Scar

Yesterday, I had surgery on my lip to remove cancer.  I saw a tiny piece on my lip that I thought would require a small incision and a couple of stitches.  Wrong!  The surgeon cut much more into my lip and then down below my lip a good inch.  I have a big scar.  He got all the cancer though, on the first cut.  Apparently, the small spot I saw had deep roots.  It must have been growing for a time.  It took a while for the roots to show themselves, or the discoloration I saw on my lip, that seemed not to change, was changing in ways I could not see.

Is this not the way it is with our habits, good and not so good?  When we begin to act badly, there may already be roots within our psyche that are just beginning to reveal themselves in our actions.  The more we do the same messy thing, the deeper we drive the roots and the harder it becomes to stop.  We don't see that in the beginning.  Addiction always starts out as a first time thing.  So does sin and vice.  Or we might begin to do an action that is not good for us.  We see only a minor problem.  As we repeat it however, we begin to drive in roots that are not so apparent, until we reach the stage of habit that we cannot stop.  That is why they call it vice, a bad habit, beyond our control.  Either the roots are already there, hidden, or we make them ourselves, but don't see it.  We keep saying we have control until one day, we realize we are out of control.  The Divine Healer is the only surgeon that can make us clean again.  There will be a scar, but we will be made clean.