The Practice of Welcoming People into Your Story, Along with a Tale about a Spider

When my children were little, I got caught up in the snare of living inside my head, and created a sort of alternate fantasy life I could escape to when things seemed too difficult. I had always like to read novels, and had learned early on that with my imagination I could go anywhere. Imagination is one of the greatest blessings in a person’s life for that very reason. One of the ways we survive is through the ability to escape with our minds and create alternate realities that make pain endurable. However, if this keeps us from being able to enjoy the gift of real life, our imaginations cease to bless us.

Anyways, so I got caught up in an imaginary fantasy life when my children were young. Real life was hard. My husband traveled a great deal of the time, my babies were young, I had lost my ministry position at church and felt adrift in the world. No one was feeding my all-important ego and probably most importantly, I was lonely. Loneliness can be so isolating, can’t it? That raw basic craving we have for connection can break us if those needs aren’t met.

I finally joined a healing prayer ministry that helped people deal with child of origin issues, and addressed areas of sexual brokenness. That ministry became a place of deep soul healing for me. We met as a whole group for over an hour and then we met in small groups for an hour and opened our lives and stories to each other and the leaders prayed for us. It was simple and it was richly intricate and complex.

However, the one thing I was not willing to talk about was this fantasy life issue. I couldn’t imagine even trying to make the attempt to talk about. It seemed so embarrassing and humiliating. I felt horrible shame around it. I also knew the moment I talked about it, it would change the secret delight I felt in having this private fantasy life. I liked my little escape world.

But it was starting to take over my real world…

One night I had a dream. In the dream I owned a pet spider that I kept inside a box. I fed it and took care of it, and made sure to keep it secret. The spider grew. It grew and it grew. It grew out of the box and began to take on a life of its own and soon, it got gigantic. Eventually, in the dream the little spider I kept as a pet became my enemy and was trying to eat me alive. 

I woke up in an utter panic, heart racing, stomach swirling. I knew instinctively the spider was my fantasy life. What had been a little pet escape world, had become a full on predator and wanted to eat me alive.

I cried out to God and asked him to help me deal with this fantasy life. I told him it was too big and I needed him to take it from me. I confessed it as a desire to run away from real life and create my own reality. I knew God couldn’t meet me in the pretend fantasy world I had created to escape my own life. He is I AM. Absolutely present in the real.

I asked God to kill the spider in my dream, to help me with my fantasy addiction and God spoke one sentence that forever changed me. “I can’t kill the spider, Tina. Only you can.”

Instantly, I knew God was right. There are some things God doesn’t overrule. I had to kill the spider. He provides the tools, the truth of his love, and even a kind of power from His Spirit, but I had to make a decision. My choice was whether to live with my whole heart in my own story and invite God to help me, or continue to escape it.

That Wednesday I knew knew knew it would help to tell the other women in my healing prayer group about this fantasy life. I recognized that if I shared my deepest darkest with them, somehow the light would get in and I wouldn’t feel so alone. But I was so afraid.

My heart raced, my palms got all wet, and my stomach swirled. Finally, though, I mustered up the courage and I told them my truth. My leader smiled this really interesting smile. “That’s fascinating about the spider,” she said, thoughtfully. “On my way here tonight, when I was praying for our time, God showed me a picture of a spider.”

No one condemned me. Everyone loved me. Everyone bore witness to my loneliness and my overwhelming fears and my insatiable need for unconditional love that was driving this fantasy life along. They prayed for me. They laid hands on me, washed my hands with cool water, and told me I was not alone, or the only one.

I won’t say that was the last night I ever struggled with a fantasy life. It wasn’t. But it was the night that broke the back of my longtime need to escape reality and opened the doorway into the possibility that real relationship is better than the false.

My good friend Lupe says over and over we are wounded in community and we are healed in community. She’s so right. Something happens when we invite someone into our story. Especially when we invite someone into the parts of the story we are ashamed and afraid of.

When we tell a safe person our story, LOVE breaks in. Real intimacy and relationship become possible and make way for us to become real, to be flesh and blood, to have needs and to learn that we are worthy of love. 

For Reflection and Conversation: Has there been a time in your life when you decided to risk exposure because you ached for community? How did it change you?

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