Pain is like a pebble.

     Imagine being at the top of a mountain. All around you are beautiful clear blue skies, and at your feet, blankets of snow cascading down the mountainside. As you stand there, taking in the view and drop a pebble down into the snow. This pebble is your pain. As you watch the pebble roll down the mountainside, you see it gathering snow and speed and you wonder, what did you just let loose? Luckily, the snowball sometimes crashes up against another large stone - exploding the snow in all directions. Seeing this, you suddenly feel relieved, as if all the energy from your pain has been released from you.

     But sometimes, there aren�t any stones to stop the pebble from going down the mountainside. Instead, it gathers more steam, and suddenly you have an avalanche tumbling out of control, in all directions, destroying everything in its path. The sound of the avalanche crashes and echoes against the mountain sides. Suddenly, there is quietness. No movement from anywhere. There is a feeling of emptiness, within and without. Feelings of sadness, guilt overwhelms you. How could you allow your pain to get so out of control that it destroyed everything in its path?

     You could stand there and wallow in your self-pity, or you can look at what has been created. As you look down the mountainside, you see felled trees, animals� dead or injured, bleakness, and emptiness. Yet, within this emptiness are new possibilities. Even as you look at the felled trees, you know that in the freshly uncovered soil, lay the seeds for new growth. There are new opportunities for animals to live and thrive. Even in destruction, there is growth. So it is with life, after the "destruction" of allowing the pain to be released from within you, you have new opportunities to plant new seeds of life and love within yourself. Given the chance, new life will come to you and thrive within you. And before you know it, you will be new yourself.