A big, beautiful spider has set up her home outside my kitchen window. I have grown attached to her presence and greet her each morning, watching her work or sleep while I take my first few sips of coffee.

For those who hate spiders, I see you. But she is where she belongs (outside) and I am where I belong. So it works.

For those of you who live in Iowa, you know we have been in a bit of a rainy cycle. And that feels like an understatement!

Often, these big rains wreak havoc on my spider friend's beautiful web. When I hear the rain pummeling our roof at night, I think about her outside hanging onto her slender web strands for dear life. In the morning, I rush to the kitchen window to see if she is still there.

She is -- she always is.

And often, she is busy at work repairing her battered web. It is a stunning thing to watch --- her knitting and sewing and pulling broken strands together in order to connect and strengthen them with new, sticky filament.

She weaves and repairs her broken home as often as needed.

And this morning as I watched her, I was reminded of this quote from the Marginalian newsletter I have subscribed to for years. It's author Maria Popova was doing her thing before Substack was the place where all the cool kids hang out.

She wrote:

"Everything is eventually recompensed, every effort of the heart eventually requited, though not always in the form you imagined or hoped for.

What redeems all of life's disappointments, what makes all of its heartbreaks bearable, is the ability to see how the dissolution of a dream becomes the fertile compost of possibility."

I am currently face-to-face with the aftermath of a dissolution of a dream and I can tell you that my first instinct is not to see this moment as "the fertile compost of possibility." Instead, I just see it as, well ... compost, if you catch my drift.

But there is something about my spider friend repairing her now patchwork of a web each morning that provides me with something that feels a little like hope.

Because if she can do that kind of repair work over and over and over every time the rain batters her web to smithereens, what keeps me, a human being with capacity and support and a life full of meaning, from doing the same thing when my dreams have dissolved before my very eyes?

Nothing. Nothing keeps me from it. Save my own weary cynicism.

I am still in a stage of shock and grief about what has been lost, so I am not weaving new dreams yet, not yet restoring shattered hopes or quickly repairing my broken heart.

But I am finding a bit of courage as I witness my spider friend's refusal to let adversity defeat her.

She is my current hero.

My muse of sorts.

And each morning as I sigh with relief at her presence, with every broken strand she dutifully replaces, she preaches hope, perseverance, valor, tenacity and fortitude to me. If she can weave the broken strands of her web back together after storms tear it apart, then so can I.

God, I hope she's there tomorrow morning.