Kill the Spider Read online

  It’s not enough to identify the cobwebs and work on them. Our strength will never be enough. When we rely on ourselves alone, we end up swatting at the same cobwebs over and over. Paul says, “And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me” (2 Corinthians 12:9 NASB).

  Is Paul telling us that by simply boasting about his weakness, the power of Christ began to dwell in him? He really expects us to believe that? Well, yes, he does.

  And, yes, it does. Our two primary weapons in this spider-killing battle are exactly what most Christians forget we need.

  We will never kill our spiders with podcasts, seminars, conferences, conversations, leadership principles, devotional apps, Scripture tattoos, or killer Instagram images with motivational quotes on them. They are great and work for a moment—literally, one moment. But that stuff isn’t and wasn’t created to address the deeper needs. It won’t completely and totally change you from the inside out.

  No, the sort of transformation Paul was talking about only comes from two tools: the Word of God and prayer. That is all.

  You can sugarcoat it all you want. You can say this answer is too elementary and that your addictions, affairs, and afflictions need all of those other things as well. But the truth is the weapons we have been handed are found inside the Word of God and our walking and talking with Him. Yes, there are intricacies we will dance with, but for now, I want you to know that if you have been trying for years to defeat your spider with tools that develop your own strength, you weren’t built to be strong enough. You won’t ever be strong enough.

  We can’t and won’t ever be able to live this Christian life in and with our own strength. We must quit attempting to clean the cobwebs every day. We must quit trying to live perfect Christian lives. Stop trying. Allow Christ to live your messy Christian life for you. You will only discover how to pull that off in the Word of God, so let’s put down our little cobweb-cleaning brooms and grab our spider-destroying weapons.

  What Are the Cobwebs in Your Life?

  I listed four common cobwebs. Maybe those aren’t the ones that keep popping up for you. Maybe you find yourself repeatedly dealing with anger or fear of intimacy or some other relationship struggle. Cobwebs aren’t necessarily major moral failings or criminal activity, just something that keeps you in turmoil and distanced from God. As we move forward, spend some time trying to identify what your cobwebs are so that you have some idea of where you need to start.

  Ask yourself:

  •What habits do I keep struggling to break? (Hint: A good place to look for clues is your annual New Year’s resolution list. What makes the list over and over?)

  •What area of my life seems to stay in turmoil? Where do I feel I’m constantly failing?

  CHAPTER 3

  THE CIRCLE AT ONSITE

  I hugged Heather and my kids good-bye. The kids were overflowing with excitement seeing where Dad was going to spend the week. It was the most epic-looking farm ever—horses galloping in the distance, a three-story farmhouse with a wraparound porch straight out of Gone With the Wind, and three dogs with floppy ears that gathered at our feet, greeting us with licks.

  Hugging the wife brought a sense that this seven-day journey was it. The summit was near. I was close to that breakthrough we’d been expecting and needing. I knew that if I focused and climbed, I would get there. But there was also a storm on the horizon. We had been in crisis mode for so long, and our relationship, our life together, and our future was still fragile; if I didn’t do this right, all the prayer in the world wouldn’t save me from dying on the side of our marriage mountain. I needed to climb. And I needed to do it now.

  After my family drove away, I walked into the main room where a smiling lady greeted me with a bag filled with goodies. I was escorted to the cabin where I would be rooming with two other participants in the Living Centered Program.

  The Living Centered Program is designed to help you get back to the center of who you are. I didn’t know what all of that was supposed to mean at the time, but if I knew anything in that moment, it was that I was in no way centered.

  As I walked in and began to explore the “cabin”—a term that really sells the place short because it was gorgeous—I saw bags on two of the three queen-sized beds in the room and poked around a bit to see if there was anything on the surface that would give me a clue about my roomies.

  One of the beds had a Bible on it. The other bed had a Lowrider Truck magazine and a bag that smelled of weed. That told me a lot about them. I dropped my bags on my bed and headed to orientation.

  There was a nervous energy in the room from the forty strangers trying to figure each other out. The second I walked in I was annoyed by seven of them. They were the loud ones, and I was pretty sure I could guess what their spiders were. I texted Heather: “This. Is. Going. To. SUCK.”

  There was a sign above the main doors that read, “Trust the process. Celebrate the miracles.” Okay, sign. Deal. But for the love of everything holy, please deliver me some miracles.

  “Welcome to OnSite!” boomed a deep voice that had the strength of the man that plays Santa in the local Christmas pageant and the gentleness of Mr. Rogers. “Go ahead and have a seat,” he said. All forty participants took a seat in a massive circle as the man introduced himself. “Good evening, friends. My name is Bill, and I’m the clinical director here. Listen, I know this sounds crazy, but by this time next week, these forty people, who you don’t know, will become some of the dearest friends you have ever made, and you won’t be able to imagine your life without them.”

  Okay, Bill. That’s cute. But can I go home now?

  The first thing we did was go around the circle to introduce ourselves and explain why we were there, or why we thought we were there. There were only two rules: for the entire week we were not allowed to say our last name, and we were not allowed to say what we did for a living. I found this fascinating and immediately began to try to figure out what everyone did.

  As people went around the circle, my pastoral heart could not help but feel that I could help these people. They simply needed what I have. They were so sad. Maybe I was there to help them! When my turn came up I told everyone the story my dad had told me just before I arrived—that I was there to kill the spider. I have to confess, I didn’t give my dad credit, so everyone immediately thought I was a philosopher.

  At the end of the kumbaya circle, Bill said, “Now I’m going to introduce you guys to your therapists for the week. You will be divided into four groups of ten. You will be spending a large part of every day with that group. This will not be one-on-one therapy. All the therapy will happen in the confines of a small group.”

  The first therapist looked like a shorter version of Cameron Diaz. She was supernice and bubbly as she called the names of her ten. I was not one. The next therapist looked to be straight out of Woodstock. She had the most epic silver hair in a braid that reached down to the back of her legs. When she spoke, it was filled with depth and peace. I threw up a quick prayer that she would be my therapist.

  Nope.

  Next was a woman who was probably the oldest in the room. She was seventy or so with bright red hair and rings on every finger. Her name was Nancy and she looked exactly like how I imagine a gypsy fortune-teller would look. And when Nancy opened her mouth, it was not a peaceful tone. It was a bossy, kind of know-it-all tone. Please, God, not her. I don’t want to be in her group. Seven names into her group of ten, mine had not been called, but the seven people I picked out in the room that annoyed me were. And then . . . I was number eight. Thanks, God. I really appreciate Your looking out for me on this. This is never gonna work, I thought, shaking my head.

  I have to admit God must have a wicked sense of humor to drop me in a group with all the people I really didn’t want to spend time with. Can you imagine? Have you ever been in a situation where
you were forced to deal with someone you didn’t get along with and saw no way out?

  Maybe it’s a coworker in your office who makes your life difficult by not carrying their own weight. It could be a person at church who tries to run everything and forces their opinion on everyone else. You might have that friend who is always a train wreck and brings their drama into everyone else’s life, asks for advice even though they never take it, and makes everyone around them miserable.

  We all have those people around us. Heck, we might even BE that person in our circle. They keep us distracted from figuring out what we need to be fixing in ourselves. They either keep us so busy helping them sort out their issues that we neglect our own, or we are fooled into thinking that, by comparison, we aren’t all that bad, so maybe we don’t need to do any more work.

  I was beginning to think that either I would grow a ton by learning how to deal with difficult people (Can you say, “false-piety cobweb”?), or I wouldn’t make any progress being stuck with them (the self-pity cobweb).

  Bill announced: “You guys have thirty more minutes with your phones. Then we are going to take them until the end of the week. You will survive. I promise.”

  So I called Heather from my room and told her I felt God had sent me there because I really might be able to help some of those people. She immediately responded, “You are not there to fix them. You are there to fix you.”

  Why does she always do this? She is the most gentle spiritual sage you will ever meet. Her comment took me sprinting down a memory lane that I had not run down before. How many times had I done this? How many times had I ignored the plank in my eye for the plank in another’s eye? Not in a sinful or negative way. It was always in the name of ministry. For more than fifteen years as I was on staff at churches, this was the conundrum I found myself in. I spent years helping other people while ignoring the glaring symptoms of unhealth in my own life. If you are in any way involved in ministry this is a vital moment for you. Sometimes you have to completely stop helping others in order to help yourself. It was time to get selfish in a way I had not been selfish before. And I needed to know that it was okay. This was the first of many hard facts I had to face as I started on this journey. They asked us to trust the process, and I thought I was ready to do that, but I was seriously questioning how it could possibly work when I was stuck with people I knew were going to make the process difficult.

  The truth is, Heather was right, although I had no clue what needed fixing. Remember, I thought I’d had the breakthrough a few weeks earlier in therapy. What was this spider? How in the world could I find, chase, and kill this freaking forty-year-old spider in only seven days? Little did I know that my spider was doing push-ups in the corner of my soul, getting ready to fight for its life while I fought for mine.

  Have You Identified the Spider Yet?

  As you dig through the messy parts of your life to locate the spider so you can get rid of it, you are going to start coming across some really tough stuff. You have to be prepared to look at yourself honestly and be open to learning some unflattering things about yourself. Coming to terms with that is the hard part. Once you accept the fact that you have work to do, it’s a whole lot easier to buckle down and start doing it. Are you ready to get to work, or are you still trying to pretend that what’s wrong isn’t big enough to need this kind of attention?

  •Do you allow distractions or comparisons to keep you from identifying your spider?

  •Have you identified something you think might be a spider that keeps creating cobwebs in your life? Are you ready to track it down and rid yourself of it for good?

  CHAPTER 4

  THE SEVEN-YEAR-OLD MAGICIAN

  One of the first things that I noticed in our gatherings at OnSite was that Bill and Nancy kept talking about our “young selves.” The five-year-old me. The seven-year-old me. And God bless them, but I had a pretty fantastic childhood. It was the twenty-five-year-old me that was wounded and needed therapy. Surely it wasn’t this young version of me. I grew up in the burbs with Christian parents who loved me and signed me up for soccer and always came to my games. I was never without anything. I always felt loved and supported. Every single time we would start to talk about the “young” us, I was annoyed. I could see in my friends at OnSite that they had some jacked-up stuff happening in their childhood, and for that I felt like they needed this part of the experience more than I did.

  “I’m glad you have such a fond memory of your childhood, Carlos,” Nancy encouraged me the first morning. I had just gotten done telling her my problem with the whole “young Carlos” experiential therapy treatment. It wasn’t gonna work. My childhood made Ricky Schroder on Silver Spoons jealous.

  “I get it. But just because you had an incredible childhood, just because your memories serve you a sitcom of adolescence, doesn’t mean there isn’t some work to be done.” Nancy sat me down and, like a modern-day Yoda, took me on a journey toward seven years old. She started me out at one of my main issues. The belief that I am faking it through this life. This common theme that somehow I have convinced everyone in my life that I am something better than I really am. That I have fooled my way into this position in life. All it took was one question from her to cause me to rush into a moment that I had long since forgotten. A moment from seven-year-old Carlos that would be a pivot point in my story.

  “When did you start believing you were a fraud? Was it something you said or did as a child? Take a minute and really think about it.”

  It didn’t take a minute. It came rushing back to me like a roaring river. I was seven. And I was at church.

  In the ’90s there was a group called the Power Team. They performed at almost every large youth event I was a part of, where they gave demonstrations of their God-given strength. They would break cinder blocks with their foreheads, place each other in handcuffs and rip them apart, or blow up hot water bottles with their lungs until the hot water bottle exploded, all while sprinkling Scripture throughout, convincing us that somehow God was giving them this strength in the moment.

  And maybe He was. All I knew was that I went home from every Power Team show and would attempt some feat of strength they showed us. One time, I grabbed a phone book in my thirteen-year-old hands and began to pray that God would somehow give me the strength to rip it in half. I really thought I could do it because only a few hours before, as one of the Power Team was attempting to rip the phone book in half, another member was screaming into the microphone for us to “Pray harder!!! Pray harder that God gives him the strength!!!”

  So I would pray harder in the stands, and lo and behold, the brother would rip that thing in half. And every single student in that gymnasium would go absolutely crazy.

  But no matter how hard I prayed at home, God never gave me the strength to rip that phone book in half.

  The church I was a part of in the ’80s was heaven to me. I remember absolutely zero spiritual abuse or malice like you hear about from so many my age—just a group of loving people who gathered three or four nights a week for church stuff. It was a place filled with friends and songs and laughter and every so often something horrible like handbell choir.

  We had two Sunday morning services and one evening service. Many times the evening services were replaced with some sort of event or concert. Sunday nights were some of my favorite memories—musicals, concerts, sing-alongs, movies.

  I’ll never forget this one evening in particular when I was seven. It is burned in my memory for a few reasons, one of them being that the next day I was going to Adam Shaver’s birthday party.

  That morning in church, Pastor Harris announced that the evening service would be a magic show. A magic show? I was all in. I begged my mom and dad to let me come back that night. They didn’t think twice.

  I found myself sitting in the front row on the left side of the balcony that night. It was the best seat at Briarlake Baptist Church. I could see everything. There were tables all over the stage draped in black cloth cov
ering whatever wonders were beneath them. The magic man was ready.

  It seemed like an eternity before the magic man appeared on stage to start the show. I don’t remember one single trick he performed, but I do remember the feeling of total and complete awe. I remember lots of applause and lots of laughing and oohs and aahs. But more than anything, I remember sitting next to my mom when the magic man asked if anyone wanted to come forward. Come forward? To hang with magic man? To learn a trick? Is this a joke? Of course I want to go down. I saw a stream of people walking down the aisles. If I didn’t act fast, I would lose my shot to hang with this guy, so I tugged on my mom’s pants. She looked at me like, “Really? You want to go down there?” Yes, Mom. I want to go down there, and if we don’t move now, I won’t get to meet this magic man and learn his tricks. I didn’t say that, but I thought it. Had I said that out loud, things might have gone differently. She looked so overjoyed. “Go,” she said. And with that, I was off. I leapt out of my seat and ran down the stairs of the balcony. I sprinted around the corner of the lobby and back into the sanctuary. There was a crowd gathering at the stage, but I was small enough to wiggle my way to the front. I couldn’t find Mr. Magic Man anywhere. Then I saw him on the left side of the stage. He had his hand on a man’s shoulder and was talking to him. There were lots of people crying. Why are all these people crying?

  That’s when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Ms. Platt. She was the church pianist. She had a smile as big as the Texas sky spread across her face. “I’m so proud of you, Carlos. Why don’t you come with me?”