Stained Glass Secrets

by: Elexis Penner

Flies vs Spiders

 

You know when you get into bed and you’ve got that perfect reading set-up. Your pillows are fluffed just right. You’re starting a new book. Everyone else has settled in and you’ve actually remembered to shut off all the lights and lock the doors. You’re on your way to getting through at least a page and a half before you pretty much doze off mid-paragraph. I’m more of a morning person, really.

And then you hear it. A fly.

 

It’s one of those big house flies that is buzzing erratically around your head. The kind that swoops past you, skimming your ear, acting like it just put back half a pot of coffee because it refuses to land and let you bash it with your paperback. Not the library’s, of course.

 

And you know that the minute you fall asleep it will crawl straight into the first available facial orifice and darn your incessant mouth-breathing!!!

 

So I got up, got the fly swatter, tried to go back to reading… and waited. Finally I noticed it land on the bed beside me and THWAP THWAP THWAP THWAP THWAP THWAP THWAP!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

“Did you get it?” I heard a quiet voice from the next room. Our family was at a cabin for a weekend, and the girls and I had stayed for a couple of extra days. Which meant we were on our own when it came to bug-killing and such.

 

And I’ve been trying to be more out-doorsy this last year, I really have. But there are some parts of nature that I just ummm…. can’t abide.

 

For instance, later that day, I was sitting outside and I noticed a spider web at the base of a nearby tree. It was one of those dense, well-established webs where you can see the outline of the perfectly formed tunnel that leads to its lair. In all likelihood it was the den of Shelob, the fictional giant spider from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth legend, and all I wanted to do was empty an entire can of Raid on it!!!!!

 

Then I laughed to myself. Look at me… wanting all the flies in the world to be dead, and also wanting all the things that EAT all the flies in the world to be dead. So typical.

 

It’s pretty much my modus operandi. As in, I love eating soup – I don’t really like chopping vegetables. I would love abs of steel – but I don’t much care for doing planks. I would love to stop being the kind of person who gets excited (read freaks out) about everything – but I’m not really willing to take the risk of not being in control. You know, the control I have of everything in my life. And my family’s life. Ha.

 

I was talking to a friend about this thing I was worrying on, and what if it didn’t work out, and what if I did the wrong thing, and plus there’s this other thing that I was feeling guilty about. I was basically asking her questions that I knew could not be answered by anyone but me. And probably not even me.

I think what I thought I wanted to hear, was that everything would just turn out splendidly. Perfect. Happily ever after. No pain. No failure. No set-backs. None of that.

 

But because she is much smarter than that, all she said was, “It would be exhausting to live inside your head.”

 

(Insert crickets chirping)

 

That’s exactly what it is. It’s exhausting. And it sucks the life out of everything.

 

It’s like that recurring nightmare where the beige, stain-hiding linoleum in your dining room has been replaced with white shag carpet.

 

You spend entire meal-times scrambling and hovering around your children, making sure nothing falls off the edge of the table. You never enjoy any of your food, and neither does anyone else. Heaven forbid you ever serve beet borscht.

 

Well, wake up. You’ve got a bare floor that matches the color of several food groups. If something spills, it’s not the end of the world. If something drops, you pick it up – someone might even help you. Just about everything is wipeable. And if it’s not? If it leaves a mark? Well then you’ve got a mark on the floor. That’s it.

 

Easy to say, I know. I don’t mean to diminish hard and painful things. Hard and painful things are really – you know – hard and painful.

 

But even entertaining the thought that maybe, just maybe, there is a chance that even if that whole thing goes south, that you will have the where-with-all to square your shoulders and somehow deal – well now you’ve got some courage.

 

In Daring Greatly, Brene Brown writes, “Sometimes the bravest and most important thing you can do is just show up.”

 

I’m guessing that’s where everyone starts.