Are you the same?

Are you the same in public as you are at home?

Does your family get the same courtesies as strangers?

Do you treat your family better than strangers or worse?

I am not the same. Does this make me fake or does it make me very real? Is anybody the same all the time? I don't think so, most of us strive to be good moral humans and treat others with respect. Golden rule and all that jazz....but so often we fail in our personal lives.

Some of us have an outside self and an inside self. Home is where it's safe to be who you are, just be, not worry. If we're blessed anyway we can be safe at home. Not everyone is. I wasn't always.

Maybe that's why I'm so guarded, ok not maybe, it is for sure. Does anyone know the real me? Do I know the real me? It's constant self discoveries as I work to be the best me all the time, everywhere.

I want to be the me God wants me to be. I fail on a daily basis I think. I'm quick tempered, I'm impatient....but you'd probably never know if you saw my world. I have 6 kids and 2 big dogs at my house....I have no choice but to keep myself in check and let go of my natural tendencies to want order, structure and a clean at all times environment or the chaos would sweep me away.

What I am doing is going out of my comfort zone on a daily basis trying to follow the path I feel I'm being called to follow. I really don't want to, like a lot. It's so much easier to just hole up in my safe little world. What's my little world compared to God's though?!?!

Where I fail miserably is with my husband. His unconditional (still don't get how/why he loves me the way he does) makes it way to easy to fall apart on a pretty regular basis. Combine that with the fact that we love/show love in completely different ways and we have a struggle going on. I don't like letting people into that little world though, nobody really knows the truth of it all, despite what they think....that's probably for the best. And on that note I'm done with that tract....

Secret worlds have been coming up a lot lately in my home and in my mind. My niece and nephew have been told by their mother to never tell anything that happens in their home. I'm not at all surprised, their mother is my sister and growing up that was drilled into our heads, it's one of the reasons we were never rescued from the chaos, nobody knew. I sure as hell wasn't ever going to tell, not even my very best friends, I knew better! I wasn't able to talk about being abused until well into adulthood and after my father's death.

I digress, so they are being told to keep secrets. They are in the foster system as you know, so secrets happening in their home is not a good thing! My niece is a talker, that's how I know what they were told, so she's still telling, but she's scared about it. Her brother has ratted her out about telling and she's gotten in trouble. Now she won't talk around him and it's probably a matter of time before she won't talk at all. She's 5, that's just heartbreaking. How can I keep them safe if I don't know what to keep them safe from?

Secrets suck! If it's not ok for anyone to know it's probably not ok! I'm not talking about surprises, that's different, so don't argue with me!!

Strive to be the same, inside the home, outside the home, everywhere. Keep trying, keep looking up. If things are not ok, tell, talk, get help and about all keep praying!