Frisky Horseshoe Crabs and Mr. Legs

For anyone who is as addicted to Facebook as I am, this first story won’t be new.  You see, on that site they have something called “status” which is where you can post what you are doing.  So, for example, mine might say, “Adam is typing his blog” or (as it actually says) “Adam is wondering who stole his children and left behind rabid, vampire wolverines”.  It’s a great way to know what all your friends are doing or what’s going on in their lives.  All of that is an intro so the non-Facebooking readers will know what I mean when I say that last week my status read, “Adam is feeling bad about interrupting two horseshoe crabs who were gettin' it on.  He didn’t hear the Barry White.” 

Yes.  It’s true.  My children and I disturbed mating horseshoe crabs.  There is an amazing beach in the town of Barnstable called Millway.  When the tide is out you can almost walk across the bay.  It goes out that far.  Consequently, it’s a great place to go exploring with little kids because, when the water goes out, it leaves all sorts of sea life behind.  One night, last week, we went there after dinner with our buckets to look for crabs.  Mostly what we found were hermit crabs but we caught a few spider crabs too.  And then I saw it.  A small patch of brown, covered in barnacles, and a distinctive horseshoe shaped ripple in the surrounding sand.  I’d found a horseshoe crab.  All I could see was a small patch of its shell but I knew what lay beneath the sand’s surface.  Or so I thought. 

I called the boys over and said, proudly, “Look what Daddy found” and I reached down to grab the crab’s long tail.  I pulled and nothing happened.  I got a shovel and dug around the edges to release any suction that might be holding the crab in the sand, and pulled again.  This time she came loose.  I say “she” because it was only then that I discovered the reason “she” was in the sand so well.  Even deeper in the sand, where I couldn’t see, was a giant male horseshoe crab.  He was more than twice his girlfriend’s size and, as you can imagine, was not very pleased that we had interrupted his date. 

“What are they doing, Daddy?”  my oldest son asked.

“Uh…….I think  they are making horseshoe crab babies.” 

“How?” 

“Uh………Um……….they’re kissing?” I say trying to keep this nice, family outing from getting R-rated.  I’ll have “The Talk” when my kids are older but four and a half is too young. 

“Oh.” He said. 

He was still wondering why the normally docile crab was trying to eat Daddy’s face off. 

After hearing this story, a friend said that she couldn’t wait to see how I got it into my blog.  I told her that if I could find a spiritual meaning in that story, I would be a genius.  After three days of trying, I decided that I was an ignoramus and gave up…until Brehm handed me a drawing.  It’s the one at the top of this entry.  I call him Mr. Legs.  The conversation went like this.

“Daddy, here’s a drawing for you.  Guess who it is.”

“Great drawing, Buddy.  Is it a planet on stilts?”

“No, silly!  It’s you.  He has long legs like you do.  See.”

Now, I’m no doctor or physiologist but I do know a little about proportions and I don’t think that my legs are THAT big.  And I have a body.  I know I have a body.  But then I realized two things: 

1)My son is only four and is not an artistic savant. 

2)My son’s head only comes up to my hip.

Number two is important because, to him, most of what he sees is leg.  He drew me the way he sees me.  As Mr. Legs. 

It was Mr. Legs that God used to get my attention.  He spoke to my heart.

“That’s what you do, Adam”

“What?”

“You make drawings of me in your head based on your limited perception and not based on how I actually am.”

“Ouch.”

But, of course God was right.  He always is.  And then I thought about the crabs.  All I could see was the small patch of barnacle-encrusted shell above the sand and I thought I knew what I had found.  Little did I know that underneath the veil of sand wasn’t just one small crab but another giant one and romance and new life being created.  All that…under an unassuming sandbar.  And behind Mr. Legs is an actual living, breathing father who fiercely loves his son and who has two arms and a voice and breath.  And behind my perception of who God is, is The Living God, The Provider, The Protector, The King, The Everlasting Father, The Prince Of Peace, Love, Grace, Beauty, and on and on.  Behind my spiritual “Mr. Legs” is the God of the Bible.  Sometimes I find exactly what I expect.  Most of the time He blows my perception out of the water.  After all, as C.S. Lewis wrote of Aslan, He isn’t tame.  And that’s the God I want to worship.