Lessons

I woke up one morning in the summer of 2008 with an itchy stomach. To my great dismay, I had five or six small bites decorating my midsection. Very itchy. Very disturbing.

The next day, I had more bites and a little streak of blood on the sheets around my ankle. More disturbing.

Bed bugs? I tore apart my room to no avail. I made a homeopathic concoction to spray on my sheets and carpet to ward them off. This did not work. By night three I was barely sleeping. Even when I wasn't getting bitten, phantom bugs crawled over my legs. I tried sleeping on an air mattress in another room, hoping that the crawlies couldn't find me as easily. This also did not work.

My friend and I lived in a ratty two bedroom, attic apartment. She didn't seem to be getting bitten as often as I was. Say, a ratio of 5:1.  Apparently whatever was feasting on me had particular tastes.

Meanwhile, my life was continuing busily along. I did not have time or money to deal with the infestation, but it didn't seem to care very much about my schedule. The added stress and sleeplessness just made life harder and more uncomfortable.

After about a week, I finally caught one of the cheeky little suckers. It was not a bed bug. Smaller, grey, vaguely menacing, but not a bed bug. After a little internet research, I had a hunch that this little pest was a bird mite.

There are a lot of horrific bird mite traumas on the web. They are not worth looking at if you're facing an infestation. But they did help me realize that tea tree oil and lavender water were probably not going to be enough.  They also resolved the mysterious ratio problem. Evidently, bird mites choose a "host" and visit them most often. Never had I wanted to be more inhospitable. My roommate and I agreed that an exterminator would be necessary.

All of this was extremely inconvenient and disruptive. I was working two jobs and trying to launch my ever struggling art business. I had very little margin for this problem. "Thank God in all circumstances..." He couldn't possibly mean this situation.

We called Orkin, and a few days later Mike the Orkin Man showed up at the apartment, armed with his tools of pest destruction. Waiting on workmen is a patience builder for me. The window of time is the real problem: "We'll be there somewhere between 8am and 1pm.", and then they show up at 1:15pm.

But he finally arrived: Yes, Bird mites are the problem. They are coming in from the fire escape. Pigeons roosting under the eaves. The landlord needs to get rid of them. I'll spray around the baseboards since bird mites only crawl...

And then he stopped in front of one of my paintings.
"That's beautiful,"he said.
"Thanks," I said, "I painted it."

"Agape" --pastel on paper

"You're an artist?"
"Yes, well, trying to be, anyway..."
"Is is for sale?"
"Yes, but the original is a little pricey. It took me a long time. I have a lot of prints of it, same size."
"No, no. I want the original. Can we work out a payment plan?"

I think I went into a mild shock.  Then he told me about his wife, how she had gotten Hep C from a blood transfusion and was very ill. He shared that he loved growing orchids and used to be a wine merchant but it didn't make enough money. He told me he just felt drawn to this painting in an incredible way and thought his wife would love it too.

I was thinking, 'Are we looking at the same picture? I mean, it's nice and all, but I'm don't get this rapture your expressing.' But I was forgetting an important fact. This painting came from a mental image that God had given me in a prayer. We are the jars, many sizes and shapes, and his love rains down over us and into us until it overflows. The title is"Agape", pronounced  /əˈɡɑːpeɪ/.  It's a Greek word for love, but not just any kind of love. It's the word for God's love for us: divine, sacrificial, never-ending, and unconditional. He loves us so desperately, would spare no expense. Perhaps that was what Mike the Orkin Man was experiencing. I don't know if he even believed in God, but clearly God wanted to speak to him.

He rid of us bird mites and bought the painting. I sent along a little card explaining its origins and the transaction was done. I never heard from him again.

But now I believe that the reason for this painting's creation was Mike the Orkin Man and his sick wife, and any other person who is captivated by more than what is drawn on the paper.

"The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.  And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us." Acts 17:24-27

I see now that the bird mites, though a scourge of the earth, were the only way that I was going to meet Mike the Orkin Man. Although they were awful, God used them to bless us.

I really love the way He works things out. I was a starving artist. How normal is it that a workman would come into my house and buy an expensive painting when I was in need of financial assistance? The seed of this painting had been planted in my mind years before. And I had painted it for this unknown couple, a hurting husband-caretaker and his suffering wife. They must have really needed a dose of Agape love. At the right time, in the right dwelling place, he brought us together to make a blessing.

It was a good lesson. Thank God for the bird mites. Thank God for the disruption of our plans. Thank God when things seem to go terribly wrong. Thank God for inconvenience that interrupts our lives. And look for Him to show us what we need to see. He withholds no good thing from us.