 | I don't know if God found a sale on spiders or what, but for the past week we have had a spider population explosion at our house. Our front walk way has hedges on either side, a perfect alleyway for spiders looking to catch a bug, a fly or a human in their web. You can hear when someone in my family forgets that they are there because a giant groan can be heard when the web hits their face. |
What really got my Spidey Senses tingling was when I walked through yet another spider web on my way out to the movies last week.
Fast-forward 45 minutes, I am sitting in a darkened theater with my friends enjoying X-Men 3. My head itches. Hmmm, I used the special shampoo that was supposed to take care of that. It keeps itching right on top of my forehead. I didn't want to look like the crazy friend who scratches her head so much that she is forced to wear mittens, but I had no choice so I went to scratch and that's when I found it. As I scratched something went 'squish' between my fingers... I had found the source of my itch, I was playing host to a spider!
Mortified, I grabbed the flattened furry beast and flung it. Now in retrospect, I probably flung it onto someone else's head and caused them great distress but I panicked and in my defense I was severely traumatized. Why am I telling you about spiders? Well, because I am very lonely since my friends found out about my spider problem, and spider webs and sin have a lot in common.
In my life I see my sin as one of those spider webs I walk into from time to time. I hate when I walk into it, it feels gross and after I do it I swear I'm not going to be so stupid and walk through one again.
After I walk into a web I am very vigilant about where I walk, I leave the house like a crazy person with my keys out in front of me swinging violently to knock the webs down. It works for a while, but just like those sins in my life that I tend to repeat, after awhile I forget and walk right into one again. GROSS!
So what has this taught me? Well, since said spider incident I no longer use the front door where I know the spiders are. I now go around the back and that's the truth, it's not because my parents told me to because they are embarrassed by me.
And with the sin in my life, the ones I really struggle with, I try to avoid them all together. I once had a priest tell me a story while he was hearing my confession (He was an Irish priest. They love to tell stories). He said there was this man and everyday he walked down the same road and he fell in the same hole. This made the man pretty upset; I guess cause, really, who wants to fall in a hole. So each day he would try to go around the hole but he would still fall in. He would run really fast by it, but he would still fall in the hole. He would try to jump over it; but he would still fall in the hole. Seemed no matter what he did he would fall in this hole. That is until one day the man walked down a different road and guess what? No hole.
What is a sin that you seem to "walk into" over and over again? If your reading this and you don't have one I would just like to take the opportunity to say, "Cool! Jesus is reading this! Hi Jesus, I love you!"
We all have webs of sins in our lives. Jesus gives us the strength to walk new paths around. If you haven't gone to confession for awhile, what are you waiting for? Jesus knows that from time to time we mess up and walk through those webs and he is ready through the sacrament of reconciliation to wipe those webs off and say, "What web?"
Now if that doesn't get your Spidey Senses tingling I don't know what will.
