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enjoying everyday life
YOUR EMOTIONAL HEALTH: GOOD
FRUIT OR BAD ROOT?
JOYCE MEYER
Are you emotionally healthy? It seems there are a lot of I remember years ago when I would complain to Dave, say-
people who aren’t, and I used to be one of them. Because ing, “We don’t talk about anything!” Finally, one day Dave
I grew up in a very unstable, angry atmosphere and was said to me, “You know, Joyce, WE don’t talk. YOU talk and
abused by my father for years, I became a miserable, an- you want me to listen and agree with you.” He was right!
gry, controlling adult and didn’t know how to have healthy Whenever I would share an opinion about something with
relationships. And until I learned how to grow in my relation- Dave, if he didn’t agree with me, the fight was on!
ship with Christ, I was a mess in my soul.
We would get into these big arguments and I would end up
Many people have wounds in their soul because of things so confused, thinking, “I don’t even know what we’re talk-
that have happened to them. They’ve been abused or mis- ing about anymore!” The really frustrating thing was I didn’t
treated and it’s caused them to have a victim mentality, understand what my problem was, so I just kept blaming it
to get stuck in self-pity, to have an out-of-control temper or all on Dave.
a constant sense of insecurity, and so on. When we have
unhealthy emotions, and the bad behavior that comes as When we don’t take responsibility for our problems, we
a result of it, we have to get to the root of the issue to fix it. blame them on someone or something else. But when I fi-
nally got to the point where I was sick and tired of arguing
Matthew 12:33 (NLT) says, “A tree is identified by its fruit. If a with Dave all the time, I prayed for God to show me what
tree is good, its fruit will be good. If a tree is bad, its fruit will was wrong. He answered my prayer and revealed that I
be bad.” In other words, where there’s rotten fruit, there’s a had a root of rejection in my soul from the way I was raised,
rotten root! and until that root was dealt with, the fruit (or behavior) in
my life would never change.
