Stop Hiding

Audio By Carbonatix

In family life, we sometimes play a game of hide and seek. Obviously, you remember the game that you played together as kids where one person was the “finder” and everybody else tried to hide from them. Quite often, I think we play a mental hide and seek game with the people in our lives. We’ve got these little things we want to talk about, but we hide them until the people in our lives find these topics, one at a time. 

I have a feeling that you know what I mean already, but I still want to give some examples to make sure. In your marriage, let’s say there’s a comment or an action that caused hurt feelings. But instead of addressing it right away, you sat with it and nursed your frustration over days or weeks. And then, the next time they said or did something that reminded you of your hurt, you suddenly popped out of hiding. And your level of anger or frustration was much higher than it should have been considering the thing that actually happened. 

Or maybe you didn’t even wait for them to do or say something that brought the topic back up. Maybe you were the one to bring it up, but you didn’t do it directly. Maybe you made sarcastic comments or joked about something similar. Or you kept trying to recreate similar situations so that you could keep making comments about it. Or maybe you’re seeing a similar thing play out between two of your kids, and you’re noticing that there seems to be something between them, but you can’t get anybody to say what it was. 

If you relate to any of those things, I want to challenge you to take the first step and get these topics out in the open. Instead of playing games with your family and making them guess why you’re sensitive about certain subjects, have a proactive conversation and deal with the things that need to be dealt with. I like to call these “adult conversations.” And I want to ask everybody reading this to have one this week. 

If that idea is too overwhelming or debilitating, then I would encourage you to find a neutral third party who can be part of the conversation and help to keep things from going off track. This could be a mentor, a pastor, a close friend (who is equally close to each person involved), a counselor, or a coach. (I didn’t mention an in-law or another family member because it’s hard for somebody who is that connected to the situation to be a truly objective mediator for a conversation like this. And that’s really what you need in these moments.) 

Whether you need to bring in a third party or not, I hope that you’ll bring some of these topics out in the open and you’ll address the things that need to be addressed. When you avoid topics or play games around them, you’re creating unsteady ground in your family relationship. And clearly, the healthier way forward would be working to proactively shore up any unsteady ground before you run into it! I want to invite you to do just that today. Once you identify some of these areas in your relationships, taking steps to have open and honest conversations will help you to win more often at home.