Fly-ing Forward, Going Nowhere

I was about to write some reflections from Lent when a very large horsefly buzzed so loudly near my living room window. I sat staring at it for a few minutes.

This fly aggressively kept flying into the window. It didn’t know that there was a window blocking its path. It saw the outside.  It wanted the outside. It knows how to get to the outside is to fly forward and get there. But all its efforts were futile.

Turn around fly! Try something new fly! Can’t you see that it isn’t working fly? Why do you insist on that which isn’t working?!

Hmm. I see myself in this fly.

Should I turn around? Am I thinking I am going forward but there is this large thing in front of me that I don’t realize is blocking me? Am I just jamming myself repeatedly into an immovable object? Am I meant to turn around and head in a different direction in life?

All the fly needed to do was stop going forward and for one moment consider that there was a different way.

Is that what I am meant to do?

The fly got tired. It stopped flying and sat on the windowsill. Then it mustered up energy and tried again. Repeatedly, repeatedly trying again. It is there still – bopping itself into the window, thinking it sees and knows the way out, thinking it can get to where it wants to go, thinking “I got this this time”. When all it has to do is stop, try something new, and be able to fly away.

I don’t want to be like the fly and go nowhere. Where am I called to fly?

I just took a picture of it… and then it fell on its back. It wiggled and couldn’t get up. It stopped moving. “Did I just watch it die?!” Then it wiggled again. I got a paper and flipped it back over to give it another chance. …It’s will to fly into that window is ending. It now buzzes for one second then stops. Waits. Tries for another second. Oh my goodness – Is this my life?! Am I that fly?! Am I watching myself die on the windowsill and not realizing there is so much opportunity for me elsewhere?!

…Soooo this is how one dives deep into prayer and self-reflection… so now I am off to cheer myself up if by doing nothing else than making a 180 degree turn from where I am currently physically facing and walking across the room. I don’t want to die this sad death of a go-nowhere fly.