“I’ve got a secret!” –Popular television game show of the 1950s and 1960s, with a few attempts to revive it in later years
A man I know wrote of the secrets his family was harboring as they struggled to deal with an addictive, out-of-control relative.
“You know how the family gets ready to host a guest and the house is clean and in order and nothing out of place? The guest is impressed. He wishes his house could be this neat and organized with nothing out of place.”
“But what he doesn’t know is that there is one room where you have stored all the junk and clutter. If he were to open the door to that room, he would be amazed.”
That, he said, is how things are for a family that tries to keep up an image when they are about to come apart.
They push things back into that private room, whose door they dare not open.
It’s about family secrets.
“Everyone has them,” he said.
One of our deacon families was hosting a gathering of church members. Their home was so neat and orderly. I was amazed at the lack of clutter. They ought to see my house, I thought. But they had no stack of newspapers, no unread magazines lying around, no stack of books to be donated to the library or returned there.
When I asked our hostess about this, she surprised me.