The secrets of the wives sisterhood

OK gals....this one is for all the wives out there.  And let me just warn you...this post might spoil some of your secrets.  Husbands, put on a helmet, because I am about to drop a knowledge bomb on you...the secrets we keep as wives.


I know I am not the only one who has pulled this one over on my hubby...
"Where did you get that outfit?"
"Oh, I've had it for a while." ("a while" meaning two days, I just brought it home quickly and hung it in the closet, clipped the tags, buried the tags, receipt and store bag waaaaayyyy in the bottom of the garbage so that the evidence was covered it trash and hubby is non the wiser).

or how about this one for the stay at home/work from home woman....your home while hubby is hard at work. You know he usually comes home around 6.  At 5:30 you decide to change out of your pj's, brush your teeth and proceed to fly through the house in a frantic sprint to clean up the place...making it appear as if you'd been hard at work all day.

And I know we've been guilty of the rounding down game....
"How much did you spend shopping today?"
"About $60" (when it was $69.99--rounding down never hurt, right?)

No one knows how to manage secrets like I.....especially when it comes to money.  I was good at writing things in the check register so that it looked liked I had paid certain bills....but never really wrote the checks.  So when hubby would see it, he would think all was good.  Or I would write $40 spent at the grocery store when it was really for a shopping splurge I indulged in.

Then Internet banking came popular which made it more difficult. But not wanting to give up on a challenge, I learned how to sneak around that system too.

Are there such things as little lies we keep as wives?  Is it right?  What's the harm?  What he doesn't know won't hurt him, right?  Maybe....but it will hurt you!

As like any nasty habit....it doesn't happen over night and at first is seems harmless.  But soon it will become more than you can handle.

My grandmother lives in northern Mississippi.  I remember going down to visit her and traveling the back country roads to get to he house.  On either side of the road, the vegetation was covered by a noxious plant....kudzu.  This was a plant brought to the U.S. to help defeat erosion, but what was intended for good, turned into a life form that choked out every other living, and good, thing.

Secrets are like kudzu.  A secret we keep in order to "protect" our spouse is the first root that takes hold and starts to grow lies, deceit, mistrust, manipulation and other toxic weeds in our marriages.

That is exactly what happened to me.  I didn't start keeping big secrets...I started with little secrets.  Secrets so small, like not telling Shane how I felt about this or that.  The secrets grew bigger and thicker and more deadly until there was a wall of secrets and lies so overwhelming it seemed like there was no way to beat it.

My solution was to run.  That is when I left, moved out and tried to outrun the secrets I was keeping....well, I don't have to tell you that it didn't work.  In fact, I was more miserable.

It still took years after that for me to see how little secrets manifest separation and division.  For years I wanted to feel closer to my hubby....I wanted to feel that "love", romance, etc.  But what was killing all those feelings was the secrets that drove us apart.  How can intimacy, emotional - spiritual - physical, be cultivated in the garden of secrets, lies and deception.  It can't.
 I Corinthians 13 tells us:
   ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Did you catch that...."love does not delight in evil (secrets can be evil!) but rejoices with the truth"....truth, honesty, genuine, transparent, vulnerable....

"It always trusts"....always, always, always.  Love is trust.  Love is truth.  Isn't that the example Jesus showed us?  Isn't that what Jesus gives to us?

Secrets is a sugar coated way of sometimes calling our lies, lies.  When we choose to live in truth...we truly live.  Notice that in the above verse, the opposite of evil is truth.  Evil spelled backwards is "live"....to me that says, the opposite of evil is life, in the truth.

Secrets are not the foundation to build a relationship on.  It is doomed to fail.  It is doomed to be consumed with mistrust, distance and separation.  Examine your heart...what little secrets might you be holding on to?  Where does "trust" factor into your decision to keep secrets?