Secret is a
pre-causal agent to the causes of trouble in Christian families. What is called
irrelevancy often end up to affect someone in a family that looks healthy
already. When a woman gives birth to a female child at her teen age and by the
time the kid grew up, she also had a child of her that exact age, it is a
function of secret. What you mostly keep away from children or tell them to
abstain from is what they mostly do. That’s because parents don’t take the time
to explain the reasons for their acts for the kids to understand and make a
decision in line to that. A man of God narrated a story where he told her daughter
about the importance of staying up as a virgin till marriage. The young girl
later asked him, “Dad, was mom a virgin when you met her?” the man was taken
aback, he then answered and said, “No, she wasn’t, I wasn’t too. But we didn’t
have anybody to teach us the importance or virtues of it. Now, you have the
opportunity to do the right thing because we your parents now know the right
thing. That’s why we holding you to a standard.” The young girl was quite happy
with the answer, and thanked her dad for telling her the truth, promising she’d
keep it safe because of that. Look at it the other way round, if the man had
presented the mom as a saint, the daughter won’t want to be a saint. And before
you know it, she might be thinking, just because mom did, doesn’t mean I
should.
Psychologists
specialising in family secrets like Evan Imber-Black, a Psychotherapist, has
discovered that secrets in family life can lead to murder, abuse, suicide, and
other damages. It is so common with Nigerian families, the parents hide
somewhere in the house discussing family matters while the kids are somewhere
wondering what exactly are they talking about. Some families make sure when
you’re at the dining you eat, not talk. No explanation, nothing. You talk, you
get beaten. In another family, it might be when the Dad calls you once and you
didn’t answer, you’re doomed for the day. The present family troubles can all
be traced back to a family secret in the line of generation. It might be the
mother was abused as a kid, might be the Dad was a cultist in his university
days. A perfect family knows when to discuss these things with each other, with
the kids and everyone. It helps push off mistakes that would’ve been made. And
it’ll also help communication between the families. A family with no secrets or
less secrets has a better communication than a family with more secrets.
I once heard
a speaker saying at a conference, ‘my parents sent me to school, just saying,
remember whose son thou art. That was all, no sex education, no peer pressure
education, just remember whose son thou art. And with that I found myself in a
very confusing world.’ According to his explanation, he came from a family
where the father calls the mother by name, ‘Tade, Deji, Tunde, etc.’ and
vice-versa for the mom too. The parents show no affection for each other, they
don’t even touch themselves, all of a sudden the mother will just pregnant, and
he will be wondering, what’s happening? How did it happen? Where did it happen?
So that before starting his family, he made sure he recounts his life from A-Z.
His own family background and the effects it had on him, in that way he and his
wife were able to plan on how to educate the kids in a better way.
Whether you
like it or not, Christian or no Christian, secret will shape the life of your
family, even when you’re dead, it might even destroy the lot. Secrets are
dynamic, and they move from person to person. The mother can tell the daughter
closest to her. While she keeps it away from the others. This will later produce
a rigid boundary in the family. It can isolate someone in a family, who thinks
he or she is carrying a burden. It then kills either the person or eats away
the relationship. A husband who discovers he is HIV positive and the wife is
negative, or a wife who is in debt with her business and couldn’t tell the rest
of the family. There are lots of concealing in families today but the knots are
unknots, the better any relationship and families will be. If you’re one of
those held in the captivity of secrets, apply wisdom, start by discussing it
with someone, preferably your Pastor, if you believe in him. And then you can
start including some people, one by one in the family and before you know it,
you’re in the clear, happy and having fun with your life not looking back if
someone has discovered what you’ve done in the past or else, the past will
continue to haunt your present and can alter the future.
Shalom!
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