Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2018

Abstract

In my part of the country, this is the season when spiders come out from their dark places and I see them crawling around inside my house. The other night, I found a giant one crawling across the ceiling of my bedroom. My husband, Randy, captured him in a glass using a piece of cardboard to block the spider’s escape. We decided to put the critter in a child’s insect viewing box so our granddaughter could see the spider in the morning. However, when I looked in on the spider the next day, he was dead, and he had drawn all of his legs tight up to his body.

As I observed the spider, I marveled how he had once seemed so big with his legs stretched out as he scuttled along; yet now, he seemed lifeless and little with his legs drawn in tight. And in that observation, my spirit recognized what trauma does to a person’s internal self: where once she or he was stretched out and engaged with a beautiful interesting world and a loving God, the person is pulled in and tight and lifeless. The world is fearful and dangerous, and God seems far away and uninterested.

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