Beauty in Fear: A Tale of Two Spiders

Until a few weeks ago, I hated spiders. I loathed them. Killing these creepy crawlies actually brought me happiness. And yes, I’m well aware that spiders kill other insects; I heard this from my dad many times as a child (and as a teenager and as a young adult). When I would find one in my room, blood-curdling screams would ensue followed by a desperate plea for HELP. How my dad dealt with this drama in a calm and assuring way, I will never understand, but he’d come to my room, grab the spider with a tissue, and then try to talk me down from the bed…where I stood.

I feel differently about snakes – I actually had them as pets growing up. And if you have rodents in your house, well, I’ve killed a few. But, encountering a large, hairy spider will end me. At least, it would have until a few weeks ago when my husband called me out to our deck to show me a very large, very hairy spider who was in the middle of weaving one of the largest webs I had ever seen. My immediate reaction was weakness; I could feel the possibility of the end drawing near, so I covered my eyes and told my husband to burn the house down.

“Just look,” he said. “It’s incredible.”

Through the thin slits of my fingers still over my eyes, I allowed myself to watch for a few seconds. Admittedly, I was taken back by what was happening in front of me. Never before had I considered how a web was actually spun. The spider had connected it from the roof of our house to the furthest edge of the deck. The web that she was creating in the massive space was like nothing I had seen. Within minutes, I was calling my kids to come out and see the remarkable scene.

As soon as I mentioned what we were looking at, my oldest said she could not even come outside because she would die. Literally die. I told her she was being dramatic, and I couldn’t even imagine where she learned such melodrama.

My son snuck a peak, and then simply said, “That’s too much. Too much. It needs to be dead.” He shivered and told us it better be squished before he went to bed. My youngest, however, was intrigued. This brave offspring stood with us for several minutes and watched the spider work.

The next morning, I went out to check on the spider. Folks, I went out to check on the spider. Like to ensure that she was still good, that the web was still intact. And later that evening, we sat on the deck for over an hour and watched as a second spider appeared and began weaving a web. I didn’t become weak (not completely, at least), even though her new home was just feet from where we were sitting. We watched in awe as the spider created a center and then attached four corners from the edges of our canopy to the floor of the deck.

We took pictures, cheered the spider on, and did some research. When I discovered that spiders eat up their webs at dawn before weaving them again in the evening, I decided to wake up early in order to watch the web being taken up. And I did. And I videotaped it.

I videotaped the spider.

After two weeks of watching them and checking on them, my husband declared it was time for the spiders to go. We were having company the following evening, and he suspected that perhaps the group of friends would not be as intrigued as we had been by watching the spider’s antics while eating dinner on the deck.

I considered his words. And then I protested. It’s even possible, although who’s to say for sure, that I shed one tiny…very small, of course…little tear over the prospect of ending these two large, hairy lives. I called my husband a spider-killer and released him to go do the business. I couldn’t watch.

When I was describing the situation to a friend, a look of disgust was frozen on her face. I realized I  wasn’t adequately explaining my connection to the arachnids, so I simply told her: “I found beauty in my fear!”

Her face softened, and I thought for a second we were going to have a moment over the spiders. Maybe she was beginning to understand why I had become strangely attached to the two large, hairy spiders, but then she looked me squarely in the face and said, “I’m glad they’re dead.”

We didn’t have a moment over the spiders.

But, I couldn’t shake the idea that I found beauty in my fear. There was something extraordinary about the reality that something which had brought anxiety through the years became something astonishingly beautiful when I held its gaze. Could it be that other fears need to be purposefully scrutinized? And can beauty actually be seen in the aspects of life that bring anxiety?

Not long after my mom passed away, I woke with nightmares for several weeks all connected to the end of her life. It was painful to see her struggle, and she died in a body that only gave hints of the person I had known and loved my whole life. Through much processing, I realized that in part, my nightmares were an expression of my own fear of dying from a brain disease. Every physical twinge in my own body made me wonder with irrational but very real terror: Do I have it?  Only recently have I intentionally looked at the various threads of this fear and realized that something beautiful could be seen in the midst of it. Woven in and around each fear are precious promises from Jesus, and these related truths are extraordinary:

God’s Love is Immeasurable:“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God.” (1 John 3:1). God loves his children and pours out that love in abundance. No hardship or suffering can separate us from it, and there is nothing we will experience that is void of it.

God’s purposes prevail: “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand” (Proverbs 19:21).  My plan for today does not include suffering, and I certainly don’t plan it for those I love, but my plans are insignificant in light of a loving and sovereign God who tenderly prunes in order for us to grow. His perfect plan will prevail, and I can relent my frantic need to control because of this.

God’s power is sufficient: “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” This verse in 1 Peter 5 doesn’t tell us to simply hand over or merely place our cares on Jesus, but to cast them on Him. Forcefully throw your cares to Jesus, He is strong enough for it. His power consumes our fears, so throw them onto Jesus and rest in the fact that you don’t have to carry them on your own.  

What beauty can be seen in your fears? Some prying may be necessary in order to move our hands from our eyes, but when that happens, it becomes clear that woven in and around each fear are precious promises from Jesus, and they are so beautiful.