Allowing an elephant in the room can cause a lot of damage …

Just before the death of actor W.C. Fields, a friend visited Fields’ hospital room and was surprised to find him thumbing through a Bible. Asked what he was doing with a Bible, Fields replied, “I’m looking for loopholes.”

Like a massive elephant sitting in your living room, when you attempt to avoid the truth and obvious issues around you, you’ll only be creating a bigger problem you will eventually have to deal with. Allowing an elephant to roam free in your living room will only result in a ton of damage! Yet, we see people attempt to live their lives by trying to avoid some of the obvious, more difficult problems in their personal or professional lives, in their marriages, in their families, and in their friendships. We transfer this avoidance behavior into the church and other organizations as well when we fail to address “the elephant in the room,” that problem everyone sees is there, but no one is willing to talk about or do something about.

The result is a lot of damage, as if an elephant went on a rampage through your home, church, or organization.

When we choose to ignore the elephant in the room, we’re choosing to try to avoid the truth, and that takes effort!

I have a friend who hasn’t wanted to deal with a few issues in his professional life because doing so may cause conflict, so he has persistently kept moving the “elephant” issues to the back burner of his attention while he keeps himself busy with some important — but many lesser important — activities. Now his boss wants to talk, but only after he’s allowed the baby elephant to become a beast of a problem.

A key reason why we try to avoid some of the “elephant” problems in our lives is that we allow irrational thinking to breed a flurry of scary scenarios of what might possibly happen if we admitted there is, indeed, an elephant roaming in the living room and tried to do something about it. This kind of thinking often exaggerates the potential downside of the problem, which only deepens our fear and paralyzes us from addressing the situation. But often, when we face an issue immediately and directly, we discover that getting an elephant out of the house may not be as bad as we imagine.

Cleveland Amory tells this story about Judge John Lowell of Boston. One morning the judge was at breakfast, his face hidden behind the morning paper. A frightened maid tiptoed into the room and whispered something into Mrs. Lowell’s ear. The lady paled slightly, then squared her shoulders resolutely and said, “John, the cook has burned the oatmeal, and there is no more in the house. I am afraid that this morning, for the first time in seventeen years, you will have to go without your oatmeal.”

The judge, without putting down his paper, answered, “It’s all right, my dear. Frankly, I never cared much for it anyhow.”

Mrs. Lowell expected an elephant of a problem, but nevertheless, she addressed it resolutely and immediately. It wasn’t anything like she expected. But the Judge, who had suffered through oatmeal each morning for 17 years, could have had a different experience at breakfast the past two decades if he had only said from the beginning, “I don’t really care for oatmeal, let’s try some eggs and bacon.”

Is there an elephant roaming around in your life? Is there an elephant on the loose in your marriage? Your family? Your church or organization? Before it gets any bigger, face the truth of the issue. Even if the results are as “bad” as you may have imagined, you’ll never get rid of the elephant until you admit it’s there and address what it will take to remove it.

Scotty