LORD OVER THE FLIES
“Stop! Stop!” I yelled, but only my attacker could hear me,
and with a growing, glowing gleam in his eyes, he ignored my cries. Despite my
plea, he kept at it. As no one responded to my screams, I felt silenced and powerless
to resist. I don’t know who he was or where we were, but I woke up and realized
it was 4:40 a.m.
I rolled over to recover, resting next to my husband. After
ten minutes, I knew it was pointless and I might as well creep downstairs and
use those morning hours, the sleeping hours, to write before my trail of
children would appear.
Entering the kitchen, I saw them. Bigger than average house
flies, with beady red eyes shining on the sides of their finely crafted heads,
they rested their articulated legs on my window pane and hid in the lamp, wings
ready to fly in first response. I counted at least three. Make it four if you
add the one lying dead on the bathroom floor I passed on my way downstairs. Who
knew how many more we’d encounter that day?
Two thoughts sprouted in my still un-caffeinated brain.
First, this was like those plagues in Egypt. Next, I saw images of my
six-year-old daughter, the one who’s dramatically undone over an insect of any
kind, running through the house hysterically because there’s a beady-eyed fly
inhabiting her bedroom. This led to images of the entire day collapsing around
me. The two-year-old wouldn’t nap because of a fly in her bedroom, and that’s
my sad but often true definition of catastrophe.
One thing I brought back from my years of teaching in China
was a deep commitment to afternoon rest time. If the Chinese take naps, and the
Spanish enjoy a siesta, why shouldn’t we Americans? I will do almost anything
to make rest time happen in our house.
I left the flies in the kitchen and knelt by the couch in
the living room. My caffeinated beverage of choice, British tea complete with
cream and sugar, rested on the table nearby as I gave the day to the Lord, a
day that really he’d given me. I heard a rustling sound, and seconds later the
unmistakable odor of skunk overpowered the downstairs of our house.
My dream was enough to wake and shake me. The flies unnerved
and irritated me. The skunk? Where could I go? Where could I hide?
Whenever things come in threes, I pay attention. Holy, holy,
holy. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jonah in the fish for three days, Jesus in
the grave for three days, Peter denied three times, Peter reinstated three
times—there’s a pattern.
My triad followed me through the day. I didn’t seek to
understand or totally unpack it, but I saw it and wondered at it, and I told
three people about it. I persevered in writing and submitting an article to a
publisher that would’ve been so easy to give up on. If the dream was about my
voice and there’s any resistance in the shadows to me using my voice, God
please protect me and help me to keep writing.
Tonight, I sat with my daughters in their room like I
usually do, and I read from their story Bible about God sending Adam and Eve
out of Eden with the promise of one day undoing the evil of sin. After their
tiny voices echoed my prayers and I kissed the tops of their damp,
freshly-shampooed heads, I glanced in the corner where the two pale pink walls
meet and I saw something remarkable.
One of those frightful flies was dead, wrapped tightly in
the whispery web of a spider who was an eighth of its size. I had feared that
fly invading my daughter’s room and undoing my day, and here he was, trapped by
a faithful spider who, like the fish that caught Jonah, was simply doing his
duty.
I wrapped up both the spider and the dead fly in a baby wipe
when the girls weren’t paying attention and thought, my God is truly Lord over
the flies.
For more about Katie's book, Loving My Children, click here.
Email Katie at lovingmychildrenbook@gmail.com.