This week, the girls and I learned about spiders.
How they toil. How they spin. How six different substances are released from the backside of their bodies to make up the components needed for their completed webs.
(What?! How do they store all that “string” in there?)
This week, we even read how human nets are modeled on the artistry and durability of their weaving. Made to catch fish like the spider’s webs are crafted to capture the small flying creatures that make up their daily bread.
A little creeped out or not, we’ve all likely paused to marvel at the intricacy of a web, watched the water droplets suspended on their nets like jewels on a necklace, even remembered Charlotte’s care for Wilbur written in undeserved words.
And this week I’m thinking about the web of my life and yours. The places where toil meets passion, where relationships weave in and out through time and place. I’m thinking especially on this: trust — my word for the year that I see connected in sticky strands to everything.
These last days, I’m mulling about how to create is, at its core for me, to trust.
So often I can look at the unique creation of you, seeming so finished, and wonder how you do it and look at my own tangled strands and wonder what goes where and how to get from this step to that branch.
And to write my thoughts and release them — watching the strands form and lines cross before my eyes — this too is trust.
Not just for me, but for each one this creating of a life requires trust. Not knowing how it will all play out, not understanding why this needs to go there, not getting how this even connects to that.
To live a life, do the work and create daily beauty on this earthly walk is to believe on some level that it is good, echoing the Creator who looked upon what he had made and saw that it was indeed good.
And in whatever place creating takes shape — when we pound keys, strum strings, apply paint to canvas, place a grouping of pillows on a couch just so, invent a soup, give a gift, teach a child — on some level we trust.
Trust that it is worth doing at all.
Michael and I have journeyed as parents together for nearly 11 years now, and one of the hardest truths for me to embrace is that the daily work of creating this family is good.
Of course, I adore my kids and believe that family is a blessing, and I know it’s right in the long run to do the instructing, disciplining, equipping and tending, but to really trust that our own brand of mess and love and clashing temperaments and successes and missteps that oozes out in the process is good — that can be another thing altogether.
I see so many examples of great families around me and love the way they do life and the vibrancy and consistency with which they live, and it can all seem so important. And I know there are the things worth majoring in — growing in God’s love and giving it away — but all those other pieces? It can feel like just one more thing to add on to the pile.
But this weaving of experience and story and hands held and cheeks stroked, this life together of us five and those we touch, this uniquely us creation of family formed day by day requires my trust.
It requires my trust to not know what my part might be today or tomorrow, how this will all turn out — how they will turn out — but to believe the web of us is good as we go, good as we respond where we’re being guided.
It requires trust to proclaim that, as unique pictures of love in this world, we — me, you, us — we are a good creation.
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Linking today with Imperfect Prose at Emily Wierenga’s place where we are exploring what it is to create.
Connecting through the power of stories written, spoken and lived
Beautiful post, Ashley. The most beautiful creative work is the one we cooperate with God in, building our life and nurturing our family.
Thank you, Elizabeth. I so agree…no more important or creative work. So good to be reminded of that.
Dearest Dolly
Yes, my friend, building a loving family is hard work we will never be able to do without being truly part of the perfect family of Pappa … knowing we are loved by the Father of all fathers. I never knew a spider can be so complex!
Bless you, dear friend
Mia
Loved by the Father of all fathers and the creator of complex creatures — both great and small.
Oh Ashley, so much goodness here. So much! Please know that I feel the same way every time I sit down at this keyboard and bleed on the screen…there is a mixing and mingling and cementing that continues once it is released from my heart and mind and to not know what that will look like? It is tortuous and glorious, all at once. For it means that it is not about me anymore.
You are not alone.
Tortuous and glorious it is indeed. And knowing I am not the only one — through both reading the beautifully wrenching words of others (like yourself) and knowing pieces of their behind the scenes process — certainly does help me feel upheld and not alone. I so appreciate your thoughts and encouragement to me today…and to your words, “it is not about me anymore,” I proclaim a most hearty amen!
This is a lovely post. I just have one eeek where I slammed on the brakes. What do you mean by “undeserved words”? Surely Wilbur was nothing if not humble. :)
You are so right. I do believe I misspoke. :-)
Haha, yup.
I so well understand the web of relationship and happenings you describe and how when especially needed things (holy) come to be and people needed come near. They seem to just appear, like that web, from secreted places.
Love that trust is your “word” this year. Still thinking through mine.
I love what you say here, friend — about needed, holy things appearing from secreted places. That covers me with chills, honestly. So much being continually woven that we do not know.
I am here reading your musical, poetic words & thoughts this morning, dear Ashley–feeling my heart expand as I do so.
TRUST. I wholeheartedly agree that it is “connected in sticky strands to everything.” I see so clearly how my capacity/willingness to trust affects every little (and big) part of my life and how, when I am able to really fall back into the arms of trust, unimaginable magic happens.
I’m sending so much love your way this morning. May this new year shower unimaginable goodness upon you, my friend.
You are so right about trust. How central it is. Of course, truly focusing on it has caused me to really see how much it does affect every other thing. Falling back into the arms of trust with you this year, dear Julia.
And we all say…AMEN.
Thank you, love. We are in this together.
Love, love, love this. Just beautiful. The trust, the vulnerability that comes with it – it is hard and good and worth it. Thank you for this reminder today.
Annie, thank you for your words here — they bless me. Yes, the very best of things are hard and good and worth it, aren’t they?
Stopping by from Emily’s today and blessed by my visit. I love your writer’s voice, your pensive heart, and the way you weave words and truth here. This line will stick with me as I go about my day today- “It requires my trust to not know what my part might be today or tomorrow, how this will all turn out — how they will turn out — but to believe the web of us is good as we go, good as we respond where we’re being guided.” Just what I needed to hear. Blessings from a mom in Iowa.
Thank you so much for your visit and your blessed words, Alicia.
I hear you and I feel your words flowing out as if we were in the same room. Community and relationship and trust and friendship can feel like that. Ashley this is so so so beautiful. I must go read it again to sip on the phrases. Ashley this is rich in the telling of a mother’s heart, the one step and then another, with trust, in faith. The releasing it all and trusting we hear as discern him. I know these places. You are not alone in the spilling of your heart here. Going back to read again. This is lovely, friend. You bless me so. My littles are 22, 18, 17 and there were and are days of doubting..are we doing this rightly. Love to you as you walk out your days.
Honestly, knowing we are not alone in our struggles — to me, this is one of life’s greatest gifts. I am so grateful for all the ways you express your heart and unity of experience with me. You bless me.
Ashley,
Nice to meet you. I’m hopping over here from the Imperfect Prose link up. Thanks for letting me peek in. You must be a homeschooling mom too. :) Wow, six different substances from a spider’s behind?! Wild.
I was most struck from your post by the assertion that to create takes trust. That is a deep concept that I am pondering right now… thank you. I think you’re right.
Have a great day,
Jennifer Dougan
http://www.jenniferdougan.com
So nice to meet you too, Jennifer! I’m actually not homeschooling my girls…just enjoying all they’re learning and journeying through their discoveries with them. Such trust required for all of us to parent our kids (and to share written words of our journeys). So much good in the mystery when we’re walking with the Maker. I’ve got to continually remember that.
Hey friend, I love this. “but to really trust that our own brand of mess and love and clashing temperaments and successes and missteps that oozes out in the process is good” Yes. I feel like this every day. Thanks so much for sharing.
Dear Kari, thank you for your words to me! To know you feel like this every day buoys me. Sending much love to you, dear one.
Ashley – you know what I love about this? Well there’s the everythingness of it, but I should save that for last. I love how the smallest germ of a not-even-thought-yet winds its way towards an essay, a teaching. (love that!) (That a childs curiousity about spiders could lead to all This!) And it’s true what you say, so true (and I love this too, and maybe even especially) that it requires SUCH trust to sit down to a blank page or white screen with nothing but a germ and believe that you are here for a purpose, that there is something for you (and for US) in this, and to stay with it until it has been fleshed out and made full. To show up when it “feels” as though you have next to nothing to say (or to paint, or to compose) but to remain in this place of trust is what is to be an artist, a co-creator. I’m very proud of you and so grateful for your tenacity and your wisdom, and for your faith! (which is just another word for trust.) yes, you’re right, to create is to trust… xxo
Thank you, Mama, for all your reflections on what I’ve written. I so loved our time together today and am immensely grateful for all the ways you’ve heard my heart. From that lonely space of not knowing to the good of abiding and trusting to the building faith of seeing words and life appear on the screen. So thankful for this journey with you.
I for one, am so glad you keep trusting, because what you are creating is such a blessing. Only you can turn my arachnoid fears into a stepping stone in faith and wonder. Beautifully profound. Love you!
Oh my goodness, Sis. You and your spider fears — in spite of a dad who rescued each and every one of them in Tupperware to release them outside. :-) I’m so blessed by your words of love and building up. I learn so much from YOU, and I love you!
I love the idea that to create is to trust. Recently I read Madeleine L’Engle’s “Walking on Water”, about being a Christian artist – although she posits that true art is inherently “Christ”ian and just because you’re a Christian doing art doesn’t make you a Christian artist. But anyway… the reason she argues that is very much like what you’re saying here. That we need to trust what we can’t see, rather than dwell on what we know, in order to create. Thank you for this!
Kati, I’m looking back over this post nearly a year later as I try to unwrap what God taught me about trust, and I’m realizing I never wrote back to this beautiful comment of yours. I am in the last pages of “Walking on Water” right now and am so moved by L’Engle’s exploration of trust. Hearing your echoes across months and am grateful you visited this place. Many blessings to you in ’14.
Thank you for this :). I pray you experience many moments of trust, followed by much joy and peace, in 2013. My prayer and hope is to “just trust”, and a year from now as i am looking back, remember feeling more peace and joy in my life. Much love
So often I can look at the unique creation of you, seeming so finished, and wonder how you do it and look at my own tangled strands and wonder what goes where and how to get from this step to that branch.
oh ashley this is SO insightful. i am learning this unique trust of creation, too.
Thank you for your words here, friend. They (and you) bless me.
I love you, dear Ashley. Such important, resonant words you write