Tuesday, October 18, 2011  How to Handle Growing Pains  When I
was a child I had what my mother called “growing pains”- aches
and pains in my legs that would not let me fall asleep at night.
Who knows if they were in fact caused by growth (although I did
reach my current height of five feet nine inches when I was
twelve so there was some serious growing happening,) but they
were excruciating. If I moved my legs around in bed they would
feel a little better. Until I stopped, and then the pain would
be much worse than it had been before I’d started tossing and
turning.  What I figured out was that I had to hold still and
bear the discomfort if I wanted it to go away. So, that’s what I
did: I would lie very still, and pretend to send my breath down
into my legs (divine grace must have prompted this idea),
imagining I was breathing out the waves of pain that came. If I
could keep this up for five minutes, resisting the overwhelming
urge to move my legs, the pain would begin to dissipate. It was
short term discomf