By Doug Creamer

Everyone who knows me knows that I love weather. I watch the weather every day and keep track of storms. I may not know the high temperature we are expecting on a particular day, but I can tell you about storms that are on the way. My favorites are snowstorms and hurricanes. I will start tracking them long before the weather people on TV begin to mention them.

I used to know all the weather people from both Charlotte and Greensboro stations. The internet allows me access to the models, which I follow very closely. Since I gained that access, I have almost stopped following the local weather personalities. I check out some of their websites, follow a few weather bloggers, and go to the Weather Channel website, too. I still prefer to drill down into the data myself and see what I think based on the models.

When snowstorms and hurricanes are brewing, I check the models as soon as they update. I have developed an email list of people who want to know what I am thinking about a major weather event. It is all for fun and to see how accurately I can “guess” what will happen. I include side notes about some possible extremes just for fun.

It is Tuesday evening as I sit here at my computer. Hurricane Debby is now tropical storm Debby and she is planning to give us lots of rain. While we will experience some flooding in our area, the people along the coast will be experiencing significant flooding. The No. 1 search on Google for that area is: how do you build an ark? But seriously, keep them in your prayers.

When Noah built the ark, it took a long time. His sons helped, but it still took a long, long time to build the ark. If we were given that assignment today, it would take large crews of men working overtime to complete such a huge project. All the crews would become good friends as they worked long hours beside each other to get everything complete.

Working beside someone can help build connections, relationships and even friendships. Deep friendships don’t develop overnight. It takes a personal investment of our time. Once a friendship is established neither time nor distance will break the bonds.

My best friend and I became friends at work. We ate lunch together every day and talked about work, personal struggles or whatever was going on in our lives at the time. Our friendship developed naturally over time. We spent time together at work and socially. We helped each other out. He helped me move; now that is a true test of friendship!

Early in our friendship, we developed two boundaries. We decided not to talk about politics because we were on opposite sides of the aisle. The interesting thing to me is that we both thought more alike than we realized. We could have discussed our different ideas because we were willing to meet in the middle and understand our different perspectives. The media portrays us as a divided country, but I believe if we could just sit down together and talk, we would find out that we have more in common with each other than we realize and that we could become friends.

The other topic my friend quarantined was faith. His faith was personal and private. I am very outgoing when it comes to talking about my faith in God. A couple years before he passed, I was at his house when he told me that I was a good writer. I asked him how he knew. He said he had printed out and read all my columns and kept them in notebooks. His faith was deep and rich. I drove home that night reflecting on our friendship. We had talked faith for all the years we knew each other…we just didn’t use words. I miss my best friend mainly because we were real with each other and we were there for each other in spite of any differences.

I want to encourage you to treasure your friendships. I was reminded recently that true friends look past different opinions to look at the heart. Someone who will stand with you through thick and thin is a true treasure. I miss my best friend, his laughter, the joking, the camaraderie and the true judgement-free connection. It is hard for some to accept, but God wants to be best friends with you. All you have to do is open your heart to Him and spend some time with Him…the friendship will develop naturally, deeply over time.

Contact Doug Creamer at PO Box 777, Faith, NC 28041 or doug@dougcreamer.com.