Life can be so random. Just a bad roll of the dice or no spades in your hand. Sometimes you plan and prepare -you learn to shuffle, you practice your roll, you might even count cards, but life has a way of catching up to you. It certainly won’t let you pick your hand or place your die down in the combination you desire.

This morning I got up early to take my son to his first college visit. I knew it would be hard on my brain, so I planned, prepped and prepared for the journey days in advance. This morning, I woke at 5:45 to get ready before he had to get up. As I stood doing my hair in the mudroom mirror while my boy used the bathroom upstairs, I saw something fly around the ceiling light a few times. I glanced up unconcerned thinking it had to be a stink bug and was shocked to see a yellow jacket. It alighted near the hole that screws the light fixture into the ceiling. I fully expected it to be stuck and buzz off. It didn’t.

It disappeared.

I quelled my growing unease rationalizing that it was simply a singular random event.

Until two crawled out and started buzzing around.

Suddenly, a terrifying mobile of countless hornets came dropping out and swarming around my head. This would be frightening enough if it were to happen to Joe Shmoe.

I am not Joe Schmoe.

I am Heather, and I am deadly allergic to bees, hornets, yellow jackets, and wasps after having been stung a few hundred times as a child, but that’s a story for another day.

My heart pounded in my chest, sweat poured from my newly showered face, my perfectly straightened and dried hair frizzed and curled with my perspiration. Dropping low and racing into the kitchen, flicking the light off as I went, I glided as quickly as possible to my room and shut the door. Trembling, shaking, sweating, I told my husband what had happened.

This was not the start I planned.

The whole trip down, I thought about the bees. Some people spend their entire lives without being stung. I have lived through a horrible real-life reenactment of Attack Of The Killer Bees.  I’ve been stung repeatedly in a foreign country & nearly died because my father thought it best not to tell my mother about the killer bees incident. Playing field hockey in high school, I was stung and then, as an adult, had to temporarily move out of my apartment when a hive of white-faced hornets took up residence in our air ducts. Fifty or sixty a day would fly through the grates and hide in our shoes, clothes, toys, and generally infested the place. That time, I stopped home to get clothing for the baby, picked her up and patted her back right on a hornet who promptly stung my hand.

Then again today.

Sometimes life seems less like a game of chance and more like Russian Roulette with all but one of the chambers full.

The only option then is to trust, pray, and find the silver linings.

I pray and thank God for once again sparing me. I thank Him for a husband who will search every nook and cranny of our apartment or house to kill them all by hand one by one. I thank Him for allowing me to get out this time without getting stung so I could still take my boy on his first college visit. I thank Him that despite my trouble, I need not fear because He has overcome the world.

John 16:33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”