May 5, 2021 “They’re more scared of you than you are of them.” People often tell me that when they learn I’m afraid of rodents and spiders. I know these fears are not rational, yet when I saw a tiny spider crawling in the handle of the door of my Jeep, I was instantly terrified. Fear is not always rational. As I found a safe spot to pull off the road, I kept trying to remind myself that the spider was more afraid of me than I was of it. “Well,” I thought, “that little creepy crawly must be terrified because I’m scared!” Once safely parked, I tried to scoop up the spider with a piece of paper with the intention of guiding it out the window. When I attempted to get the spider onto the paper, the tiny object of my terror jumped (I didn’t know they could do that)! I squealed, flung the piece of paper and completely lost sight of where the spider landed. I looked all over my Jeep. I couldn’t find it. I even got out of the vehicle and looked where I was sitting and all over my coat, pants and shoes. There was no sign of it. I got back in my vehicle and back on the road. The entire drive, I was convinced the spider was attempting to crawl up my leg. I swatted at my pants every time I felt even the slightest itch. Of course, because I was thinking about the spider, my legs itched every few minutes throughout the commute. I repeatedly convinced myself I saw something bug-sized moving on the passenger’s seat, on the door, on the floor… About halfway through my trip, the absurdity of the situation struck me as funny. This spider was truly tiny, smaller than the end of a pencil eraser, but I still let it take over my thoughts. I let its presence consume me, and I couldn’t let myself forget that it might be near me. It struck me that it’s easy to spend the better part of an hour dwelling on my proximity to a spider, but I forget so easily and so often that God is with me in every moment. While I’m glad I don’t have a terror response to our Lord, I wish I could focus on his presence as easily as I could focus on the presence of a tiny bug. I’ve been trying to do that. For the last six months (possibly longer), I’ve been making a conscious effort to spend a portion of my drive every day in silence and listening for what the Lord is saying to me. I’ll admit it: Sometimes, I don’t hear anything. But there are also times I hear, through fleeting ideas or feeling urged in a particular direction, God inspiring me or calling me to a particular task or to say something specific here in these pages or in my life. I never did find the spider in my car, but I find God working in my life every day, and I hear him calling me. |
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