Make a Snowball This Instant!

The “snowball effect” is often used to describe something that gets bigger and bigger, slowly at first, then picking up speed so that it’s huge to the point of uncontainable. People tend to say something “snowballed” when they describe a mess that could have been avoided. Or when something shouldn’t have gotten to some unacceptable state of being but somehow did anyway.

I see it differently. The snowball effect when it comes to a relationship between a man and a woman is a tender thing. Something to be cherished.

It starts of slowly, indeed. Each one feeling out the other. Each one tip toeing around, weighing whether what they discover about the other is interesting, intriguing or attractive. With each step, and with interest growing on either side, a snowball is formed.

As both invest, the snowball grows. It’s a joint effort. No single individual can build a relationship snowball. It takes two. Each adds their own handful of snow, each eager to see it grow into something of their own. A snowball like theirs has never before existed.

With each passing day, each conversation and each activity, the couple is pleased to add to the snowball. It is their own. It contains their history. The core consists of those first days and weeks, the exploration and the discovery, and in time as they push the snowball forward, it grows with shared memories, laughter, highs and lows.

The problem with a snowball is not that it can’t be unrolled, bit by bit just as it was formed, but rather that it can be destroyed in an instant. All it takes is a heat source. Sun, fire, a hair dryer… it does not matter. A snowball of any size can vanish merely moments after the heat takes aim. All that effort, all that joint building, gone. Not even “undone.” Just gone. Disappeared, leaving no trace but a puddle, which is absorbed into the ground and quickly turned into mud.

There are no words to somehow make this better. There’s no lesson to be learned. Nothing like “build the snowball anyway, just avoid heat at all times.” No, “Build it but store it in a freezer every time you’re not busy adding to it.” Nope. You can build the snowball or not build it. Every snowball comes with risk of a heat source presenting itself at any given moment.

Not all snowballs melt away. But whether you have had one or whether you have had many melted snowballs, you’re not alone. You are free to do whatever you need to do to mourn its disappearance. You can take all the time you need.

Then you can choose: will you move to sunny terrain to live out your days, or will you go find another winter wonderland? The choice is yours and no one is judging you. Both environments can be home to a richly rewarding life. Whichever you choose, go there without apology, with the wind at your back and the memory of your snowball alive. Because even if it’s gone, your snowball wasn’t the only thing being formed. It, too, was shaping you.

(written maybe a little too soon ?! after the writer’s snowball got held up to fire)

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance…a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak.” – Ecclesiastes 3:1-4, 6-7 (NIV)