A friend called out of the blue yesterday. She was upset – it happens a lot. In celebration of her birthday she had
a party at her house. She ordered
her husband to clean up the yard and store all his miscellaneous equipment in
their storage building. He worked
all afternoon and before long her guests arrived.
The party was a success and the night became heavy in
darkness as their moods became lighter.
Their guests liberally imbibed in the free liquor enjoying each other.
In midsentence of a joke a huge explosion rocked the
party. Flames and sparks danced
into the night sky as they all stared shocked at the burning building before
them. It was the shed her husband
had stored his equipment in. Their
reactions were slow, and her husband, crawling on his knees from too much
liquor, battled the blaze with a water hose. She called the fire department and six trucks arrived.
Thankfully the fire was put to rest without damaging the
house that lay situated fifty feet from the shed. But the night was not over. A drug unit arrived to investigate. “Sheds just don’t randomly blow up”,
they said. And so the search for
the meth lab started. Her entire
house was searched and she describes in detail the humiliation of being drunk
and suspected of operating a drug operation out of her house, with children who
were thankfully at a friend’s house that night. The drug search turned up nothing and the officers departed.
Several days passed but the drama continued, she tells
me. A man in town was spreading
the rumor that she was under heavy investigation for suspected meth lab
operations. But this is not what
bothered her, it was the fact no one told her of the rumor. Instead her friends avoided her
and the situation. It wasn’t until
a business acquaintance she had recently met came to her with the rumor.
I thought about what she was telling me about her pain and
betrayal of the people who attended her party, who had imbibed in free liquor,
and withheld this damaging rumor.
I assessed their reactions and I concluded they were a sorry lot. If it had been me and my friend
was being accused of anything, regardless of the validity, I would certainly
discuss it with them. But to
withhold the information and letting the rumor flourish is poor – no matter what
the excuse.
It is a tired saying but I told her anyway. She didn’t need friends like them. I had said this before but obviously
she hadn’t listened. So this time
I told her she was stubborn. She
was shocked but I didn’t stop there.
I accused her of being so afraid of being alone that she takes any
person offered to her. But the
problem was they aren’t friends, they are people who use people like her. They are around for a good time or when
they are in a bind, but they are never there for when you are in a bind. They
are also the first to turn on you, if it benefits them. I told her to stop over-friending and
keep with the people who mean the most and are the most important – her family.
Then I told her that sometimes drastic things have to happen
for stubborn people to wake up.
She exclaimed “What?!” And
I explained. God gives us signs
every single day to guide us in the right direction. Sometimes it is friends giving a bit of advice, sometimes it
is a boss giving you a difficult time, and sometimes it is the sunset on a
relationship. But unfortunately
most of us are too stubborn to see the signs. We think we must move forward because, of course, we are the
only ones who are right. Or we are the only ones who could possibly understand
the situation. So we ignore the
signs and we continue on a path that deep down we know is wrong. We are
stubborn. This is when God gets
fed up and explodes our lives. In
my friend’s case literary.
So, I tell my friend, listen to this sign and find worthy
friends. Keep faith that they are
out there – heck she was talking to one.
