Spiders

 

"The cupboard under the stairs was full of them,"

I heard my daughter reading from Harry Potter.
(hear the British accent there)

Then ...

"Mom! Harry had to sleep with spiders!"
She laughed and had the heebie jeebies simultaneously.

I grinned, then said:

"We all do!

We just don't always see them.
We don't always realize they're there."
(and her daddy just killed a spider in her room the previous day)

 

 

Oh, spiders are definitely there,
especially when you live in Texas.
They are in every corner, in the garage, dangling out of trees ...
What would we do without the exterminator?
 

Before submitting my book to the publisher,

I was working hard in our office.
I edited until my eyes were literally bruised.

Barefoot in summer,
I had one leg propped up on the chair I was sitting in.

As soon as I put my foot down on the hardwood floor ...

tinge of pain.

I looked down to see the culprit,

but my reading glasses made for minimal visibility.
My first thought: scorpion?

I yanked my glasses off, looked down ...

and there was a squashed spider.

Huge.
It was a suicide biter ...
it chose to bite me and take a foot on the way down over life.
In that whole room ...
the spider had to be right under where my foot would touch down ...
are you kidding me?
What are the odds?

Chills went up and down my spine.

I grabbed the squashed spider up in a napkin

and walked limping out the house to the back property to show my husband,

milking out the injury for all it was worth.

Tingles went all over my foot and lower leg.

We googled it and found it named: "Rabid Wolf Spider."

And it was poisonous.

 

I had just had an encounter with an eerie computer virus

while trying to get my book to the publisher ...

heard an eerie laugh come across my computer speaker

sounding like what I would envision - the devil himself.

That incident led me to pen "his viral voice" in my book when mentioning the enemy.

And now, a spider bite.

 

The enemy is so there.
 He'll bite you and take a foot on the way down over life.

We may not see him,

but he's there to whisper into our ears with his viral voice ...
Poison -
 

Our failures

Our shortcomings

Our past

You should have ...

You should have been ...

You can't do this ...
You don't deserve this ...
You will not do this ...

 

Oh, the critter's there ...
he's there ...

hiding under the bed ...

hiding in the corners ...

brazen enough to be right under our feet,

at our fingertips,

and crawling over us in our sleep.

 

When you give that spider your total focus,
when you sit down beside him,

you'll be looking straight at arachnophobia.

You'll be fearful.

Peace will be absent.
Tangled ...
Ensnared ...
 

We can't give the enemy our total focus.
God deserves our total focus,

and we'd better not lend it to anything or anyone else ...

especially not the spider.

 

Oh, the spider is there all right.

But more importantly ...

God is there.
Focus.

Focus on God.

Replace the enemy's lies with God's Word - the truth.

 

When God offers so much wonderful ...
(Yes, I'm using "wonderful" as a noun ... wink!)
 

 

Basket of assorted cat toys.

Why would we focus on that one?

 

 



 

Mind what you see, what you read, what you hear, what you touch ...
Oh, be careful.
Focus on God.

That is the Raid - the exterminator - that will knock out
that spider, that prowler, that intruder

and squash him like the bug he is. 

 

Don't leave your intentions hollow
When temptation comes to wallow
Focus on the ONE to FOLLOW