When I was a little girl, I lived with my family in a 12 foot by 60 foot trailer. Back then, they weren’t called anything fancy like “modular homes” or things like that. One of my favorite memories is when it would rain and hit the metal roof. It was peculiar how the rain had its own rhythm. It would lull me right to sleep. To this day, I keep trying to convince my husband to replace our shingled roof with a metal one, but he says they’re too expensive if done correctly.
Currently, I’m sitting on my front porch in one of my rockers, I'm enjoying a cool spring rain. The rain is coming steady and straight down.
I hear it. I smell it. And I'm thankful. Our garden needed rain. Did you know rain is different than tap water or well water?
Rain is soft water and contains nitrates which is one of the key elements plants need to grow and thrive, to be lush, to reproduce and produce. After this rain, our garden will shoot up a few more inches.
Rain can come in a variety of speeds. A mist. A sprinkle. A gentle rain. A hard rain, and there's the kind of rain in which the windshield wipers might as well fly right off the car because there isn’t a speed fast enough to move the water off the windshield.
Rain can last for a moment, days up to a week.
It can rain so much the results are disastrous. In 2016, Denham Springs, Louisiana, had a 500 year flood. I had never heard of such. I had heard of 100 year flood because we had that type of flooding earlier in the year. A 500 year flood means it had never rained that much. It flooded areas that never flooded. School were closed. Highways were under water. Many lost everything.
To know how strong a friendship truly is, a little rain must fall. When problems arise in your friendship, how do you respond? Pettiness or with grace and understanding. How easily do you or your girlfriend forgive each other or do you hold a grudge?
Proverbs 18:24
One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
When things go terribly wrong on your life, who's standing there beside you, praying for you and with you, and who abandons you at the first sign of hardship? When the rain is so heavy she can’t see five feet in front of her face, where are you and what are you doing?
Who are the friends who stay with you when the hardship lasts past a moment into a day and stretches on into weeks, months, years? Are you that kind of friend? Do you endure? You can't expect to have those kind of friends if you are not that kind of friend yourself.
But here’s the thing. Our girlfriends also have lives of their own, so they may not be able to be there when catastrophe hit or when a little rain falls. Realize this isn’t all about you. When times like this come, and they always do, Proverbs 18:24 tells us we have a friend who is closer than a brother. There will be times when Jesus wants to be the only Friend you seek. In truth, He’s the only Friend you need, but He blesses us with friends in this life knowing we need girlfriends who will stand in the gap for us and with us from time to time.
As soon as you realize you are angry with a girlfriend because she isn’t there for you, you need to check yourself. Have you called and checked on her? Is she going through something? True friendship doesn’t just benefit you.