Let It Go

July 27, 2014

This morning my friend, Heidi, sent me a text message asking how my day was going. Honestly, it’s ok. I’m a little tired from overdoing yesterday and kind of dragging my butt my there’s no real problems. I answered and inquired of her well-being. She replied that she was currently trying to kill a spider in her car, that she’s afraid of them and surely as soon as she started driving again it would jump out at her. I had to laugh because I am so much the other extreme. Whenever there’s an unusual bug I’m all “Oooooo let’s catch it in a bottle so I can get a good look!” Then I Google it and figure out what it is and if it’s not poisonous or otherwise the sort of thing you don’t want around I let it go.

(That doesn’t mean, however, that I won’t do the jig of utter panic if a spider or even a big ant (and we have some that are huge!) starts to crawl on my leg or arm or… It’s a time I can lay down some moves that might remind you of a spastic ninja!)

What I’ve found is that most of these little creatures are pretty fascinating. There is such diversity and creativity in God’s handiwork! And it always gives me a new way to look at things and imagine creating it myself. That need to create and the creativity to imagine and do it is what I think is our divine spark – the little piece of our Heavenly Father that we carry within us.

Curiosity and creativity are good things!

A few months ago I found a scorpion in the house. Derek was gone to work (he always seems to have a job with insane hours) and I’d come upstairs, either just getting up for the day or on one of those potty runs that happens when I drink too much water too close to bedtime, and the dogs came up with me. With the dim light of very early morning, or maybe it was the carport light shining in the door window, I saw the black spot on the kitchen floor just about the same time the dogs did. Of course, my “what the heck?” translated to each of them as “Yummy yummy morsel if I can be the first to grab this special and unexpected treat!!” and all three got stung on the nose as they took a sniff behind the one who’d just dropped it. By then I was thinking that it looked a lot like a scorpion… and grabbing for an old pesto bottle (I save the Bertolli ones because I have designs of storing herbs and spice mixes in them). All the years I lived in those Western deserts you’d think of as a natural habitat for scorpions I never saw a single one. Move to lush, green, almost tropical Georgia which doesn’t impress me as the place that kind of creature would be at home and there it is… my first encounter with this specific arachnid.

Google told me that it was, indeed, right at home here. The black little fella is known as a Georgia Devil. They are native only to the low mountains of northern Georgia. The pain equivalent of its sting is like that of a yellow jacket (not desirable but not end of the world as we know it kind of painful either) and they will only sting a person or pet if provoked. While he looked plenty provoked down in the bottle and I’m sure would have happily stung me repeatedly if he could, Google said these scorpions spend most of their lives eating other spiders and noxious bugs from around a house’s foundation and in the garden. I thought it was really interesting so I left the bottle where Derek could see it when he came home. He wasn’t nearly so impressed by my newfound knowledge or the little treasure on the counter but indulged my Mother Earth instincts and took it out to the edge of the woods and let it go.

I’m trying to use that example in the rest of my life and just let the little problems go like most of the strange bugs and lizards and whatnot I find in the yard (and occasionally inside). I need to focus my energy on the few things I can control and work on building more positives into daily routines. Besides, so many little problems only look scary until they are solved with a bit of faith, curiosity and applied creativity. And when the little ones are taken care of, big problems don’t seem quite so insurmountable either.