I”m sure that you are all familiar with how pearls are formed.  An irritant, (could be a grain of sand),  works its way inside the oyster and  begins to irritate the soft inside, similar to us having a splinter.  The oyster, in order to protect itself, begins to form layers around the irritant, out of the same material as its shell.  The oyster keeps adding layers and layers and the result is often a beautiful, perfectly formed pearl. 

Perhaps we should take a lesson from the simple oyster.  Sometimes we are plagued with irritants from the outside (inside too).  Somehow these things work their way into our psyche and they begin to annoy us and bother us.  It may be the tiniest thing, something that others may not even notice, but for us, boy, are they irritating.  We may think that we are able to ignore them and they will ‘go away’ but most of the time they remain, and sometimes even begin to grow and grow until they can be ignored no longer.

Maybe we should just deal with them the way that an oyster does.  It takes work to turn an irritant into a beautiful pearl, but once the pearl is formed, the oyster can live with it inside its shell.   We need to turn those sharp, piercing annoyances into something smooth and round and certainly something that we can then live with in peace.  Somtimes we cannot rid ourselves of the problem.  Sometimes we have to face it, work with it and transform it.  And then, the product is something that we can be proud of.  The oyster is different after the pearl is formed, and so are we.  It doesn’t happen overnight, it is a process, but one that yields a beautiful result. 

Ok – today I add another layer (or two).