meditation

My husband is a natural born animal rescuer. It’s not enough for him to rescue dirty, emaciated dogs trying to cross busy streets, he also likes to rescue crickets, spiders, snails, bees, ants and grasshoppers.

He has developed a whole special system for crickets as they tend to have a disproportionate death wish. Crickets are always flinging themselves into our garbage disposal, or into a tub full of water, which Glen then feverishly works to rescue them from. Hubby takes a scratchy sponge (he has figured out that they like this), and once the cricket barely steps onto the sponge, he flings it out the back door, onto the grass. I am in awe of his respect for life, but secretly wonder if the baseball-like flinging kills them anyway.

I once was alone in the office, trying to channel my next great blog entry when a gargantuan, hairy spider crawled up the wall right in front of my computer. My whole body began to shake and quiver. Surely this spider would see me and be promptly motivated to spring from the wall and land on top of my head. Once on top of my head, he, or she, would spin down to the ground and proceed to crawl up my pant leg, all the while biting me with his, or her, poisonous fangs.

I tried talking to the spider, “Please, I don’t like spiders. I’m not going to rescue you. Glen’s not here. Come back later tonight, around eightish.” And I was being totally serious. I said many more things to this spider, I even tried talking to the spider’s angel guide, or animal guide. I was desperate. The spider didn’t budge.

At that point, I knew two things to be true: we absolutely could not co-exist in this space together, and I could not muster up the moxy to rescue, transport, and then free this beast of a spider. There was no other choice. I would have to kill it.

I will spare you from my murdering ways, but I will tell you that I did not succeed. The worst thing happened: I didn’t whack it hard enough and so it remained there on my wall, terribly injured, but alive.

What happened then was nothing short of miraculous. I began to love this spider. I began to see the horrific, menacing threat as me, not this small fury thing that was looking for a home, or perhaps a cricket.

Now I know, I know... the circle of life and all. I mean, if I had put a juicy cricket in this spider’s web, it would paralyze it, wrap it in silk and suck it’s guts out. Who’s the killer now? But I tell this story to address a current theme in my life; moving from fear to faith.

My actions were completely rooted in fear. The result was an injured creature and a terribly guilt-ridden human. How would things have changed had I acted from faith--faith that this spider could not harm me, that I was perfectly safe and able-bodied? I had all the creativity and resources available to remove this creature from my space without causing it or myself harm or injury. To me, that feels like such an elevated and evolved way of thinking. And, on top of that, it just feels better to my heart.

The faith-filled thought always feels better. Why? It is in alignment with who we are... our essence. This is our inner compass that always knows our best, highest path. When we are in alignment, it feels good.

So thank you Ms. Spider, for sacrificing yourself so that I could really learn that life-lesson. Thank you for not jumping on me and confirming my fears. Thank you for, instead, teaching me of faith, and the power of what I choose to think. When I see one of your thousands of babies, I will do my best to show them the great outdoors. If you could somehow let them know that Glen is better at all this, I’d really appreciate it.