Since my fast running days are behind me, I’ve spent a lot of time cycling around Atlanta because it is much nicer to my body. There is one thing I really hate about riding a bike: flat tires. Due to the incredible number of massive holes in the roads around the city, I’ve had more flat tires than I like to admit.
When you change a tire, you are replacing the tube in between the tire and the wheel of the bike. When you hit a hole, it is pretty clear that it is just the tube that is the problem instead of a spike or rock that is poking through the tire. However, if you get a flat from a puncture in your tire, and you don’t realize it, you may have another flat down the road. You must check the tire for anything poking through before replacing the tube.
This can relate to our lives. Some of you are replacing tubes in your life instead of cleaning the tire. You are operating in maintenance-mode just to have another flat tire down the road because you didn’t clean out your tire. If you feel like the same issues or struggles keep popping up over and over again then maybe you are looking in the wrong place. You need to find the root of the problem instead of putting up a minor bandage over a wound.
Carlos Whitaker refers to this as Kill the Spider, the title of his book. He says that we fall into the trap of cleaning up cobwebs in our lives instead of killing the spider. Your issues will keep surfacing if you don’t kill the motives or “spiders” underneath.
If you struggle with substance abuse, removing that from your life for a week is changing a tube or cleaning a cobweb. Realizing that you constantly fall back to drugs or alcohol because you don’t feel accepted as yourself is discovering the spider or cleaning the tire.
What is deeper down behind the things you want to change?
What lies are you believing about yourself?
It’s time to clean the tires in your lives.
It’s time to kill the spiders.
I appreciate you.
-JP