i am the ant

so, i was in sweet abigail's room today...daddy was changing her diaper and i was lying flat on my back on the full sized bed that is in her room....i was looking up at her ceiling fan which we are needing to replace...and as each blade passed, i had to take a second glance to see if i was seeing things correctly...is that what i thought it was??? sure enough. there on her ceiling...crawling along, was a little black dot....a little rolly polly.

now we live among lots of trees and nature (gee, caroline, ya don't say...you live near trees? i had no idea. he he, just making fun of myself for a bit! :) anyway...bugs in general, especially spiders of all sorts and rolly pollys (not sure if it is pollies or pollys...both look wrong and i have never had to make that word plural before, hmmm) are very, may i repeat, VERY common in our house. we have two little plastic "bug-catchers" that we got as a sonic toy months ago that we often use to catch and release the bugs. (mommy often then stomps on the spiders, once they are outside, fyi. i have no sympathy for spiders, sorry.)

anyway...but never, ever have i seen a rolly polly on the ceiling. have you? this really struck me. and then because my mind wanders (and wanders and wanders)....off my thoughts went and i followed. i stared at the poor little guy and wondered if he had any idea where he was. i mean, let's be honest...this was rough terrain. we live, after all, in a house that was built about the same year as i was, and therefore we are blessed to have popcorn ceilings. (that was going to be one of the first things to go when we moved in, but that was almost two years ago and now the thought of covering all our stuff and spending money on having smooth ceilings for goodness sakes, makes me anxiously excited for the inevitable turn around to when popcorn ceilings are "in" again. hey...it could happen) so, as i said, this poor little guy was battling rough terrain, and upside down nonetheless. now, i don't know much about the anatomy of a rolly polly but i would venture to say that it requires more effort to crawl upside down than it does right side up. needless to say, this bug was waaaaay out of his element. he was not made to live in a yellow and lavendar room, as precious as it may be, and have to crawl around the equivalent of hills and valleys for miles and miles (in rolly polly distance)...and don't even get me started on the danger he was crawling toward. could you imagine the damage a ceiling fan could do to the poor little guy.

seriously caroline, you wasted this much brain energy on a stinkin rolly polly?? yes i did. i often do. my brain just wanders all the time. but this time it reminded me of something i heard once about our great God. i spend a lot of time trying to control things in my life. this is not something i am proud of. i could go into great detail as to why i do this. recently God has shown me (through my current on-the=couch- circumstances and also through Beth Moore's book "goodbye insecurity; you've been a bad friend to us" which i am sure i will talk A LOT more about later!) that i went through a great deal of drastic change in my life...some good, some bad. some in my control, most out of my control. over time i have developed the desire to want to control things so that i am not "blindsided" anymore. whew. NOT a good habit to get into. and also NOT an easy mindset to break. He is working big on it though, people, BIG. anyway...often i sit and try to "figure out" all God is. all that my life means. how i can make sure it goes how i planned. where it fits with the past, and with the future. it is then that i remember what i heard once ( i can't remember who said it, sorry! i think it may have been my pastor, but i can't be sure) about trying to figure out God....the quote that i thought of today staring at that brave little rolly polly who had no clue where he was or what he was up against.

trying to understand God would be like trying to explain the concept of the internet to an ant.

fyi...i am the ant. :)

really, think about it. an ant doesn't even have the brain capacity to understand what anything in our "people" world is all about. they can't fathom what real things are all about, like a car or a toaster....much less something abstract like the internet. we are the ants, people. we can't even begin to fathom the greatness of our God. the same God who sees galaxy after galaxy that we know nothing about....who invented the concept of DNA and the cell.....who created the rolly polly and gave it the ability to crawl upside down :) how in the world do we think we need to (or even want to!) know everything....or have a better plan that the One who made us...from dirt, nonetheless.

so, yes...i am not sure what actually happened to that daring rolly polly. i do know that he has about 432,000 of his closest family and friends in our yard that my kiddos love to hunt for. God - you love me. you know me better than i know myself. thank you for placing me where you want me. for equipping me to crawl upside down on popcorn ceilings if need be, whether i WANT to or not. you equip me and hem me in. you never forsake me. you never forget me. you never need reminding that i need you.

keep reminding me of my ant-ness, Lord. thank you for your beauty all over. i love you. amen.