"Honestly, I love you": A Family Topic

When it comes to relationships, I've heard it said that openness and honesty are the key to making it work.  However, in my own experience,  I've seen that this is not entirely true (which is a little ironic).   This is not to say that honesty isn't important.  No relationship can survive inside a web of lies.  But it's a fact that the more "open and honest" we are with each other about our thoughts or feelings, the worse our relationships become.

I was stuck in this mentality about "openness" when my husband and I were newly weds.  Those first few months were the hardest of our entire lives, and I still fear sometimes that the heartstrings that were ripped have never completely recovered.  What should have been our blissful honeymoon time together became a nightmare of confusion.  I blame myself for much of this.

I can still see myself dropped to my knees by the side of the road, my eyes dried out from all the tears. I know that Drew is walking up beside me, but I don't want him there right now.  I can't find the answers with him, but he's all I got.  I'm miles away from my family, and my other friends have all moved on.  I don't know what's going on with me, but I know that it's been eating at me for a long time.  Drew is rightfully confused by my anguish.  He wants to help, and I keep pushing him away.  "I'm scared", I finally blurt out.  "I think... I made a mistake."  While I am still looking for answers I say, "I lied to you.  I lied to myself.  I was in a lot of pain because of Ben, and I think I just tried to force this to make the pain go away.  I lied and I'm sorry.  I'm not in love with you."

So much of what was said was just out of fear and personal frustration, but I chose to vocalize it in front of him.  (Not a good idea.)  I know that he is my husband and I should feel free to show that kind of vulnerability in front of him, but what I was doing was bringing him into my own confusion.   Under emotional distress, I would present my thoughts and feelings about our relationship as facts when in reality they were just me thinking out loud.  And although these "talks" would eventually bring a resolution, my husband should not have become both the mediator and the punching bag for my emotions.

Many of us don't like to bring in an outside party to these troubling events in our lives.  We want to "keep it in the family".  We don't want to bring shame to our family name.  It's pride and fear that stand in the way. We would rather keep things the way they are - a total mess - than to give up our family "secrets". I know this all to well.   I lived it out as a child.

I had a friend from my youth group at church who was there for me when ever I needed someone to talk to.  Jayme was someone that I finally let inside my world.  She was the one I would call upon when things got "ugly" at home.  Although, she didn't know it, but my only expectation of her was just to be there, to listen.  I needed someone on the outside to remind me that I wasn't the problem; that I wasn't the cause of everything that went bad.  One evening, when my dad was looking for his "punching bag", I gave Jayme a call.  When she picked up I was hysterical with tears.  I don't even remember the specifics of what my dad had done that day, because to me, it was just another day.  But Jayme after talking to me and hearing my immediate pain, decided the best course of action was to get an authority figure involved.  Not that the thought hadn't ever occurred to me as well, but I had thought ahead to what the overall outcome would be, and figured that things would just get worse for me.  Then there would be no denying to everyone else in my family that I had caused the problem.  If I had told on my dad to the police or someone that you would think is there to help then I would breaking up our "happy" home.  I would be the divider.  I would be the traitor, the snitch.  Because this is our family, and family is supposed to have that super special bond, a bond that no "outsider" could ever fully understand.

We fight with our family like no other human being on earth.  We tell things, secret things, things that we would wish stay only on the inside.  We show off the ugly, the unbathed, the  unkept side of ourselves to our families.  And we do this not as a leap of faith, and certainly not because we love them the most and we wish only the best for them.  We do this because we are unable to keep up the artificial act, the one that we put on for everyone else.  The make-up has to come off sometime.  So because they (our loved ones) have already been exposed to the ugly, and they haven't left, we find acceptable.  And we might even say, "This is me.  Love it or leave it."  Of course, for those who are faced with the "Leave it" choice lived out, there is a reawakening of what is more important; me or them. Perhaps, we forget that it's not by contract or law or even blood that we should all be living together.  It's not sharing the same last name that makes us more special than the rest.  It's in the choices we make, to love, to stay, to see past the imperfections, to forgive.  I think we forget and we take for grant it that each individual in our home, makes these same choices everyday of their life with us.  And I could go on talking for hours about how we are all so self absorbed (some of us to the point of sociopathic tendencies, no sympathy left for anyone else but our self), but I think the solution is found in the choice.

The "choice" gives us hope.
I can't change my circumstances of a bad morning.  I can't choose who my parents are, or make my husband be every way I want him to.  But their actions do not leave me helpless.  I have a choice.
I can choose to love.  I can choose to not raise my voice in anger at my children, before I send them off to school.  I can choose to not let everything that comes to mind slip out of my mouth before I've had the chance to really (prayerfully) consider its necessity and timing.  I can choose to continue being who I've been before, or to be someone different.
 Yes, there are variables involved.  There are other people in my world that will have an influence in my behavior.  Yes, I may sometimes fall into the same pattern as before.  But I still have the power of  choice. God can help to make that choice a good one, if I let him -but it is mine.  I don't have to allow those past choices and regret be the end of my story.   I have a choice for that too.
 In recovery groups they have a saying that I like to hold onto and remember, "Live one day at a time."  
I think that's what it takes to make our family into something we don't have to hide behind closed doors.  We start with ourselves.  Living in a way that makes us proud of who we are that day, and not filled with regret.  It won't always be easy, and just like any good habit, it will take practice to form.  But the situation is not hopeless, and I think that's reason to rejoice.  Amen? Yes, there is hope for our families!  And it starts with us.