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If you are into praying, you might add rain to the things you would pray for today. I thought we might get some the day before yesterday but it went elsewhere. To be fair, I always hope that whoever gets the rain really needs it but doesn’t get so much that its dangerous for man or animals like recently happened in the New Braunfels area.

I was coming home from Marble Falls the other day and noticed that the temperature there was 97 and that’s just too hot. I thought about the people who have to work out in the heat and felt bad for them and decided it might be the time and place to say a rain prayer. It had begun to cloud up pretty good and so my prayer went something like this, "Lord it looks like you have some rain clouds up there and we really need rain. We need it here and we need it now and unless someone/somewhere else needs it worse than we do, let it come on down." I continued, "The peaches are small and I think they need some good rain and the livestock have about eaten up all the ‘green’ we had from spring and they need some grass and the grass needs rain, people who have collection systems need the rain to fill their tanks, Lord we need rain for all kinds of reasons and we need it now!" And without another minute going by the biggest, hardest shower I have seen in months came down all around me for about THREE MINUTES!

It was almost scary it happened so quickly after my long rain prayer.

It was such a surprise that I felt like I had really been heard and that my prayer was answered. I called my husband to let him know what had happened and he told me in no uncertain terms NOT to do that again until I was back in Blanco County, preferably on CR 211. He said it never hurts to tell the Lord where you want the rain to come because being specific never bothered the Lord and we may as well ask for it on our place. I tried but I apparently only had the Lord’s ear for that stretch of 281S, closer to Marble Falls than to here, but I am sure they enjoyed the bit that they got.

I guess what I will say is that you should be careful what you pray for because you just might get it. I always felt that if I prayed for myself and mine it would be selfish. But of course I pray for a long list of folks in general and have a big list of personal people who need prayer. But someone I trust said to me recently that it is perfectly acceptable to be very specific in prayer, so I am doing that.

We had such a magnificent spring. The weather was gorgeous, the flora was abundant, the winds carried with them the beautiful scent of the most abundant bluebonnet season I remember having seen. I hate to be so needy again so soon, but it doesn’t take long for us to get in bad shape weather wise.

I used to hope for some minor hurricane to bring us the badly needed rain up this way but I won’t pray for that this year as a hurricane is the very last thing the Gulf Coast needs this summer. However if some small storm would not further upset the Gulf Coast area but send some rains to us inland that’d be really good.

Well, I am writing this on Monday afternoon before you get this paper on Thursday and it’s happened again. I stopped writing this column about 5PM to fix dinner and when we went out to feed the dogs the air was so heavy it was hard to breathe. I began to speak to whoever might be listening that if we didn’t get rain today with this humidity and all these dark clouds we probably would never get any.

We ate dinner and as we sat down, I said to Pat, "What is that noise, is it rain?" Sure enough it was and I am not claiming responsibility for this good shower, but I am telling you that I was just talking about it and now it is here.

We quickly ate our dinner and went out on the northwest side of the house to the porch and took our seats. It was not only raining pretty good, but blowing as well and the temperature had dropped appreciably. It felt wonderful. In a few minutes, we heard the back door slam and here came our two dogs, Trixie and Prissy. Neither of them like bad weather and they do not like getting wet but I know they heard us on the porch and each one began to paw on our legs to pick them up.

Isn’t it amazing that when you think you can’t take another minute of the high humidity AND the heat, then in a heart beat it rains and cools every thing off and gives every thirsty thing a good drink of water. My hope is that everyone who needed this nice shower got some today and it looks as though we might get even more tonight and maybe for the next few days. It just never hurts to be specific in your prayers and to ask for what you need and that is how I feel and I am sticking to it.