KILL IT, before I have a heart attack, please

I was driving home from youth group in the dark with my mom and Lizzie.  We were about five minutes from our house, which is located out in the middle of the country.  (By the way, I live in the State of Confusion, which Google pinpoints as somewhere in Maryland)  I'd been driving for about a half hour -- yes, my youth group is quite far away, to most people's standards.

Anyway, as I was driving, my mom super-casually mentioned, "Don't freak out, but there is a rather large spider over here on my side of the windshield.  Don't worry, though.  He's nowhere near you.  Just keep driving."

Here is something that you need to know about me.  I am TERRIFIED of spiders.  Some people (ahem) think that I am on the verge of arachnophobia on certain occasions, but that is simply not true.  Any sane person should be fearful of spiders because they are evil.

 Now, back to the story... as I continued driving, my mom informed me that this gigantic spider that she was keeping an eye on, well, she couldn't see anymore.  It had dropped to the dashboard and she thought (she took great liberties to assume this) had crawled into the vent up there.  I was not convinced.  It was too dark to actually see the the top of the dash, because the geniuses who build cars forgot to put a light up there for occasions such as these.  My stomach dropped as if I was on a rollercoaster.  What if the spider crawled across the dash, up to the steering-wheel, and on to my hand?  The thought still makes me queasy.

But the spider didn't crawl across my hand.  Instead, he reappeared on the windshield, crawling upward right in front of my face.  I'm not sure which scared my poor mom more -- me screaming in terror, or me pulling off the road without a turn signal.  And all the while Lizzie sat calmly in the backseat and rolled her eyes.

Finally, mom was able to reach across and smush him with a napkin.  Unfortunately (for me) his body wasn't on the napkin or on the windshield.  We only had a few legs and a small smear as evidence that the spider ever existed.  And because we couldn't see the top of the dashboard, I had no idea where the rest of him was.  My mom assured me he was dead, yet I could just imagine him crawling on three legs across the dash, down the radio, and onto my hands...  It took extreme mental determination for me to reach down in the dark and manually shift the gears.  You never know what you're reaching down to.

I tell you all this to show you just how traumatized I was.  I literally was afraid of a spider.  And later, when I tried to explain to Lizzie exactly why spiders make me shriek in horror, I couldn't come up with a legitimate reason.  All I could say is that they have lots of legs, and they skitter with all their little legs and jump across floors and fall from ceilings and into laps.  And that's not a great reason, because it's not like I am in danger of being killed by a spider -- unless I have a heart attack.  They pose no threat to me.  Yet I am still afraid.

I bet God looks at me, and anybody else who fears things, like Lizzie looks at me.  He shakes His head and says, "What are you afraid of?  How can this hurt you?"  God looks at death and darkness and trials and asks us why we are shaking like a leaf.  He has us in the palm of His mighty, all-encompassing hand.  Whom shall we fear?  Maybe when God looks at us quivering in our boots He wonders why we are troubled.  It looks as insignificant to Him as one spider on the dash of a car.  Though our troubles seem enormous to us (and let me tell you, that spider looked three times bigger than the size my mom showed to my dad when she told him the story) they are so small to Him.  So, today, let us not be afraid, for the God who created the universe is with us ALWAYS.