Spiders

It's spider season again. I know because when I walk into various buildings, there they are. When I go to the bathroom, there they are. I watched one in the bathroom at work just hanging out all day, tracking him from the floor to the shower to the shower seat until I finally lost him. 

And I keep finding spider webs with my face while I'm out walking. 

That's a big giveaway. 

The other morning, I set out walking my dog and ran face-first into a big mess of spider web. Right in the middle of nowhere. (And it wasn't the only one.) But I looked up and looked around, trying, of course, to find the spider - to make sure it wasn't on my person somewhere. That's priority one. But as I was looking around, I realized I was literally standing in the middle of nowhere. Nothing around. A road sign a few feet to my right and a couple of inches in front of me; a tree and a chain link fence a few feet to my left and a little bit behind me. There was a good nearly 5 feet between these two points in space. 

And I thought...

Man, I want that kind of faith. 

I want the kind of thing to be a small thing in a big world and to just be completely comfortable launching myself across grand distances, across chasms that don't even seem like real spaces, with nothing but my tiny body and this fragile little thing I'm building to hold me together. (Of course, in faith, God and I are building it together, but stay with me here.) 

Some little tiny spider - some little 8-legged thing that I never did find - somehow wove a decently thick web across nearly five feet of space between the tip of a street sign a millimeter or so wide and six feet in the air...and the far end of the small branch of a little tree on the other side of the sidewalk. Some little guy that I could probably squish under my thumb if I wasn't so squeamish about things like squishing bugs under my thumb is repeatedly leaping great distances - hundreds of times his own body size - with nothing but this fragile thread of spider silk to steady him in the wind and against gravity. This fragile thread that is stretched across an incredibly dangerous space where anything - including a person just going about their life and not intending any harm - can destroy it in an instant. 

Man, I want to live like that.

I want to live confident in my fragile little things. I want to live comfortable with the things I'm building. I want to live stead in the wind and against gravity when all I've got is this very little bit that feels like it would break with the slightest bit of pressure. 

I want to throw myself into things that are so much bigger than me, where I can't even see...maybe can't even fathom...the other side. I want to stretch across what feel like dangerous spaces like they are the most natural things in all the world, the very best places for me to be. 

And I want to remember that most of the time, when things go south, there wasn't any malice in it. It was just some random person going about their regular life and not meaning me any harm, even if it brings everything tumbling down in an instant. 

And if it does?

Then I want to throw myself into that space all over again, hanging on by my fragile little thread, and doing my best (with God) to build something there to hold me up.