Kill the Spider Read online

  “I have ten minutes. Can you make it quick?”

  (I hope you read the following story in the voice of Morgan Freeman, because I swear my dad sounds like a Latino version of him.)

  “When I was early in my ministry in Panama, I was preaching a three-day revival in a small church by the ocean. That first night I preached mi corazon out. I preached hard and loud. Many were touched by God. Toward the end of the invitation, Ms. Ramirez stood up in the second row. She made her way to the center aisle and walked very slowly toward the front. When she finally got to me, I asked Ms. Ramirez why she had come forward. Her answer was simple.

  “‘Pastor, I need you to pray that the Lord cleans the cobwebs out of my life. I have so many cobwebs. Could you please pray?’ she asked me.

  “And so I obliged. I prayed that the Lord would clean the cobwebs out of her life. She thanked me and went on her way. On night two of the revival—”

  I stopped him.

  “I just got to the retreat place. I’m gonna have to let you go. I need to say bye to Heather and the kids.”

  “No, Son. You need to listen for another few minutes. Please.”

  I was a nervous wreck, and my dad’s voice had always been soothing to me, so I said, “All right, but hurry.”

  He picked back up. “Night two of the revival, I saw her get up again—Ms. Ramirez. And she came walking down the aisle with a little more certainty.

  “‘Pastor, could you pray again? Could you please pray again that the Lord cleans the cobwebs out of my life?’ she asked.

  “I reminded her I had prayed the night before for this very thing, and that the Lord would honor our prayer. But she insisted I pray again. And so I did. Our Father, Ms. Ramirez is obviously very concerned at the state of her life. Would you please help her clean up her life so she may honor you best with it? Please clean the cobwebs out of her life.

  “Son, listen to me. The last night of the revival—I couldn’t believe it—she got up again. She made her way down the aisle even faster this night. I wondered if she was going to tell me that her life had begun to take a turn for the better—that the Lord had begun to clean the cobwebs.

  “‘Pastor Fermin, Pastor Fermin, please, one last time? Can you please pray that the Lord cleans the cobwebs—’

  “I stopped her mid-sentence. I stopped her because I realized that we were praying the wrong prayer.

  “And so I prayed, Father, we do not ask you tonight to clean the cobwebs from Ms. Ramirez’s life. In fact, Lord, keep them there for now. But tonight we ask for something much greater. Tonight we ask that you KILL THE SPIDER in Ms. Ramirez’s life. In the name of Jesus I pray. Amen.

  “Carlos, I have watched you your entire life. You are a professional at cleaning the cobwebs from your life. You are amazing at playing the part and being used by God in spite of your circumstances. But do not go to this place and try to clean up your life. That won’t work. You have to kill the spider. You must find the producer of all the cobwebs in your life and kill it. It is much more difficult, but that is why you are there. To kill the spider.”

  I don’t remember much of the next few minutes. I mean, I remember hugging my family. I remember slowly making my way to the registration table. But the thought that took over everything else was that I had never heard my life explained more accurately than how my father had just summed it up.

  I realized I was there to kill the spider. To kill the freaking spider. Now I just had to find it.

  And, my friends, find it I did. I imagine one of these things is running through your head right now:

  1.I don’t think I have a problem with spiders, but how can I know for sure?

  2.I think I have two hundred spiders, so how will I kill them all?

  3.I know my spider; I just can’t imagine killing it.

  I can’t promise you that this book will accomplish for you what seven straight days of therapy did for me. I hope this book is nothing like seven straight days of therapy.

  But I can promise you this: This book will take you on a journey that should not be taken alone. So I’ll share my story to give you hope in yours, and together we will face the spiders with the power of the God who makes the earth spin and float. Because with God, all things are possible.

  What Is the Spider in Your Life?

  You are probably wondering how in the world you are going to identify the spider in your life when you can’t even get the cobwebs out of the way to see it. Well, let’s begin with a couple of questions you can think about as we dig deeper.

  •What sort of behaviors jumped out at the mention of “cleaning the cobwebs”?

  •What sort of words come to mind at the phrase kill the spider. These don’t have to be deep. We aren’t searching to immediately define anything.

  •What would your family say are things you need to work on? Hint: these are normally cobwebs.

  •Growing up, what were the things you often got in trouble for?

  CHAPTER 2

  COBWEBS

  As I signed in for the retreat, I couldn’t help but think about this charming metaphor my dad shared. There was definitely something profound there. I got it on a surface level, but I also knew there was more there that I needed to think about. Being at OnSite would allow me to really dive in.

  Can we all agree that nobody likes to live in a house filled with spiders? Unless you have a pet spider—then you can skip this part.

  Anyway, nobody—absolutely nobody—likes to walk into a cobweb. Remember the last time this happened to you? There was probably not a whole lot of grace involved in your reaction. You didn’t walk into a cobweb, slowly stop, smile a crooked smile, reach into your pocket, and pull out a mirror. You didn’t then pull out your hanky and slowly dab at your face, using your pocket mirror to methodically make your way around your face to pick off little bits of the cobweb.

  No, this is not how you reacted to the cobweb.

  Upon stumbling into said cobweb, you launched into what looked like a full-body seizure. Your arms flew up above your head, flailing frantically around. And as soon as you adequately swept your three-foot perimeter with your thrashing arms, you went for your face. You swiped at your face repeatedly. You also spat because, inevitably, some of the cobweb ended up in your piehole. This, my friends, is what happens when we stumble into cobwebs.

  It’s safe to assume that not one of us wants to live in an environment where we are running into these all the time. So we clear them out of the way, especially if they are in areas where we encounter them every day. Cobwebs in doorways, cobwebs in walkways, cobwebs under lamp shades—places we will be accessing daily and don’t want them there.

  But what if they are up in the corner of the room, tucked away in our bedroom closets or beneath the lip of a stair? If the cobwebs are in places where nobody is looking, we don’t mind them so much. Who cares to clean the cobwebs in your basement, garage, or attic? No one. Why? Because they’re not bothering us.

  And when they stop bothering us, we forget about them . . . until the spider, which created that cobweb in the first place, comes crawling out.

  Cobwebs are not welcomed, but we get used to them—and we get used to cleaning up after them. So what are some real-life cobwebs? I want to share how I began to recognize my personal cobwebs and give you some general tools for getting rid of the spiders that keep you repeating these behaviors. (I define a real-life cobweb as a lie that brings false comfort to a lie.)

  Body Image

  Let’s start with one of the mothers of all webs.

  Back in 2012, I stepped on something that I had not stepped on in a long time. It wasn’t a cockroach. It wasn’t a LEGO left in my hallway as a booby trap by my five-year-old son that would take me down at 2:00 a.m. It was a scale. And that bad boy greeted me with this number: 225. I’m 5'9'' and all of the websites were telling me that to be “healthy,” I was supposed to be a whopping 175. Game over. I was fat and there was nothing that was gonna get me unfat because I have the foll
ow-through of a dad on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon with leaves to rake. Earlier in my life, at about ten pounds heavier, I had a friend who would gently jab me for my weight. He’d call my neck “preacher neck” and poke my belly in the name of “fun.” Hilarious, right? No, it stung. It stung every time. And every time I would try to lose the weight, it was always for them. It was always for what I looked like on the outside and for the world outside of me.

  My weight loss always failed. The cobweb of attaining a certain appearance would not only not get cleaned; it grew and grew and grew. Unfortunately, at the time, I didn’t realize that the only way to get rid of this cobweb was to either have a photoshop artist follow me around at every moment of my life, or to get healthy for the sake of health and not for the sake of body image. When God created man, God didn’t create a body image to shoot for. That’s our own doing. And if this is your main issue, if this is your main cobweb, well I can completely relate. When I killed the spider behind this web, I lost more than forty pounds. And I kept it off, because I stopped chasing the impossible. I began chasing God instead.

  Gossip

  I’m an average singer. But even with my average voice, singing opportunities kept coming for me all throughout my twenties and into my early thirties. I knew I wasn’t an incredible singer, but that didn’t keep me from leading worship in some of the largest churches and conferences in the country. That didn’t keep me from signing a two-record deal with the biggest record label in Christian music. But the higher up I got in the industry, the more it would hurt to hear people talk about my “average” voice. There was one publication that ripped my first record apart. They may as well have ripped my soul apart. I went off on them on my blog. I went on a witch hunt and began to spit rumors in order to somehow feel as though I was better than they were. Once the comments began flooding onto my blog article titled “How Dare They!” I began to feel incredible. Such a rush. Like a drug. The cobweb was spinning out of control. I began a blog hunt against their magazine and its credibility. And every time I hit “publish,” I took a hit from the cobweb called gossip.

  One day the editor of the paper called. “Hey, man, I’m really sorry about how we covered your record. I know we used some language that was insulting and for that I’m sorry. But is there any way that you could stop with the witch hunt? It’s hurting us. It’s hurting me. What can I do to help?” It was like I stepped right into a really cold shower. Like the fog had been lifted and I was suddenly standing there. Completely aware of the damage I had inflicted. The cobweb of gossip was all over the home in my heart, and I needed to clean it soon.

  “Man. I’m so sorry. I didn’t think that my little corner of the web was gonna inflict any sort of pain on you guys. I’ll delete all the articles. Thanks for apologizing.”

  It seemed like an easy fix. I deleted the blog posts, but all that did was clean the cobwebs. The spider was still there, whispering to me, “You only matter as much as other people tell you that you matter.” Until I get over that particular lie, I will gossip every single time I’m wounded.

  Artificial Intimacy

  It doesn’t take a behavioral therapist or a PhD in psychology to get to the bottom of our need for intimacy. We crave it, and we often settle for fake intimacy when we can’t find a true connection with someone. We turn to our screens to fulfill this deep-seated desire for a fix. Sometimes that happens through our obsession with online interaction. We can allow ourselves to be absorbed by television shows where we become attached to the characters and almost live vicariously through their experience. At its worst, this need leads to deeper and darker cobwebs such as addiction to pornography or promiscuity.

  Imagine you were at the grocery store and you had worn your best outfit that day and your hair and makeup were on point (unless you are bald and don’t wear makeup like me). You were just minding your own business walking up and down the aisles and someone walked up to you and tapped you on the shoulder. You turned around to see the most beautiful human creation (next to your significant other, of course) smiling at you. “Can I just tell you. You have an amazing smile.” And then, just as they appeared in your lane, they disappear. Woah. That felt amazing. I mean, I love my wife and you love your significant other, but that felt good. Maybe next week, if you wear the same outfit and show up at the same time in the same aisle, you can get that compliment again! This isn’t some evil scheme. This is simply humanity. It feels amazing to be noticed.

  Now let’s just replace this impossible interaction with a more relatable one. The one that happens on our screens. The feeling that rushes inside of you when you get that intimacy from strangers is amazing. But we have to remember: it’s not real. If we aren’t careful, we can let these cobwebs take over. And before we know it we will be tangled up in artificial intimacy and not know what is real and what is not.

  It’s starting out with healthy desire. A healthy desire to be seen. Cobwebs don’t have to start off in these nasty dark corners of our souls. No, they can start from places of innocence and purity. So even if you aren’t immediately finding these massive webs in your life, look in the safe spaces. They are there. We all have them.

  Alcohol

  Alcohol won’t be a cobweb for everyone, but you know if it is for you. Maybe you can’t stop at having one beer after work because it turns into four. By the time you get done with the third you feel nice and numb, and you think, This feels so much better than the reality of my life. So you keep going back to that place of numbness. The numbness is medicating the problems that you have in many areas of your life that need correction. But that is gonna take work—a lot more work than the numbness takes. The problem with this cobweb isn’t just that it keeps coming back, but that it gets bigger and bigger each time. I’m not saying alcohol is always a cobweb. I love having a glass of Blanton’s Kentucky Bourbon when I’m with friends. It is a cobweb when that occasional drink with friends becomes one of those messy parts of everyday life.

  Take, for instance, a time when Heather and I had not been connecting. Nothing crazy, just not connecting for a few days. What we really needed was some time together dreaming. That is what always does it for us. But instead of connecting, we did something else that we both find enjoyable. We invited a few friends over for dinner and drinks. After two glasses of wine I suddenly stopped feeling the deep pit in my gut about where we were as a couple. It felt strangely gone. And so, you know what I wanted? For it to be completely gone. So I drank another glass. And maybe another. My marriage woes felt light-years away. But they weren’t. They were staring me right in the face. But that is when drinking for me becomes a cobweb: when it covers truth.

  Social Media Addiction / Approval Addiction

  Social media can become a cobweb in two ways. You are either getting your self-confidence needs met by being validated by the “Likes” from some stranger or friend as we talked about in the last section on artificial intimacy, or you are desperately addicted to wishing your life looked like someone else’s. This is where Carlos Whittaker’s trouble began with this particular cobweb. Instagram is supposed to be the place where we share our lives with our friends. What it quickly turned into for me is the place where I go to wish my life looked like someone else’s. It sneaks up on you. One day you are enjoying your life, the next day you are wishing your life looks like someone else’s. And it really began to affect me when Snapchat showed up. It became my FOMO Headquarters. What is FOMO you may be asking? FOMO means the Fear Of Missing Out. I’ll never forget the first time social media gave me this feeling. It was right around the time I went to OnSite. A bunch of my friends got invited on a trip without me; the group of friends whom I always got invited to go with. It was pure torture watching their snaps and their Instagram posts of all the fun they were having. I was spinning some massive conspiracy theories as to how and when they decided that I was no longer part of their club. Maybe it was because I hadn’t hit the level of success I was supposed to? Maybe it was because I hadn’t sent them a C
hristmas card that year? Maybe it was because I wasn’t as smart as they were? Maybe it was because I am no longer worthy of friends? OMG; why why why?

  You know the feeling. It’s not simply seeing someone you have never met and wishing you had their life. It sneaks up on you in your real friendships. I was tempted to live my life in a way that would impress those who were impressing me and end up being the most inauthentic version of myself in the history of myself.

  This web. There is no way of cleaning this cobweb without it being spun moments later in another corner. You know what you will be tempted to do to get rid of this particular cobweb once and for all? You will just delete the social media apps off of your phone. But guess what? The spider is still there, lurking in the corner, waiting to spin the web without your social media apps.

  We were made in the image of God, not in the image of [insert your “instajealousy” here]. The cobweb is spun when you are going to social media for the validation only God Himself should provide.

  Cobweb Cleaning

  These are just four examples of cobwebs—only four. You may recognize yourself in the ones I described or they may prompt you to identify others.

  Now, let’s see if I can describe how the cleaning normally goes down. Most likely, the first thing that happens is avoidance. We avoid them until they show up in our face, right? We see them in the corners of our souls but don’t really do anything until somebody else points them out for us.

  And then, just as I noted earlier, we go into a panic, flailing our arms and swatting at our faces, trying to remove the cobweb. We clean up the initial nastiness of the cobweb by offering an apology to the person we have hurt with our gossip or by promising our spouse that we will stop drinking so much after work. Now we feel clean.

  Maybe we do a little follow-up cleaning to make sure we got it all. We download a sermon or inspirational message that speaks to our issue and really motivates us to stay on the straight and narrow. Maybe we hear a quote that offers a great takeaway or nugget of wisdom and we write it on a Post-It note to stick on the mirror to remind us every day. And maybe if we read it enough times we will not be tempted to repeat our offending behavior. Maybe we can conquer our issue. We might even go all in and get it tattooed somewhere to make it permanent. But we all know how it goes. Eventually, we get so used to seeing what’s in front of our faces every day that we forget it’s there. We overlook it and the significance fades. And poof, we’re back to ignoring the cobwebs.