Photographers are pretty clever people. they can make everything look amazing, even broken-ness, even pebbles. reality is a little more harsh. try walking with a pebble in your shoe for a day; try climbing over a mountain of pebbles or even digging your way out of a hole in a mountain of pebbles. why this now? I guess it’s a way of explaining my last blog. you see, for months leading up to my writing ‘the end’ there have been hundreds … maybe thousands … millions of pebbles that I have tried to deal with. each one not so big and significant. just a pebble. but millions upon millions become mountains and finally, a mountain caved in on me. and in that avalanche, I became the insignificant one. life itself became valueless, so small did I believe myself to be in the tomb of pebbles that I became buried under. in the darkness of my grave i believed myself totally alone, totally abandoned, dead. from within my tomb, I could not see the many hands of the many hearts that suddenly jumped to the task of digging me out or helping me find my way back. so, near to the end, near to the very edge of life, I faltered. only the vision of tomorrow held me back. not the positive of hope but the grief of questions unanswerable by ones loved. so I fell and slept. I am now in the slow process of waking, seeing the destruction of pain. the destruction it has left on others. the destruction it has left on me. some have understood, some have judged, some have remained safely distant. and now the digging begins (or begins again) pebble by pebble. yes another cave in cannot be out-ruled. it might happen again. but what options are there? to risk a cave in while trying or to risk a cave in while not trying … that is all. in all of this where is God? I don’t know … I don’t have the answer to that for me yet. my faith is being tested? maybe. being refined? maybe that too. being born? yes maybe that too … I don’t know. all I know is that the end didn’t come, not yet. it will … one day it will … but not like it was going to back then … and tomorrow is a new day. when someone is dying, don’t judge them for the grief they cause you. don’t be angry with them when they cannot control what they cannot control. walk in their shoes for a minute. ask yourself why they might be at that point. maybe the pebble in their shoe, the pebble that you consider such a small thing, has torn through the sole of their foot and travelled to their heart and blocked all blood flow. maybe they cannot see any other way of being free of the pain in their heart … no other way than dying …                                                                and tomorrow is another day.