I Have Arachnophobia, Except ...

Karen Estep shares life lessons she's learned from Orb Weaver spiders.

Let me be honest first: I have arachnophobia. My very poorly developed theory is that spiders have four times as many legs as I do, meaning they can probably run four times as fast as I can, so that makes them scary. I know this is not a sound theory, I’m sure someone can actually explain proportions and all that jazz, however, it makes sense in my head. Spiders also have a lot of eyes. In general, I just think God gave them a lot of creepy, crawly qualities. However, there is one spider that is actually really cool.

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Every year at our house we have female Orb Weaver spiders that take up residence. You can tell the females from the males because females are more neutral colors and they are also bigger than the males. Orb Weaver spiders make the really intricate webs that we are all used to seeing. They look like orbs or wheels. Typically when you learn to draw a spider web, you mimic the web of an Orb Weaver. Also, in the book Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White, (one of my childhood favorites) Charlotte is an Orb Weaver. These spiders are very docile, not aggressive and are actually incredibly beneficial as they eat a lot of pesky insects.

Every year I look forward to seeing these spiders build their webs around our house, and every year I get too attached, much like Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web. I even name the spiders and then get very sad when they leave. Last year we had Charlotte living in one of our outdoor lights and this year we have Aralyia. Aralyia is stunning; she makes these huge, gorgeous webs, and helps decorate our porch for Halloween. We like to call the webs “Organic Halloween Decorations.”

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Orb Weavers can actually teach us a lot about life in general too. Every night they build new webs and the next day they tear down what either didn’t work or the web altogether and start a new web. Sometimes we get so caught up in making sure we do everything just so and when it does not work out the way we want or thought we just stop. We do not put enough effort into looking into what was the real problem, taking that down, and fixing that area. Orb Weavers are experts in this and although scary to some, can teach us how to restart. Aralyia is not being too hard on herself and expecting perfection from the get-go: she carefully reworks her web to start fresh that night.

Orb Weavers are also extremely patient. They literally sit all night and wait for food to come to them. They do not worry; they sit and wait. Now, I would be one cranky bear if I always sat and waited for food to come to me, but I can learn something about patience. I tend to want good things to come to me like right now and if something is going wrong, I often do not always have the patience to deal with it.

“Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more important than they?” (Matthew 6:26)

Much like those birds, Aralyia doesn’t worry about much and let me tell you that she is thriving! Every day we worry so much instead of trusting that God’s love even extends to the spiders on our porches. If God’s love covers even creepy, crawly things, His love is on us fully!

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We live in a world where it is easy to overlook the small things that God has provided for us to learn from. #catholicmom

We live in a world where it is easy to overlook the small things that God has provided for us to learn from. We see spiders and some of us yelp and try to run away on our two legs while the spider usually runs the opposite way on its eight legs. However, even the small, creepy, crawly things can teach us important life lessons. We need to be OK with starting over when something doesn't work, we need to practice patience, and most importantly we need to trust that God loves all of His creatures—including us and the creepy, crawly ones.

This year be sure to keep your “Organic Halloween Decorations” proudly on display!

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