There’s a rule in our house: don’t pray for patience unless you want to spend the next 48 hours stuck in traffic with screaming kids, a flat tire, and the kind of soul-refining humility that only comes after using a gas station bathroom in August.
But one Sunday, I got clever, I thought I had found a way to get some easy points.
I raised my hand when the Pastor asked, who would pray for stress in their lives? Up went my hand… bold as brass, and said, “Lord, give me something to grow through. Something to stretch me. A little… stress. You know—refine me.”
And God, in His infinite wisdom, and what I now believe was a very cheeky mood, said:
“Bet.”
Because within 48 hours, my life was stretched to infinity… and beyond. You see my shed was not just a shed, it was Shedzilla!
Ok, shedzilla is a stretch… IT WAS WORSE.
It was a nesting ground for literal thousands of black widows.
Thousands. Not dozens. Not “a concerning amount.” THOUSANDS. I opened the shed door and it looked like Shelob’s lair. There were webs on webs. Spider eggs. Suspicious scuttling. One of them made direct eye contact with me like I owed her child support.
I screamed. I am not ashamed. i screamed like a baby who had its last piece of candy took by a bully.
Jo screamed, too, but hers was more of a banshee shriek that scared the family of raccons clean out of the neighbor’s tree. the Possum in the attic fled too! Slayden came running in with a water gun, like he was gonna help. Kara told us calmly that the female black widow eats her mate, then eyed me down for a little too long.
So, naturally, we did the only rational thing a God-fearing suburban family can do.
I declared war.
I drove to the hardware store and asked the man behind the counter what I needed to “cleanse evil.” A regular demon removal. He handed me something with a label that said: “Warning: Not for indoor use unless you have made peace with your God.”
I smiled, and like the grinch, my heart grew three sizes that day. It was perfect.
I fumed that shed like it was a rice paddy in ’68. Hazmat suits. Full masks. Chemical smoke so thick it formed its own weather system. For three days, it looked like we were filming an instalment of a horror movie in the backyard. The dog refused to go near it. Birds detoured around our property. The FAA shut down airspace! (I’m pretty sure.)
And after the fog cleared… silence.
Not a single web. Not a twitch. Just the faint scent of victory and carcinogens.
I’ve never prayed for stress again.
Nowadays I stick with safe prayers like “help me be more thankful” or “please let this Chick-fil-A line move faster.”
Because apparently, when I ask God to stretch me…
He sends spiders.
hope todays a spider free one!
-austininva
