When I was a little girl I used to fall down very often because of the rough games I played.  My knees were full of scars and I would cry hard because I would be covered in blood and dust.

I remember the games with so much love.  It was so much fun and I didn’t even care about the pain.

Sometimes I look at myself and I still see that little girl, I can still experience the sensation of pain on looking at my knees.  But more than that I see myself as a reflex of my past, I can see that little girl complaining about being hurt.

How many times I am wounded in the inside and I can feel it in my soul.  So many times I hurt myself, so many times others hurt me and even life itself is just pain.

It has been hard for me to understand pain, it has been hard for me to accept suffering and yet on comparing it with my own experience of my childhood I can (if not exactly) understand or accept it, I can at least get to be their friend and be thankful.

When I was little my mom would clean my wounds with disinfectant and in that precise moment my wound would be clean to be ready to heal (that hurts), after she would place some healing cream and everything would be ok until I would fall again.

I often ask my self about the purpose of my falls and I can see now that it was a preparation for me to be ready for the real pain and healing I would suffer later on in my life.  The kind of pain you suffer in your soul.  Things that happen to everybody as:  death of someone you love, betrayal, mistakes, etc.

We often ask God:  Why did it happen to me.  I say that the question should not be WHY, the question should be WHAT FOR.  This question leads us to the real meaning of growing.

The whys are not supposed to be focused on the situation, they should be focused in the reasons as what is the purpose of what I am experience in order to grow.

Just as when my mom cleansed my wounds, pain cleanses my injured soul, the process of cleansing hurts and it must be a process.  We cannot, we must not allow pain go away without extracting from it its purpose and to do so, we have to poke into our souls wounds and into our minds (I mean psychological wounds)  ask the correct whys, as what have happened to me in my entire life that made me act the way I do?  Have I any kind of trauma that makes me do things the way I do, in short words:  Why did I become to be who I am?  Once we answer those questions, then we can start dealing with the growing part, I mean, we can start to heal the very beginning of our wounds.  God loves us so much that he gives us the disinfectant, then he protects our wounds with healing cream, we will probably have scars, but that would remind us of what we have been through.  I assure you, once you grow (in your soul) you will remember when you were little in your spirit and will love that time as much as you remember with love your actual childhood.

Life is not something to be lived lightly, life was given to you to live it fully, to explore all your possibilities, to fall and get up again, life is an opportunity as pain also is.  Open your eyes as much as you can, walk in life conscious of what made you be and what you are, then you will walk the path of pain without fear, because you will know that the only thing that you can get from it would be growing in the inside to be able to glorify God as much as he deserves.