I
have freakishly wide feet. I don’t mean “wide feet.” I mean “freakishly
wide feet.” When I go to the shoe store, I buy a box of shoes, throw
away the shoes, and then wear the box. When I go swimming, I make ducks
jealous. The problem is, in my line of work, people look at you funny
if you walk around wearing boxes on your feet. I pretty much need to
wear shoes, painful as that may be.
So
I buy freakishly wide shoes. They still aren’t wide enough. They take
awhile to break in. Then I wear them and wear them and wear them out.
The soles are the first to go. Still, I wear my freakishly wide shoes.
Then the heels go. Still, I wear them. The color fades. No problem.
Eventually, holes develop. I ignore the holes. But then it rains. My
feet get wet. But it is still better than breaking in a new pair. But
with cold weather comes cold feet. That is where I draw the line. There
is nothing worse than getting “cold feet.” Only when my feet hurt badly
enough do I change shoes. And the process starts all over.
We
all have leaky shoes, don’t we? But we tend to prefer old problems we
understand, over new solutions we don’t understand. We prefer the pain
we know to the healing we don’t know. Nobody likes change. That’s why
we do it so little. We only change when the pain becomes unbearable.
Where are your shoes leaking? I don’t expect you to change shoes at the
first sign of trouble. But when it gets bad enough, when you get
desperate enough, change can happen. And that leads to unspeakable
breakthroughs and victory.