Night spiders

By Jeff Becraft

 

There are these things we call night spiders.

I don’t know what their official scientific name or zoological name or biological name is. We just simply call them night spiders. There’s a lot of spiders that come out at night but these spiders have these big bulbous bodies and they weave a new web every night. Then when the sun comes up the next morning, they take the web down. These things are huge.

When I was growing up, I was terrified of spiders. I really, really did not like spiders. I was just telling my wife the other day about one time my grandfather picked me up and I was riding in the backseat of his station wagon. There was this tiny spider on the seat and my eyes were riveted on that spider and I am all tense the entire time we are riding in the car.

Over the years, however, I have come to a realization and the realization is this: I am bigger than they are.

Just think about it. In a situation where I might see a giant spider… let’s say it’s a wolf spider or something like that…. I might be like, “That spider is huge!” And would be all anxious about the thing.

Well… if I am saying that, then what do you think the spider is saying when he goes home for dinner that night? “You should have seen this human! It was right next to me!… shining a flashlight in my eyeball and everything. I thought he was gonna squash me right there!”

It took me years to realize this… the fact that I am bigger than them and they are probably more scared of me. When I was younger, it was so bad one time – there was this giant spider in our house. This guy looked like a junior tarantula. I was renting a house with four other guys and this arachnid from a late-night movie was in my room. Well, we didn’t have any bug spray in the house and at that stage of the game, I wasn’t about to go into hand-to-hand combat with him. But I did find a can of oven cleaner. I just doused that dude with that white foam out of the can. But after one spray, you saw these legs stick out. I’m like, “Wow, this guy’s the abominable snow spider or something.” Well, I doused him again and eventually, the oven cleaner took him out. We never used it to clean the oven but it was good to have around for giant spiders.

As the years have gone on, as I’ve said, I realized I am bigger than they are. Why should I be walking around in fear of them? Years ago, my wife and I were riding along in the car and there was a spider on her leg. Brenda screamed and instantly I sprang into action. I delivered this kung fu whack on her leg and smote that spider right on the spot. It did, however, leave a handprint on her leg for the rest of the several-hour ride… something she still brings up.

I’ve come to the point where night spiders actually fascinate me. The fact that they would spin this intricate web every night and then take it down the next day. I have come to enjoy seeing and marveling at their work.

I still don’t want to walk into a web of a night spider. That has happened before, particularly on the side of our house. They like to make this web between our neighbor’s tree and my car. (What are those guys thinking?) More than once I have accidentally walked into one of those webs and I’m sure if my neighbors were watching, they would have thought that I had just watched some Bruce Lee movie with all the lightning fast reactions I had going on, with all the sound effects to go along with it.

Now, I don’t like spiders or anything. I simply no longer walk around in fear of them.

I wonder how many things in life, we just simply have a wrong perspective. Something seems so big, it seems so large, or it seems so overwhelming… and we lose perspective. So we walk around in fear.

I have heard someone say that fear means: False Evidence Appearing Real. And that is the thing that winds up persuading us. A lot of times what we need to do is go back to the truth. The truth will set us free… and then we won’t be walking around, giving in to fear all the time and letting that dominate our lives.

 

Jeff Becraft is the Director of Our Place of Hope and the Director Emeritus for Youth Corps and has dedicated much of his life to helping shift the vision of people’s lives. Our Place of Hope is a paradigm shift for people living with mental illness that encourages them to regain meaning, purpose, and hope for their lives. You can connect with Jeff at  [email protected].