Creator of the Bedbugs

Did you know that bedbugs can withstand temperatures of nearly freezing to 110 degrees Fahrenheit?  And survive for up to a year without feeding on their staple, human blood?  And that they anesthetize when biting so that you don’t feel anything?  And that they hide in tiny cracks in your bed frame, where a single female can lay 200 eggs during her four-month lifespan, venturing out for a meal in the early morning hours when you’re sleeping the soundest?

On alert ever since a friend’s long-ago bedbug ordeal, I was alarmed to feel something repeatedly crawling across my arm at night a few months ago.  But an image search identified the critters as carpet beetles, a pest that feeds on cloth and not humans.  Thankfully, a thorough cleaning of my room and disposal of pillows where they were living resolved the problem.

Bedbugs were still on my mind when I began to feel itches and twitches in bed shortly afterwards, though I never found insects or bites to substantiate their existence.  Sometimes changing clothes helped.  I grew more confused when I found a number of mosquito-looking bites on my torso one afternoon.  I was definitely concerned when the girls in the bedroom across the hall from mine complained of waking up to bites on their legs; but that situation dissipated spontaneously without identifying or combatting any pest.

Then, on my trip last month, I saw several bugs on the bed where I slept.  My internet research couldn’t rule out their being bedbugs, and though I found no bites on myself, one did leave a blood-red streak when I squished it.  Whatever they were, could I possibly have brought them from my home, even though I hadn’t been seeing insects there?  Or was I in danger of taking them back with me?  I didn’t mention the matter to my African hosts, unsure of the local cultural implications of bedbugs, but I did keep my duffel bag on a table in the opposite corner of the room from the bed.  Upon arriving home, I sprinkled insecticide powder inside of it, zipped it up, shook it around, and left it outside my room overnight.

I also e-mailed the American couple at the organization where I work who had kindly offered me hospitality during the construction at my home.  Though they were traveling, I was to move to their place the day after returning from my trip, but I certainly didn’t want to risk bringing bedbugs there.  After a day of interaction with them about the details of my experiences, I went home to pack up my room with their tentative permission to keep those plans.  Dead insects under my bed convinced me to seek alternate lodging to avoid starting an infestation at our headquarters the month before our big conference.  But photos persuaded my hosts that the critters weren’t bedbugs, so they told me to come anyway, which I did, arriving around midnight.

“Is this stressing you out?”, asked my hostess.  “Amazingly, no,” I replied.  “I marvel at the grace of God in my life that is making me actually excited about what He will do through this situation and how He as a loving Heavenly Father will meet my needs even if I end up, like Abraham, going out not knowing where I am going!”  It helped that I’d been praying about bedbugs for months, reminding myself that the Creator of these impressive insects uses them for His purposes and works for good every situation that He brings into my life.

Imagine my consternation at work the next morning when a critter that looked like the ones I’d expelled from my room months previously came crawling across my hand.  And imagine my horror when Google informed me that it was a bedbug!  Did Google even know what it was talking about?  My phone’s resolution is poor at close-up photos of something that small.  Maybe Google says every blob is a bedbug, because so many folks are talking about bedbugs online.

I hadn’t seen a bug like that in my room for weeks, not even when I packed up the whole place the previous night in preparation for the construction.  And I had been convinced (by Google) that they weren’t bedbugs anyway.  This insect seemed different from the ones I’d encountered on my trip.  And it was in my office, on the opposite end of the building from the bedroom I was staying in.  This bug had probably just come in from outside.  I probably wouldn’t have paid any attention to it if bedbugs hadn’t been on my mind.

But when an identical creature crawled across my journal the next morning in the kitchen, reality hit home.  With dread in the pit of my stomach, I e-mailed photos of the two dead bugs to my hosts, who were due to return the following week to their home where I — and now this invading pest — was staying.  My further research affirmed their conclusion that these were indeed bedbugs that had appeared in opposite ends of their home.  The infestation had begun.

It was difficult to concentrate on my work as responsibility for the unfolding disaster weighed heavily upon me, despite my hosts’ gracious response.  I followed their instructions to sprinkle insecticide powder on the floor of the kitchen and office.  Still, before the morning was out, I had found an identical but dead bedbug in the bathroom of the room where I was staying, and squished — with a blood-red spatter — a fourth one that crawled across my foot on the pesticide-dusted office floor.  This infestation was so much worse than anything I’d experienced previously that I was inclined to believe I had only just now encountered bedbugs for the first time.  But what were the chances that nothing I’d previously suspected was actually linked with bedbugs, and that bedbugs only coincidentally arrived on our organization’s premises at the same time as I?

The Creator of the bedbugs is my loving heavenly Father.  He reminded me that He sends and removes bedbugs at will, just as He did with other insects during the Egyptian plagues and as He did with the elements on the Sea of Galilee.  He knows that it is my service to Him that brought me far from sophisticated pest-control methods utilized in the developed world, and that an infestation could significantly distract me from ministry.  Since He invites us to bring our petitions to His throne of grace, I beseeched Him:  “Lord, by Your power, kill every bedbug in this house!”

God evidently answered that prayer.  Eighteen days have elapsed since then, and not one further bedbug has been sighted here.  Praise be to our Almighty God!

It’s not that I haven’t been looking.  I’m still in the habit of examining every spec I see.  And we have used the means available to address the situation. I sprinkled insecticide on the floors of the whole house on the evening after the last bedbug sighting.  That’s when it occurred to me:  What if Jeremias, who travelled with me and works in the same office, is the one who brought the bedbugs, and the fact that I was concerned about them made me attentive to catch the infestation so it could be treated early?

Accepting the reality that I may never know the mysterious ways in which God worked in this situation, I remained content to trust Him through those days of waiting and wondering, grateful that He works His perfect plan through everything I experience.  I certainly learned much about His design of bedbugs in hours of online research prompted by this situation.  More importantly, I grew closer to their Creator as I pleaded for His mercy and determined to trust Him regardless of what the outcome would be.  Joy in the midst of trials is a precious fruit of the Spirit!

Pray that I would continue to walk in sweet communion with my Lord through other, often lesser, irritations that arise in the course of life.  I’m ashamed to say that even after witnessing God’s power avert the nightmare of a bedbug infestation, such a small matter as a text from Jeremias indicating that he would arrive late to work last Tuesday upset me with the realization that I wouldn’t accomplish as much of my work as I’d hoped due to covering his tasks.  It was only two days later that I thought to ask what had kept him at home for the extra hours.  “A crew was treating my house . . . for bedbugs,” he explained.

Bedbugs!  So it evidently had been Jeremias that had brought the bedbugs from our trip to the office!  Up to that point, my only mention of bedbugs to him was to say that the dust on the office floor was for treating them.  But the revelation that he was suffering a full-fledged infestation at his house broke through my apprehension about approaching the subject with Africans.  I told him the whole story as I’ve recounted it here, and we shared our experiences of strengthened faith through the challenge.

And then the question hit me:  Why didn’t I tell him before?  We were together on the trip where we likely encountered the insects.  We work together in the office all day, every day.  For much of the time that questions about bedbugs were swirling in my mind, he was a few meters away from me.  And he’s one of my closest friends.  If I had simply overcome my embarrassment to inform him of what was going on in my life, perhaps his infestation also could have been avoided.  It had been nearly two weeks since I’d hypothesized that he could have been the one who brought the bedbugs to our organization.  How could I have been so selfish as to not even consider his own vulnerability to the trial that was besetting me?

I apologized for my silence, and Jeremias didn’t hold it against me.  I also apologized for venting my frustration at his tardiness to the office on the day the exterminators treated his home.  He readily forgave me with the acknowledgement that everyone has motives to feel the way they do, and has the right to express their feelings.

Many questions remain.  Was the fumigation at Jeremias’ house successful?  His room is still quarantined, but he expects to be disappointed upon re-entry.  We have also heard that another colleague has brought bedbugs home from ministry travels.  Will we keep sharing the insects around?  How will we respond to the next invitation from our dear friends in the place we evidently encountered them?  Will they bring the pests to the nationwide conference on our premises next month?

I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I know Someone who does.  He is the Creator of the bedbugs.  He sovereignly designed their incredible capacity for survival and reproduction.  He gave me the peace that passes understanding as I struggled to analyze the evidence and love my neighbors by not bringing bedbugs to where I work.  He heard my cry to exterminate the pests that appeared here, quite likely using the insecticide which we had providentially already imported.  And He used them to draw me closer to Himself in earnest prayer, and show me the importance of openness with those around me.

All this evidence, added to the infallible promises of His Word, convinces me that God has good purposes for any bedbugs which He has allowed to remain at Jeremias’ home as well as those that may be at the homes of our other friends.  You can pray with us that they will be exterminated, to remove hindrances to ministry, and that we will exercise due diligence towards that end.  But even if our heavenly Father shows His will to be otherwise, I can sing with Habbakuk (3:18), “Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.”  All glory be to Him — the Creator of the bedbugs!