I watch as tendrils of a future spider’s home waft through the air, by the hundreds, down towards me. When we moved here, the number of spiders and bugs seemed like a cruelty. It actually used to make me angry. How could a single place on earth be so filled with spiders? It would make my skin crawl, worried that every single spider was out to personally ruin my life, let alone my day.
And as time has gone by, and I’ve learned to get more quiet. To watch with greater trust and simplicity. To set down my preconceived notions and judgements; I have come to see that there is nothing more beautiful than those dancing webs.
The threads arcing through the sky, and settling on my fence posts, come with the sounds of birds rising early with the dawn. They stay late into the dark orange of a summer sun. They are a rhythm, created by God, and I am but a part of it.
My husband told me 2 years ago that he felt we were called by God to learn to steward land, to come back to a more simple life. At this point, we were already 4 seasons in on tried-and-failed gardens, tried-and-failed sourdough starters and a batch of chickens that got mauled by a wild animal, despite some seriously intense predator protection attempts.
We had wet our chops on building a rudimentary coop, and learning how dough feels under the hand, how good a genuinely yellow yoke tastes.
This homesteading thing has been a trend that filled my feeds, but before it was that, it was a dream on my husband’s heart. When we started dating I marveled at his jerry rigged barrel gardens, and his plans for someday owning a cow. I didn’t really take it all that seriously, to be honest. I was a city girl. Although I had been raised by gardeners, I didn’t think much of it beyond a nice hobby some people have.
And, each step of the way, it feels like I’ve fallen into this task, not really by my own desire but by being led on, step by step. By providence. And I’ve wrestled. I’ve tried to hate every bit of it, just like the spiderwebs. Because, I wanted to go back to “normal.” I wanted the life of less effort, a life of more cleanliness and comfort. I wanted the life of easy gym memberships, temperature controlled rooms, and distraction.
And yet, here, in the midst of a hundred costly mistakes, struggles that threatened to break our marriage, and waning energy from a new chronic illness; God has come in and turned me upside down. He has shown me: what I thought was normal before, was topsy-turvy. It was a lack of humanity.
And now, I look at the spiderwebs floating through the air. I listen to the birds, hundreds of them, singing different songs throughout the day, I watch the trees respond to the light and the wind, and I breathe. I breathe deeply. This is life. Real life. And my heart’s responsiveness to it; where I crave the touch of soil under my hands, the gaze of a cow who is hungry and waiting, the sound of a rooster in the morning- that shows me a lot about God, and it shows me a lot about me.
The movement of existence. The kind that you put your feet and hands into, not the kind you see on a screen: there is something rich here that God wants us to learn from. To experience this movement of existence is the fullness of my humanity. And I would posit it might be yours too.
So go outside. Be bored there. Look with fresh eyes. Let Him heal your blindness.
Jess and The Fiat 