Life is Full of Disappointments

He brought me out into an open place; he rescued me because he delighted in me. Psalm 18:19

Life is full of disappointments.

I was enjoying a few moments of peace and quiet on our deck, reclining on what purports to be a zero gravity lounger. While it is quite comfortable, I’m afraid my body has always been able to detect the existence of gravity and, in fact, would no doubt attract space clutter at twice the speed it normally does on earth – but that’s beside the point.

I was lying there on the lounge and spied a marvelous spider web shining off in the distance across the yard. I was amazed I could see something so light and wispy from so far away, and then realized that perhaps it wasn’t as fragile as I’d thought – that perhaps it had been created by some gigantic mutant Shelob – that perhaps the reason I could see it was because the spider WANTED me to see it, WANTED me to come explore it, check it out and … SNAP! That would be the end of your dearly-beloved-now-departed columnist.

Well, my fear of spiders goes back a long way, and so I wasn’t going to fall for that, but I had decided to go check it out and was impressed with what I had found.

The fact is it was a common, ordinary garden variety spider who had been quite busy in our – yes, you guessed it – garden. I don’t think she would have rated a 10 in the Miss Spider Beauty Pageant, but still, she was of a freckled variety, and the web stretched from the roof of the house down to the shrubs below, and across the pathway to another shrub entirely. It was quite a feat of engineering and most intriguing.

I decided against disturbing the little beastie, even though the abode had closed off an entire pathway. Instead, I decided to leave it until morning and capture some brilliant shots with my camera. With any luck, the web would glisten with dew in the morning sunlight and I could come away with photos of prize-winning caliber for National Geographic or something.

The next morning, while it was still dark, I got up and, as is my custom, got the coffee going and while the nectar of life dripped slowly into the carafe from which I would draw the life-sustaining go-go juice, I got out my camera, set the dials, and mounted it on a tripod for a photo-shoot with the aforementioned sure-to-win-a-trophy arachnid. 

I stepped out onto the deck as the sun made its ascent, breaking over the trees to the east. I crept up to the spider’s lair and … nothing! She was gone. The web was gone. A single strand of webbing hung from the soffit, waving good-bye in the faint morning breeze.

Life is full of disappointments. My dreams of a Pulitzer – dashed. My dreams of a cover shot for the National Geographic – slashed. However …

My coffee was ready, so I gathered up my equipment and drank away my disappointments.

Life happens. Maybe a bat swooped in during the night and made off with my little spider friend. Maybe he or she found someone else with whom to pal around or make baby spiders with. Maybe she found the neighborhood too active with paparazzi – who wants to live where there’s no sense of privacy?

So, I abandoned my quest for the perfect picture.

I wonder why I didn’t get all my stuff together and take some photographs when I had the daylight and the shot the day before? Why did I think the future would be better than the present?

Perhaps life is full of disappointments when we try to live in either past or future, and not in the now. I’d made a decision based upon a dream. I could have taken a picture when I first saw the web and its fascinating occupant/architect, but I didn’t. Shall I regret that choice? Or is it wiser to reflect on what I did (and why), and decide to seize the moment next time I have it?

There may or may not be a next time, but there is always a now, and that’s where I think God would have us live here in this, our valley.