Ready or Not Here I Come!!

I'm sure you remember as a child playing hide and seek. Someone would count to ten or twenty then cry out READY OR NOT HERE I COME!!! You and the rest of the kids playing would cringe at the sound of those words. We would all of a sudden get quiet and have a heightened sense of awareness to everything going on around you. I can remember hearing the wind blow, the crunching of leaves on the ground, and tree limbs banging into each other as someone was searching for you. This heightened awareness is brought on by our trying not to be found. The quiet opens up our senses to see, hear, and feel so much more about what's going on around us. The thought here is, if we know what's coming we can be prepared for it and if you were an expert in camoflague or very creative in your hiding most of the time you might never be found. Then there were always some kids who were a little more scared of the dark and would choose to hide more out in the open and then run from the seeker.

This is a fairly accurate picture of what happens in life when we have issues that concern us or problems that need solutions or we anticipate conflict and hide in our corners, hoping the trouble will pass. I think that you would agree that any problem that goes unchecked or discussed usually grows with time creating a bigger problem than the original issue. Take a leaky pipe, today it is just a drip but if it goes unchecked or unfixed could rot away an entire structure and cause major issues and potential losses. What could just of needed a turn of a pipe wrench to correct the situation, now with time can be a disasterous mess which will always cost us more in the end, usually much more. The time needed to correct the problem now is multiplied expotentially also.

I don't know about you, but the trials and issues of life that I've had to go through never felt all that great. Our troubles, trials or problems lead us to this almost paralyzed state or to a sprinter state. Some of us hide when difficult issues come our way or situations we don't feel comfortable with talking about. These people are those who just hope that in time their problems will just fade away. "This is the lie we tell ourselves." It never does pass by it just festers and starts polluting other areas of our lives, usually our relationships. Before long it shows up in many different areas of our lives, only it's bigger, uglier, and is causing a lot more damage than the original problem. Now our sprinter see's the issue that is before him and says I'll change my enviorment or my view and I'll move over here. He seemingly is trying to leave his problems behind by changing his geography but the runner sooner or later gets tired and when he is finished realizes that all his running from here to there trying to duck and dodge his issues has caused even more problems and created more barriers to overcome now and he always ends up right back where he started.

The bottom line is this when you come up against issues in life, especially in marraige, don't waste any time getting it on the table no matter what it is and have a plan of communication so you don't have miscommunication or misunderstandings. Always give the benefit of doubt to your spouse or counterpart in the relationship and always think the best of them until you have clarity about what it is they are trying to communicate. Whether your struggles, challenges, or trials are individual or marriage related if they go unchecked will result in greater harm and loss both personally and relationally.

I would love to here your responses, thoughts, and/or questions. Please send them to the email address on the blog. I will get back to you as soon as possible if you need help with structure for better communication or counsel on this topic or any other I will be glad to help. You can leave your comments here anonymosly if you like also.

Thank you and God Bless!
Michael Shumski