This morning I considered two quotes. One is from a movie version of the Agatha Christie novel Death on the Nile, where a self-centered and arrogant young woman comments, “Isn’t it awful when one’s friends fall on hard times? One simply has to drop them!”

The other is a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien. It says, “Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.”

What kind of a friend are you? When your friends are crushed under life’s circumstances … when doubt and depression and grief overtake them … when the pain seems to go on without end … what will you do?

Will you immediately wash your hands of them? After all, they don’t have anything they can give to you. They can’t meet your needs in the middle of their own crisis.

Will you keep the relationship going for a little while, but with less and less energy and initiative on your part until it finally fritters away? Get on with your own life and leave them behind to succeed or fail on their own?

Or will you be faithful when the road darkens? Will you walk the entire length with them, the whole Via Dolorosa? Knowing it’s going to cost you. Knowing it’s going to hurt. Knowing it’s going to be a long, long tunnel before they come out the other side. 

What kind of a friend are you?

© 2010 Paula Marolewski, www.SinkYourRoots.com

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