You Bug Me

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"Fools show their annoyance at once, but the prudent overlook an insult.

Proverbs 12:16, NIV

The bugs are so bad here in Virginia in the heat of summer. It’s like a Biblical plague, reminding you that yes, Washington, D.C. really was once a swamp. It makes it difficult to throw tennis balls for Squirrel. It's his favorite thing in the world, but when we do go out to play, I get eaten alive.

With the new in-office policy at work and how hot it has been, I’ve started taking Squirrel out to throw tennis balls at 5:30am. I’d say it wakes you up better than coffee, but that’s a lie. Nothing starts the day off better than coffee. But, then again, fetch with a hyper Labrador wakes you up impressively fast too.

I started off wearing jeans to protect my legs from the mosquitoes. Then the next morning I added a long sleeve shirt. Then I added gloves. The final pièce de résistance was a bug net over my baseball cap. 

I am one sexy lady.

Also, please remember, it’s regularly over 100 degrees here in the summer. Even at 5:30am, it’s still freakishly hot. So this whole endeavor truly is an act of love and self-sacrifice for my boy.

You know what bugs me more than bugs?

People.

They are very annoying. Like, very. Not all of them, and not all the time. But they do have an uncanny knack for little bites here, little bites there, buzzing around my ears until I’m completely fed up. No amount of layers I put on stops it from happening. The only option I have is hiding away from the world in my house, something we as society are doing more and more.

Jesus calls me to get outside, both of my house and myself. To face the inconveniences, whether major and minor. That’s love. Not everyone serving and adapting to me, but me learning to lay down my right to be offended or annoyed and making allowances for differences. 

One of my coworkers loves to cold call me just to complain. I usually sit in back-to-back meetings for 9-10 hours a day; if I have a spare second, I want a bathroom break, not a phone call whining about how the work is too hard. Yes, it is, but please save it for your therapist. 

It bugs me more than angry red mosquito bites ringing my legs like a candy cane. 

There are times it's probably appropriate to tell people to knock it off, and sometimes I think I’m well within my right to tell my coworker, politely, that this is the time or place. This week though, I feel the need to make some extra allowances for this person in the name of love, and in the name of Christ. This coworker doesn’t know Jesus, and the best way I can tell him is not with words. It’s with the way I love him when I least want to. 

But I reserve the right to keep a flyswatter around. Juuuuust in case...