Collect those raindrops

Life hits you at the strangest moments. As I was driving my daughter to school in the pouring rain, I looked up into a street light. The rain drops seemed to flow down to the earth in super slow-motion, and I could see individual drops, not merely sheets of a downpour.

Seeing all of those individual droplets made me think about flooding…and I realized something. An individual droplet won’t cause a flood. It is an annoyance — but it doesn’t change its surroundings except to make them a little bit wet. Unless there are millions of droplets…the environment doesn’t change much.

Millions of droplets, however, cause huge changes in their surroundings. Some for the better, and some for the worse. They can alleviate a drought, or cause a flash flood. They can fill a rain barrel and they can keep a retention pond full. A lack of them brings us right back to a drought, and until there is a consistent amount of raindrops over a time period, not just one downpour, a drought continues.

Raindrops are our habits

One new habit won’t effect the change we are looking for in our lives. Also, adding a multitude of new habits and going strong for a week (like a single downpour) won’t move the needle either. But adding new habits in one at a time, consistently, day after day, will create enough of a consistent rainfall to move us out of the drought of our lives and into the people we want to become.

I’m going to start thinking of my current habits (and new ones) as raindrops. Am I creating a go-big-or-go-home flash flood? Or am I adding in a little at a time, consistently, and avoiding drought? Are my raindrops being collected in a barrel or a retention pond, or going to waste when I could use the win later, in a season of life I may not have the mental time or energy to keep going? We all have those seasons…we ought to be ready for them.

What about you?

What raindrops are you collecting? How are you filling your barrel? Do you start with a bang and taper off quickly like a flash flood? Or do you create a consistent stream of moisture that nourishes the life around you?

It’s funny how life can hit you at the most random moments. But it was a good reminder. ☔️