There is something important about me readers of my blog may not know. While, for much of my career, I have gone by the titles artist, producer, and writer, a thread of greater continuity has remained unchanged throughout that I sometimes feel should get its own job title: Bug Rescuer.

(Addendum: I only recognized long after writing this article that the heroine of my book rescues bugs, which is not something I had even been considering!)

While bug rescuing is not an activity I normally talk about a lot, having had the privilege of meeting and learning a little bit from an almost miraculously kind and world-renowned entomologist several years ago, I do it proudly; and I learned a great deal over the course of a few days recently that felt worthy of reflection.

Perhaps because I have somehow felt so small compared to the challenges I, and many others, have tried to help address in recent years, helping wayward bugs find their way back outside sometimes feels more than just important, but urgent.

I loved, several days ago, for example, encountering a little fly who, with eyes trained on an obvious destination, bumped and bumped again hard against a screened-in windowpane between dodging my attempts to place her in a cup for transport outdoors before I was finally able to capture and free the adventurer. How obvious and fitting an analogy, it seemed to me, for just about every time I saw right in front of me exactly what I wanted but that from which I needed to turn away entirely in order to get into God’s cup, so to speak, en route to my next destination.

As if to underscore the point (and perhaps also a need to be more mindful of stowaways when opening and closing doors), I observed another little fly later whose persistent attempts to zoom through a door windowpane were perfectly aimed and rewarded with the success of right timing when I simply saw what she was doing and opened the way.

Inspired by the ways in which I felt God was leading me to think about how important it is to seek and pursue what at least feels like a right way forward in a given situation while remembering it is only He who can either bless my attempts or redirect me entirely, I soon noticed a wasp desperately trying to fly through a closed window above a work table and right next to a wide open door. Being in a room filled with tools, I noted a long metal ruler nearby and thought this might be the most helpful implement with which to guide the wanderer. Almost instantly, though, it occurred to me I needed to be willing to try to catch the wasp in order to guide her and I climbed toward her with a cup and cover in hand before I felt intuitively that, actually, the ruler would work. In the sweetest moment after I simply extended the implement under the wasp, she literally dropped right onto its end, as if drawn by some special gravity, and I was able to lift her right over to freedom.

Immediately afterward, I happened across another ruler, left over from childhood and that I’d not noticed in a very long time on the ground, etched with the label “Megan’s Ruler,” and I’ve been so grateful for it as a reminder of what to do when I feel I don’t know.

(I later captured and freed yet another wasp without incident as if to underscore the importance of a full willingness to face fears in this important work of bug rescuing. Insects are such wonderful teachers, I’m finding. And E.O. Wilson’s kindness was no wonder.)

I’ve been grateful to enjoy a few walks in recent days and loved the message of the kid-designed guidepost above.

In pondering it, I’ve felt reminded of times I’ve longed to be where it is warm,

And cold. And dimensional. And right for me, only to need (and I still need) to remember

God is my zip code.

This week I talked with an acquaintance I’d not seen in several years, and she told me about how it was that a tree, which had been prominent in her yard, had been removed since the last time I’d visited; and I felt again an important point etched in my heart. In the process, she’d asked an arborist who’d climbed to considerable heights whether he wasn’t afraid of falling. “No,” he replied. “I trust my equipment.”