Not Your Typical Church Lady

"Then the Lord said to him, 'What is that in your hand?' 'A staff,' he replied. The Lord said, 'Throw it on the ground.' Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it."

~Exodus 4:2-3, NIV

Once upon a time, in 2013, I had just returned home with a sleeping baby. As I carried her through the house and up to her crib, I noticed something odd out of the corner of my eye. However, the mission at hand was to get the baby into her bed for a nice long nap, so without looking, I noted the odd difference and triaged it to be investigated at a later time. When I came back downstairs, I walked into the dining room to take a better look at whatever that thing was. Much to my surprise, I found the thing to be a black snake. Some of our wallpaper border near the ceiling had come away from the wall at the top, making a long comfy pocket for the snake to lay in. But it had also made a ninety degree turn with its body, perhaps in a bid to slither down the wall, and had stopped to rest its head, for whatever reason, on a nail that holds a picture.

So there I was, staring at a snake. On our wall. In our house. It was very calm, just hanging there. You know, its an odd thing to find a snake in the house. I stared at it for a few minutes, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do about it. We have high ceilings. The snake was above my head. I was at home by myself, with a sleeping baby. For some reason this felt like a problem.

Under normal circumstances I'd just ignore the snake. But under normal circumstances the snake would be outside and not in the house. Under normal circumstances, if I had to move a snake, I'd just pick it up and move it (snakes are not on the list of things I'd scream and run from), but under normal circumstances the snake would be on the ground and not coming down the wall above my head. The snake and I stared at each other. I think we were both a little confused about what to do next.

We live next to a garage. A garage that employs men. Men that can come and maybe get snakes off the walls of damsels in distress. I called next door to the garage. It was lunchtime. Our neighbor's youngest son, just a teenager at the time, answered the phone. I explained that I had a little situation that I might need some help with. The situation being that there was a snake hanging on my wall. He laughed, good naturedly, and said he'd be right down. I must say, it was nice just to have another human in the house. We both looked at the snake. He asked what I wanted to do with it, and I told him to just take it outside. I got our corn fork (similar to a pitchfork but the tines are shorter and curved for pulling corn out of a corn crib) and he somehow disengaged the snake very calmly from the wall and carried it out. We did take a picture first to commemorate this very weird occasion. Every year it pops up in my Facebook Memories.

Having a snake inside the house was very uncomfortable. It felt like a violation of some law of nature. Having someone witness it with me made it a little better somehow. Two of us saw it. It was real. It really happened. This strange odd thing wasn't a figment of my imagination. I knew that I was capable of handling the snake by myself, but I didn't want to. I needed someone else. Sometimes, we just need some backup, a little moral support. Or a really great neighbor and friend.

In Exodus 4, when God told Moses to cast down his staff and it turned into a snake, Moses was startled, too. In the New International Version it says he "ran from it." In the Complete Jewish Study Bible it says he "recoiled" from it. At any rate, he found it shocking. To do the job God gave him, Moses needed his own backup, in the form of his brother Aaron. God told Moses that he would be with Moses' mouth, but Moses insisted that he couldn't do it. Public speaking was just not his thing. The irrational fear of public speaking is widespread to this day. Alone he was unable to do it. The help of his brother made all the difference. With Aaron at his side, Moses returned to Egypt and did the job that God had given him to do.

It's not always easy to call for backup. But sometimes its necessary. Sometimes it makes a tough, weird, or awkward job a little easier.