trying to damage me!

I hope that today's blog made you think a little and it wasn't too hard to follow. Take care of your dry rot or eventually your roof will cave in and you'll be destroying more than just the top of your house, the inside will be damaged beyond repair. Have a great monday and here are my learning and thankfulness for yesterday:

Learning March 27, 2005:

1. Holidays away from family can be bearable after all.

2. Talking to my family on the phone on a holiday is almost good enough.

3. The beach is by far my favorite place in California.

4. I love Churro the turtle and look forward to seeing him when I am corona del mar.

5. When I set boundaries and keep them, I do a really good job and noone gets hurt!

Thankfulness March 27, 2005:

I am thankful that my holiday wasn't so bad even though I didn't celebrate it. It is hard as this is my first Easter away from Adolfo. Although we weren't together last year, we went out for lunch together to make sure and ease the transition. I missed our easter egg hunts and the love we once had but I made it on my strength and God's arms. Thank you God for getting me through yet another milestone, That dry rot is almost fixed up! Thanks :)

~Mosoltov~