Spiritual transformation - a web-based miracle.

After sitting there awhile, I decided to leave my spider be.  She seemed to have earned a right to be there.  I could clean my house around her.  It would be fun to show her to the boys, anyway.  They would be home from school soon.  In two weeks, we would board a plane for Seattle, Washington.  Our other home.  It had been 4 years since we had seen our other home.  We were excited to go home, no question.  Certainly for my husband and I, America is our home.  But even our boys, who mostly have only known New Guinea as their home, were excited to go to America for a year.  To them, it was an adventure.  They were anxious to try snowboarding, eat hot dogs and go to a Mariners game.  My husband and I were mostly excited to see friends and family again.  But for me, there was a sadness in it all.  Going home meant leaving home.  As a mother, wife and a woman, it’s always so hard for me.  I find that my tendency is to want to rest in my nest, not disrupt the entire process.  My initial response – always – “oh God, surely, I cannot move again.”

The spider became a source of entertainment for our family.  We began to spend all our free time sitting on the porch enjoying our new pet.  We started to feed her with moths.  Our neighbors would walk by laughing at our family, who was once again sitting on the front porch enjoying this creature that never ceased to amaze us.  Often, we would video her, as if she was one of the family.  We developed a concern for her welfare.  When it was raining hard, we would run out to see if she was o.k.  She always was.

After our first 2 days with her, I noticed holes in her web.  Later that night, as I checked on her, I was shocked to see that she was tearing apart her web, rolling it up like a yarn ball.  I was surprised by the sadness I felt as I thought about her leaving us.  The next morning, expecting to find her gone with no remains, I was met by another wonder.  She had indeed destroyed her entire web.  But she had miraculously rebuilt the web all over again.  It was perfect.  Over the remaining 2 weeks, she did this repeatedly about every 2 or 3 days!

She became known to us as Charlotte, of course.  She was clearly a woman.  Only a woman would take care of her home like that.  And Charlotte from the E.B. White story had a web that produced miracles; hers, with the words, “some pig.”  My Charlotte’s web did not have words in it, but her web still produced a miracle.  It spoke volumes to me about the love of my heavenly Father.  She showed me every day how to take apart a home and rebuild it.

A month after we got back to America, we got an email from the family who moved into our home when we left.  Charlotte had disappeared.  They didn’t seem to mind.  But our family mourned her loss and I, especially, cried sweet tears of both grief and joy, as I considered how faithfully God had moved us across the ocean, once again, and set us up in a new place.  Charlotte had shown me how to do what God invites us to do every day – worship Him in the midst of my circumstances, because He is enough every step of the way, and will enable me to do whatever He leads me to do so that I can fulfill my God given destiny.