The Fall and Rise of a Stink Bug

Our sun rose at 7:41 AM this morning, and the wind blew a lot of the dead leaves over the lawn, I felt the surge of exhaustion, but it wasn’t because I didn’t sleep; it was because of the autumn glory, where the sun beams through the colours of gold and reds, and I wanted to crawl back into bed.

I called my mother. I love the sound of her voice. I look forward to praying the Christian Prayer with her. I realized I was almost out of gas on my way to my parent’s home. I landed at the gas station. Things were going well until I saw a stink bug on the screen as I was hitting the amount. It was sliding down and up but couldn’t grasp anything with its feet. I took a piece of paper to get it from the bottom of the screen where I thought the bug was. When I went to help it out, I realized it was not outside the screen; it was on the INSIDE, and I couldn’t grab it. I tried to find a way that the screen could open, but I couldn’t do it. Watching it struggle as it crawled up and slid down was hard. It was a horrifying sight. There was nothing I could do; it was stuck, and I couldn’t free it. I finished filling my tank with gas and went to talk to the shell gas attendant. I wanted it to be free. I was desperate when I spoke to the attendant, “There is a stink bug trapped in the screen of your gas pump, so can you open it so it can get out?” The attendant talked to the manager. A few minutes later, the manager spoke to me and told me opening up a gas pump is not easy; one needs to call in people to do that. “We get tons of stink bugs in there, and there is nothing we can do. It might be lucky enough to find its way out if it flew in.” She said.

I felt jarred by this hopeless situation. I know what some of you are thinking, it’s JUST a stink bug, a bug that is a nuisance. I know. Would I feel the same way with a fly? I don’t think so. Why is this bothering me so much? It could be that so many are sick with cancer or the many more profound things I can’t mention here about why this bothers me so much.

There are some things we have no control over. That our time is limited on this earth, and we keep trying to make it one day, one hour, a month, pushing and struggling, laughing and crying and looking at the sun. However, when life blows hard on our body and sickness comes, I am so happy and blessed that I have God to call on. When nothing else is working, and it seems there is no hope, God gives me this grace to reach out and touch the Son through my prayers, and God hears me!

There is always a way out of being stuck. It isn’t enough to let go of the struggle. It is enough to allow the battle to change the circumstances from I can’t do this, but God can. It is a miracle to have the grace to see God mix with man. I use the term man as humankind (male and female). I didn’t stop there. I prayed for the bug and thanked God for His precious creatures, hoping this one would be set free.

Now I ask myself this question, what do the gas attendants do with that many stink bugs getting inside the strangest places of the gas tanks?

Something I am going to think about on my drive to school.