Save the Spiders

Our daughter Madi, now 26, loves snakes, bugs, and spiders.  As a kid, Madi used to spend time outside picking up rocks, wood, and other things to find the bugs that might be hiding underneath.  She often found, caught, and played with the biggest wolf spiders you’ve ever seen. She even taught her younger brother, Mitchell, now 22, to be almost as comfortable with these little critters.

But her older sister, Brittany, now 29, never was interested in playing with spiders. It’s not that she was afraid or repulsed, just not interested. Yet a quick story about Britt shows that despite not having her sister’s love of spiders, this doesn’t take away from her level of compassion. Even with spiders.

One day, recently, she saw a spider up in the corner of the bathroom and just watched it for a little while. It just hung out, like spiders do. If this were my wife, she would have immediately run - straight to me. “Spider!” I won’t say what my solution is since some of you may align with what I’ll share about Brittany. 

She wanted to catch it and take it outside. I can’t tell you how many times she’s done this. But being in the corner, she’d have killed it upon trying to catch it. She figured she’d just see where he was next time and left.  He stayed right where he was for a few days. Then one day he was gone. My wife would have freaked out, her imagination soaring. She’d check her hair first and then come find me.

Britt just looked around a while, hoping it would be easier to catch and save it in its new spot. But she never did find him. Maybe he’ll come back, maybe he’s elsewhere. Maybe he’s looking for my wife!

It occurred to me that Brittany has more compassion than I realized. She really did not want to kill this spider. She wouldn’t necessarily begrudge others who do but just can’t bring herself to take a life.

Mitchell took a homeless man to lunch and learned his story one day.

Madi worked with autistic kids and now is in senior care. She has amazing compassion and patience for people with special needs.

My wife and I sometimes grab a Little Caesar’s pizza and drop it off to the homeless guy on the street corner. He gleams when we hand out a steaming box of pizza.

Do you need to be more compassionate? Does choosing to do something compassionate lead us to feel more compassionate?  Even if we don’t always feel it, maybe we should just do it, and the feeling with come.  As Zig Ziglar said, “Act your way into feeling.”

I need more of that compassion. Maybe I can learn by promising to catch and release spiders from now on. Except if they get away, and Amy finds out…yeah, maybe I’ll learn compassion another way.