Every day Rosie, Molly, Bethany and I work out when we get back from doing ministry in the morning.
The ever-encouraging T25 instructor, Shaun T, with his apparent inability to sweat and instead only glisten, yells at us through Rosie’s computer from his nice climate controlled gym that ‘it’s only 25 minutes a day!’
Meanwhile, outdoors in Cambodia, I finally discovered the purpose of my eyebrows as so much sweat is pouring down my face and being caught in them that I have to squeegee the water out of them with my finger.
So with that visual, a decently cold shower is a most welcomed part of my day. And this shower began like any of the others.
While staring in the mirror and wondering if I would look good as an old lady with hair as white as my shampoo made it, I glanced up at the window above the mirror.
In that moment it became nothing like a normal routine shower.
There in the window was a disturbingly eerie, brown spider about the size of the palm of my hand just chillin’. He stared at me with his too many eyes in a laid back manner of not being swayed in any way by my presence as if to say, “Your move.”
With panic rising and my eyes refusing to blink at the chance of in that moment of blinking is when the attack would occur, I had to make a conscious decision to remain and finish out the shower or grab my stuff and make a quick departure.
Departure meant abandoning even the idea of washing the shampoo out of my hair and my questions of what I will look like in my aging days to come because if I stay those days will never come to pass anyways.
At this point I am 10 months into the Race. I have experienced more bugs crawling on or around me in the past 10 months than probably my entire life.
I am no longer even slightly squeamish at the mouse that crawls down from the roof every night or the inevitable cockroach like bug to be found in my clothes pile.
So I looked this spider in its glassy, black eyes and decided to remain.
And the next 5 minutes of my life consisted of the most stressful shower I have ever endured.
I tried to distract myself by reading the conditioner bottle label as I cleaned the salty residue of sweat off the rest of myself, but I knew this spider would not be deceived by so simple a diversion of my attention.
I tried to imagine him as a boggart as Ron did in Professor Lupin’s class from Harry Potter and Riddikulus him into producing 8 tiny roller skates and looking like a fool. But, alas, being a muggle has too many limits.
I tried to envision ways to kill him but every way I thought up produced more thoughts about what would happen if I failed in killing him, and instead would then just make him really, really angry. And then shuddered at the repercussions of a failed attempt on his life.
I tried to give him a backstory and envision him as a non-threatening spider that would not cause me harm, as it could be the neighbor’s runaway pet. I mean it was gigantic enough in my mind to put a leash on, and he would be called something catchy like Fang or Webby.
As I wrapped up to leave and quickly pushed my head and arms through the holes into my shirt, I took into account that this spider, who had plagued my 7-minute solace of the day in the shower, had not once moved.
I shut the door to the shower and felt instant relief to be out of the spider’s strike zone as I heard the click of the door handle behind me.
Later as I laid in Bethany’s hammock, processing and debriefing the experience, as well asking Jesus why He created a creature such as Fang/Webby, it frustrated me how something so small (relatively speaking) shook me to my core.
With all of the spiritual warfare happening on our team my mind went to images of Satan quietly and patiently waiting for his moments of attack. When we are most vulnerable and unprepared. He wants us at our weakest in order to not walk out what the Lord is asking us to do.
And I hate being weak. My weaknesses sit staring up at me, unmoving, like a giant elephant in the room of my soul that I would love to just turn my back on and shut the door, as if they are not there.
I hate them enough to come up with elaborate backstories of a spider in my shower window to distract myself from the weak holes in my façade. Instead of turning to Jesus, I’ll turn to myself to fix what is weak because I should be strong enough to face whatever it is.
I should be strong enough.
I can’t tell you how many times I have had this thought in the past year, in my life really.
But in my weaknesses I am more aware of God’s grace than when I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:10)
This time my weakness may have taken the form of an abnormally large spider and fear of not being strong enough to fight my overall fears and spiritual warfare of the month, but within the fear I still see Jesus.
He’s holding out the Armor of God laid out for me in Ephesians 6, imploring me to grasp it and hold it dear to my heart.
Because I am not supposed to face them on my own strength, I am supposed to face them with the knowledge that Jesus has already gone before me and will fight right next to me.
No matter how large the spider.
