What Ugly Slugs Teach Me About My Anxiety
By: Mary Hood
Tags: Life Lessons, Gardening, Conflict, Christianity, My Story

Is there anything uglier than a slug? These tiny blobs of slime don’t know they teach the truths of God.

I know the Lord is slowing me down, but this week I am traveling at a slug’s pace.

So much is going on in my mind and around me, and as thoughts and ideas are coming at me at lightning speed, nothing more than notes, scripture, and brief references are jotted on scraps of paper, or in a notebook, or written in the middle of the night. Every day I wonder when I will write again. Well, today I decided to give it a whirl.

I remember something said to me some years ago by someone who needed a byline for his business.

“It took me over three weeks to come up with one sentence.

Today that is a very comforting thought.

I wonder if I am going to be as the sloth soon.

According to a website, https://frontier.ac.uk, the 10 Slowest Animals, “The sloth is the slowest animal in the world and its name is actually a synonym of slow motion. It has an extremely low metabolic rate, and its slow digestive system means it has to move at a languid, sluggish pace through the trees. The top speed of a sloth is 0.003 miles per hour; they are so slow that algae can grow on them: on average, sloths travel 41 yards per day — less than half the length of a football field!”

Right now I am like the slug

The same website states, Slugs can never reach a speed over 0.2 miles per hour — in fact, the fastest slug ever recorded was 1.9 miles per hour, making them slightly faster than their cousin — the garden snail. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, lugging that big shell around is hardly easy work!”

This year my garden is overrun with slugs!

They are chewing on my beautiful mint, leaving holes and ugly black spots. I donate this mint every year to a local restaurant. I cannot donate any more this year unless I can stop the slugs from destroying the plant.

I planted Gladiola bulbs for the first time and was so happy when the chipmunks and moles did not eat the bulbs. I planted eight of them and eight came up. Now I am told squirrels or rabbits or caterpillars or slugs could be eating the leaves. Since I have caught slugs red-handed on my mint and hostas, I am blaming them also for the Gladiolas. Most likely, I will not see any flowers.

For something that moves so slow, slugs are covering a lot of ground, causing a lot of damage, and making some of us (me) very angry!

I cannot compete with nature!

This is just one more thing to deal with on top of everything else this year. Wouldn’t you think I would get a break from conflict?

I listened to a free webinar. An author spoke about developing characters of conflict. After listening for about 25 minutes, I chose to leave. I will be receiving the recording in full in a couple of days.

As I sat in silence I rehearsed what he said. For a few moments, I felt shriveled up like a fly caught in a spider’s web. The subject of conflict confused my thoughts, blinded my eyes, and suddenly placed me in a surreal space of ambiguity. I doubted who I am, what I believed, and wished I could turn back time just about an hour so I could choose differently.

I fell asleep in conflict, but in the morning I looked at it with a different perspective. I thought about spirits.

There are three basic spirits mentioned in the Bible.

The human spirit is empirical, meaning it is reasoning based on intellect, emotions, fears, passions, and creativity and the mental functions of awareness, insight, understanding, and judgment.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, the third person of the trinity of Almighty God.

The spirit of evil is the spirit of Satan, whose only purpose is to destroy the validity and testimony of Christ through deception and confusion.

The human spirit and the spirit of evil are always in conflict with the Spirit of Christ

Worldviews and philosophies are diverse and prolific, multiplying every day.

Each individual faces the same questions.

Who am I?

What is my purpose?

Where am I going?

We crave autonomy, yet we have an innate need for connection.

Man craves a cause because man has a void.

The spirit of evil takes full advantage of our human spirit by offering a plethora of philosophies and provides with each one the intellectual criteria to justify and solidify, along with moral standards based on individual experiences. Like people find like people who sympathize as one.

“There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.” (Ephesians 4:4–6, NASB) “Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1 Corinthians 1:13, NASB)

Whereas evil divides in hopes to conquer, the Spirit of Christ is unique, It stands firm in one single truth, for He has already conquered!

There is no ambiguity in Christ!

When a Christian experiences conflict, what I feel in my human spirit is opposition to the truth dwelling inside me. If I cannot discern the truth, I must seek the Spirit of truth, not stay, and figure out all that is going on around me.

Christ sent His disciples out with one message, not a hundred different philosophies and views about who He is and who we are.

“I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine, He who pastures his flock among the lilies.” (Song of Solomon 6:3, NASB)

Isn’t that all I have to know?

Yes, I may be as slow as the slug, soon to go slower still as the sloth, but what do they care about being slow? They are being fed.

These are my thoughts today.

Now that the lesson is told, can they leave now?