Spiders and lessons

I was reading in the pitch dark last night (I love my Kindle App), enjoying the peace that only 11:00pm can provide in a farming community. Then just as princess buttercup was about to be eaten by the shreeking eel, I decided I was tense enough and it was time to turn the book off and go to bed. I reached up for my light switch so I could find my plug to charge the dern book, and as soon as light flooded the quiet room, a sound as deafening as the cry of Wesley from the pit of despair came from my mouth and bounced off the calm Tuscan hills. I found my self flailing my arms and I tried not to pee my pants from the standing position I had thus acquired on top of my bed. There was a monster on my wall, two inches from my light switch. Teeth the size of butcher knifes, claws the size of dinner chairs, spiky hair running down the wall and resting upon the pillow beside me, eyes staring into my soul with rough battles reflecting within them. I found my center (pronounced "thenter", naturally) and I unsheathed my sword and smote off the wild beasts head, saving Atticus' life just in the nick of time.

Wow. That true story ended up being much fruittier that previously imagined. The whole jumping up on the bed and yelling thing did happen. The beast really existed, but it was a spider. Although... My description wasn't too far off. I had to use a bowl to capture it, simply because a cup wasn't big enough. I threw it out my door and heard it hit the weeds below my house. I should have killed it to prevent a reenactment of this devastating moment in my life, but how does one go about killing such a creature? Ew. Atticus laughed at me and I went to sleep, feeling quite proud of myself for handling the beast at all.



This morning as I was taking my walk and contemplating over last night’s events, I learned something that I think is pretty important. I run into these gross and horrifying events almost every day (although usually not as dramatic as the spider). On my way through Rome a month ago, I saw rude things written on buildings and people doing things that I never wanted to see, so I closed my eyes. I was on a picnic yesterday and came across a dead snake that was about 4 feet long and 2 inches wide, which I stepped over and thanked the skies it wasn’t in my house. This morning there was a bag of bird parts strewn all over the road, so I held my nose and ran for a little while. Every day it’s something else. Dog poop in my yard. A bug in my ear. Someone yelling gnarly words at me in Italian. But… these are things that we just deal with. We step over them, throw them out, kick them into the weeds. It’s the same with profanity, pornography, and other worldly things. We do what we have to do to get them out of our way, then we go on with living the beautiful life we have been given instead of just sitting down in the “poop” or letting the “bugs” crawl all over us. And dealing with them makes us stronger. I now know that if another vicious spider enters my house, or if other worldly things appear in my life, I can deal with it. I’ve done it before, and it felt wonderful. I’m safe. The end.