Spider Webs and Mountaintops

          There is a spider web outside my window. No spider works there, but bits of leaves and dust and a dead fly remain trapped in a gauzy maze. Occasionally a breeze will move the web and I silently hope for release for the fly. I silently hope the web will just blow away on its own or be washed clean by a rainfall and remove itself from my view. But instead I wait and look at it. I wonder why I don’t take charge and clean the windowsill and be rid of spiderwebs and death fragments and entrapment. I know I will—I just have to get to the place where I decide it is time for it to go.  I have to get to the place where I will change. 

Where is the place we change? Is it when we have had enough? Is it the place where we can’t stand ourselves anymore? Is it when we have new insights, new direction, and new inspiration? Is it when we seek change from those around us who offer an idea, a word of encouragement, a hope-holding hand along with some spoken words of truth?

Why do we resist change? It’s not because we enjoy looking at dead flies caught in spider webs.  Sometimes the webs are gnarly and sticky and we are caught and it is just plain hard to get out of it. It holds us in a grip and entwines around us, until like the fly, we become exhausted simply trying to flee.  All of our energy is devoted to breaking free, leaving no energy for productivity and meaning.  And we forget how good it feels to fly. And we die.

I belong to an energetic group of women writers who trek to a mountain house every year and we work through some of the “webs” in our writing. The webs are all shapes and sizes. Some are fresh. Some are in need of major de-webbing. And some just need a little sweeping with a whisk broom. But each writer brings ideas and encouragement and hands to hold and words to encourage.  The view of the mountain range keeps us focused on the goal. What goal is that? That somewhere out there, just over that mountain, the words will come. Somehow the spider webs become insignificant. The entrapment loses its gnarly grip and we become free to write, free to grow, and free to become all that God intends us to become.

And so how do we change? We surrender old ways and commit to new ways. On the final night of retreat, we set goals for ourselves and offered comments and questions about those goals. A scribe even wrote them down and will send them out—written in words to hold us accountable to one another, dated so we can measure our productivity, reminding us that we have viewed the mountaintops—and somehow, the spider webs  seem insignificant.

Psalm 121:1 “I lift my eyes to the hills; where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”