If you have read other posts on this blog you will know that my husband travels often on business.
Although some people think this has perks - it rarely does. In fact there are so many other things that are downsides of this fact.
The Spider in the hall being just one of those.
When we moved into this house in December 2010 we noticed a lot of spiders appearing in the first 6 months here.
Suddenly we would be sitting quietly watching a dvd in the lounge when something would run along the floor past us and Fred would have to jump up to get it and kill it before it disappeared again. Slippers were even known to have been thrown across the room in some cases.
These spiders were not wee tiny things but quite big and therefore noticeable when they tried to sprint the length of our room.
The 2 good things about that time was that
- Fred was not travelling much so he was there to do the killing (please don't judge us for killing them).
- It came to an end, we presumed the spiders had been hiding somewhere after being free to roam the house while it was empty before we bought it and now they had all ventured out and been GOT.
I'm not saying we didn't get any spiders since then but to be honest we got more outside on the patio than we did in the house and the ones in the house were not big.
Until September last year that was.
It was enormous!
I mean really enormous!
But worse than that - Fred was away on business!
I was on my own in the house!
It was 1.15 in the morning when I should have been in bed fast asleep but well.....
All I could think of was
That thing could make it to our bedroom
and the door of our bedroom doesn't close properly
and this thing could be crawling all over me in bed.
I would never be able to sleep.
It has to go!
But there was no Fred to get it for me.
Now just to prove that I did not zoom in on this spider to make it look BIG you can see it compared to the mirror which is about 4.5 feet long and 2 feet deep. The spider was just approaching the corner and was about 1.5 feet from the mirror.
Before I decided how to kill it I had to take a picture because otherwise Fred would never have believed me about the size of it.
My biggest problem was I did not want to squash it on the wall because I did not want to mark the paintwork - too lazy to have to clean it!
I would have to act quickly before this thing ran off.
But I didn't because the spider seemed content to just sit there while I took the picture and stared at it considering my options.
No way was I going to try to scoop it onto a piece of paper and try to take it outside - it would have been far too close to my hands.
It had to be the flick it off the wall and stamp on it method!
But I was in my slippers and my feet are small so I had to go get a newspaper and would you believe that brute just sat there on the wall and waited for me to come back. I think he thought I would be no match for him.
Then with a swift flick off the wall (making no mark), I threw the newspaper on top of it on the floor and jumped on top of the newspaper.
GOT IT!
I actually think it was so big it couldn't move as fast as smaller spiders.
After what probably would have looked to others like a little flamenco dancing on the newspaper it was definitely dead.
Well I felt so good (not because I had killed a spider) but because I had managed something I usually relied on Fred to do and I would be able to sleep unworried about the spider.
But then the thought struck me
What if there was a spider's mate somewhere in the house?
How quickly I could go from one feeling to another!
How quickly my mood could be changed by one little thought!
But the devil sure knows which little thought to put into our minds - that one little thought that will be the one to do his evil work.
He knows just when to slip it in to rob us of any joy we have.
He tries it all the time.
He is an expert at it.
He thinks he knows us so well.
And let's face it he does know us well.
He knows all those thoughts, feelings, fears, reactions, worries that he can attack us with.
But
God does not attack us.
God does not rob us of joy.
God does not throw discouraging thoughts at us.
God does not plant niggling fears in our minds.
God is the one who gives us joy.
God is the one who helps us overcome all that the devil wants to pull us down with.
So next time you feel your joy being sucked away by the devil and his whisperings in your ear think about this story of the spider and
imagine you are flamenco dancing on the devil
because
Don't let the devil hold you back!
because
Don't let the devil hold you back!
