Side Effects of Spider’s Bite
Labor Day weekend. My favorite
holiday. Why? I'm not exactly sure. It could be because my family and I would
always get together at my grandmother’s house to hangout barbeque, and listen
to music. On the other hand, it could be because it's every kid’s last “hurrah”
before school starts. (This used to be true before I became a teacher in the
Delta. Starting school in August?! What are they thinking?) Or, it could
represent the end of something great, like summer vacation, and the start of
something grand: a brand new school year. Whatever the reason, there is no
denying it; Labor Day is my favorite holiday.
As this most recent Labor Day
was approaching, I had been recently given a new reason to celebrate Labor
Day. Addison, my baby girl, was
born on the holiday weekend. She would be turning a year old, and we had to
celebrate in style. So, we decided that a trip to Shreveport, LA fit the bill.
My dad had recently moved there, and it was the first time in over 12 years
that he lived less than 6 hours away, and so it was. Labor Day weekend was
spent laughing, eating, drinking, relaxing, more drinking, more eating,
swimming, and not in that order of course. Fun was had by all. Around 2:30pm, Monday,
we hit the road and headed back to our Marianna home. We arrived at precisely
8:17pm. I was so ecstatic to be home though not looking forward to waking for
school at 5:00am. Still, I figured I would make the best of it. After all, it
was a short week.
Once I dropped my bags in the
living room floor, I headed to my bedroom. I stretched my long limbs across my
mattress and inhaled and exhaled deeply. “I am so glad to be home” I breathed aloud.
A pinch. I reached towards the prickling sensation to discover a tiny brown
stick that must have poked me in the arm. “How did a splinter get in my bed?” I
asked myself. Radiating pain. That's odd. Pokes usually don't increase in
pain. So, I turned my head ever so
slightly to search for a new explanation for my discomfort only to come face-to-face
with the culprit: a brown recluse. I immediately sat up in a 90 degree angle
and screamed for my husband. “There is a spider in the bed”, I hollered, “Please
get it!” After Phil disposed of the creature, I decided to go on with my life
and continue to get ready for work. Besides, it was only a harmless spider, or
so thought. Boy was I wrong.
I woke up the next morning with
symptoms that ranged from fever and chills to extreme exhaustion and body aches.
This seemingly insignificant bite sent me running to the hospital for treatment
and led to me missing an entire week of school. The vulnerability that I felt
from the bite of this tiny insect left me feeling weak and humiliated. So, like
anything that I find difficult to deal with, I looked for purpose.
Thursday afternoon, once I had
started my steroid treatment and regain strength, I began contemplating the
purpose of it all. Someone who prides herself in never being sick and also
hardly ever missing school now had to endure both all at the hands, or should I
say fangs, of an eight-legged insect. What could this all mean? The English
teacher that forever lives inside me concluded that it must be a metaphor for
my life. That's it! The spider who is known to be non-aggressive and who lurks
in the dark corners of our homes is a symbol for our life purpose. The spider
is the idea that passively sits in the deep recesses of our minds and is content
with coexisting with our other priorities as long as we remember that it's
there and it's powerful. I was careless when I crawled onto my bed after being
gone an entire weekend without checking it first. I knew that there were very dangerous spiders in my home,
but I began to underestimate them. I am acting carelessly when I go live
everyday as if I don’t know why I was placed here. I know that I have purpose
here in the Delta, but what happens when I begin to neglect that purpose
because I am so engulfed in myself?
Your purpose will do exactly
what my spider did: position itself in such a way that refuses to be ignored, and
if you choose to make that over sight, inflict painful and uncomfortable consequences.
Operating outside of your purpose never leads to true happiness. Money? Yes! Contentment? Possibly. However,
true joy only finds us when we are doing those things for which we were created.
Sitting home for a week, immobilized by own fatigue, gave me an opportunity to
reexamine those things that have somehow been relocated to the back of my mind,
and decide, once and for all, that I walk in my purpose and destiny. So, my
bite may not have given me super powers or unnatural strength, but the side
effects are definitely something that will stay with me forever.
