Ants have been harassing me.

For a week or so before our big trip west, a couple of times when I sat on the couch in the evenings, I felt a little tickle on my arm or leg. When I glanced down, I saw a big, fat black carpenter ant moseying along my bare skin. With an instinctive, “Ewwww!” I brushed it off and then promptly squished it.

Was the dog bringing in ants? Were they coming in under the storm door? Neither my husband nor I knew, but we talked about it almost every morning during our devotional time for a week or so.

At random times during the day, some slight bit of movement on the floor caught my eye, and I sprang into action, beating at it with a shoe or smashing it with a handy tissue. After a few times, I started getting the shivers sitting in the family room, so I moved my reading spots to the living room sofa and a bench on the deck.

Ever conscious of our dog’s tendency to stick her nose in anything new and not wanting to poison her, Jerry reminded me that cornmeal is supposed to be attractive to ants. Folklore says they eat it and take it back to their nests, where it kills the entire colony. So we pulled the tops off our winter sowing jugs and baited the caps for our ant couriers to eat and carry. For the first several days, the only thing that changed was my constant feeling that ants were crawling up my leg, down my arm, and through my hair, whether I was inside or outside the house. It was so irritating.

Then, as I got out the peppermint essential oil, another DIY hack, the little intruders must’ve moved their operational headquarters outside. When the deck where I was reading began crawling with the big black Cootie Game ants, I grabbed the bag of finely ground cornmeal, took it outside, and scattered its contents all over the deck planks, hoping it would fall between the cracks to get to their tunnels. That’ll show ‘em, I thought.

Then we left for a two-week vacation.

That trip wasn’t the end of our Formicidae harassment, though. When we were in California, we skirted around a hill of fire ants as we seated ourselves at my daughter’s wedding in the desert. We were careful to steer very clear of those little devils! It seemed that ants were everywhere!

Pushing away thoughts about ants as we enjoyed our travels, when we got home, we discovered that we had only begun to fight. Harassment orders had been extended to the Hoosier cousins of the fire ants. Dozens of tiny ants had decided to set up camp in our kitchen, with a direct assault emanating from the floor under the dishwasher.

Out came the bag of cornmeal again, and we dumped some on the floor as a stopgap measure.

Unfortunately, the sweet little morsels of grain beckoned the ants like well-lit golden arches on a midnight fast food run. They swarmed around the pale yellow dust like it was McDonald’s fries. But were they taking it back to their nests, as we’d been led to believe?

It didn’t seem so. More like they were telling all their friends that the Miller McDonald’s was having a free fry giveaway and they’d better get there before the special ended. More and more tiny ants marched in double time to get in on the fest. Weirdly, though, by morning, the ants were gone, but by noon, they’d returned.

It was a situation that was simply out of hand. Unacceptable. Outdoors, the garden had become a jungle from all the rain while we were gone, so I had kitchen work to do, work that had no place near ants.

Each morning for several days, we briefly talked about a strategy, and I prayed for a way to make the ants disappear. First, Jerry located more milk jug tops, filled them with cornmeal, and strategically placed them on the countertop and the floor. We watched them crawl toward the yellow and red milk caps and forcefully put out hands behind our backs to keep from smashing them all. After all, they were couriers, and to kill them meant they wouldn’t spread their poison to their comrades. For a day or two, the number of ants diminished. But it wasn’t long before the dog found she had a taste for cornmeal.

We knew we’d have to up our defenses. Jerry pulled out the double envelopment tactic: cornmeal and ant poison syrup on the counter to hit from two sides. Surely, it would work.

But it didn’t.

We started to consider hiring an exterminator. But where would we start?

In the meantime, some unexpected family business popped up. Its importance trumped the ant issue, so as we ran errands that day, our minds were far from the bug issue. Ants were too low on the list to fret about. On the drive home, our new Ring doorbell app signalled that someone was standing out front of the house. I opened the camera, but didn’t recognize the young woman. Jerry didn’t either.

“Someone selling something,” I predicted before our conversation turned back toward pressing issues.

After we’d been home for an hour or so that I’d spent fretting about family stuff, the doorbell sounded again. On my phone, I saw the same young person outside as before. Reluctantly, I got up to answer the door.

She was a salesperson. For pest control.

“Are you having trouble with ants?” she asked.

I nodded.

“You and everyone else nearby,” she tsked tsked. “The little ones, or…”

I nodded.

“Near your dishwasher, I suppose,” she tossed off and then started her patter and pointed to her laminated chart with prices. “Yep, you and all your neighbors.”

I stood with my mouth hanging open.

Her spiel was so fast that I had trouble following it, but the gist was that they were in the neighborhood and could spray around our house today.

Spray for ants? Uh, Lord, is this happening? This is just what we need!

I heard the door to the garage open and knew that Jerry had come inside. I asked the girl to wait a moment.

“She’s here again,” I whispered to him in the hallway.

“Who’s here?”

“The girl who knocked earlier. She’s back, and she’s from a pest control company! I think you ought to talk to her.”

He came to the door, and I went back into the house. Within just a few minutes, after some chit chat and a few questions, he’d signed us up for a series of four pest treatments, starting that evening. Without even checking any reviews of the company!

“It’s a metaphor,” I told my husband as we sat waiting for the application crew to arrive.

“What do you mean?”

“The way will open. In God’s time.”

He looked at me, waiting for the rest.

“We’ve prayed for these ants to be gone,” I reminded him. “And the way has opened.”

He nodded.

“You can’t rush God. But He’s there, and He provides a way. We just have to be patient. And He’ll handle this family stuff, too. In his time.”

Jerry smiled and nodded again.

I smiled, too. I remembered that the sales girl said the treatment often pushes the bugs inside for a few days, but to be patient. “They take the treatment to their nest, and eventually the entire colony dies off. But it works if you give it time,” she said.

Here’s what I heard her say: things may get a little worse before they get better, and we may have to wait a bit, but the way will open; things will get better.

If you have faith.