The Secret-Driven Life

When you find yourself in a reflective mood, go see Robert De Niro’s movie, Everybody’s Fine. Perhaps you’ll come out of the theater 90 minutes later (120 minutes if you include previews) as I did: feeling some deep distress and a desire to put into words some issues long stored in the archives of the soul.

De Niro is Frank, an aging, lonely and unwell recent widower. In the opening scene, you meet him at the supermarket where, sparing no expense, he is loading up on groceries, wines, a new barbeque and other essentials as he anticipates a weekend visit by his four adult children who live in various parts of the country. When people ask how Frank’s soon-to-visit family is doing, he always answers, “Oh, everybody’s fine.”

A day or two before this “fine” family is to arrive, the phone brings some disappointing messages: each of the sons and daughters cannot come. The reasons seem plausible. But if you’re really listening, you smell a rat. You’ve heard these excuses before, and you begin to sense that the “truth” is that no one in this family really wants to come home. for each, home just may be a toxic experience.

Frank, who’d lived in la-la-land concerning the kind of father and husband he had been in the past, doesn’t quite get the message embedded in the phone calls. Thus a brainstorm: if no one can visit him, he will make surprise visits to them. What Frank learns during each of those visits about himself and his family becomes the tenderloin of the movie, which I will not spoil for you.

I can say this much, however, and you’ve already guessed it: everybody in Frank’s family isn’t fine. There are lots and lots of family secrets, and until they are surfaced and owned, this is a family in serious trouble.

I left the theater wishing for a place to cry because the movie reminded me that I grew up in a world similar to Frank’s: both in my family and in my church. In my childhood. appearances were everything (right doctrine, right answers, right behavior), and what was underneath the appearance was to be kept there: unexposed and unexplained.

I lived at least three parallel lives in my early childhood, and adjusting to them was a daily challenge requiring cleverness and duplicity.

My first was a church life where my father was the pastor: a life where I was popular and envied by people. In church I was known and accepted by everyone because I was the son of an excellent preacher and a beautiful, effervescent, musical mother. How lucky I was to have such amazing parents, everyone said. “Perhaps you’ll grow up to be just like them,”

My second was a public school life where my grades were poor (really poor) and where teachers consistently expressed consternation over my day-dreaming and failure to “apply” myself. “Gordon is smart but scattered,” they said. Children in my class scorned me as the kid who was not permitted to do movies, parties, and dances “because of his religion.” The Monday morning transition from church where I was a celebrity to school where I was a nerd was difficult to negotiate.

My third life was at “home,” where my parents who, although they desired differently, often quarreled bitterly and systematically destroyed each other’s aspiration to be healthy human beings. They never understood each other or knew how to treat the other with dignity and affection.

Many times when the family had passed through one of its periodic relational tsunamis and my father had stomped out the door for who-knows-where, my mother would say—I can hear it now—”you must never tell anyone. This is our family secret.” She would continue, “If people knew about this, it would destroy your father’s ministry.” Feeling somewhat responsible for my father’s ministry, therefore, I became quite proficient at keeping secrets.

Our family survived for a long time managing to communicate whenever it was necessary that everybody was fine. Only a relative few got close enough to us to see the truth: that none of us was fine. In our own ways, each of us was growing sadder a little bit each year.

Many years later, just before my mother died, she spoke of those long-ago times and said, “There was simply no way to find help, to figure out why each of us was making so many mistakes and hurting one another. Who could you go to? What would happen to our ministry if the word got out?” My mother died, heart-broken, asking anyone who would listen for forgiveness, convinced that she had been a failure as a mother and wife … and probably as a Christian.

My own redemption from a secret-driven life began when I went away to boarding school and came under the influence of worthy men and women who modeled healthy relationships and great faith. The redemption continued in my marriage to a remarkable woman, Gail, with whom I have now shared almost 49 years of life. From her I learned that no amount of appearance-management would ever establish me as truly “fine.” The fact is that I am “unfine” by nature. True “fineness” comes slowly and reaches its crescendo at a time known only to God.

When I saw Robert De Niro’s movie, I wanted to cry for a second reason. I had the feeling that the movie was not only a reminder of the family experiences of my childhood, but it also spoke to some (not all) church experiences I have known.

As I watched Frank’s fragmented family operate, I was reminded of churches where people are nice, reasonably polite, and cooperative. But with some regularity, one learns that underneath this appearance of religious composure, this person or that one is hurting terribly: firings, divorces, personal failures, doubt, addictions, sexual identity issues … the list is long. But no one speaks: neither the person in trouble nor the ones who know of the trouble. Why? Because that would threaten the fantasy that everyone’s fine. This kind of church culture starts with the idea that everyone is presumed fine until they prove differently.

Not so in Alcoholic Anonymous meetings, my friend who does meetings every day reminds me. Where he goes the message is clear from the get-go: nobody in this room is fine. In fact, my friend is quite blunt when I ask him if he ever minds sitting among prostitutes and homeless people. “You don’t understand. There are no prostitutes, no homeless people, no business people; we’re all just drunks helping each other survive for another day.” Put that line into Christian terms.

My friend’s insight, had it been absorbed in the family of my childhood, would have changed lots of things. A thousand regrets would not have been necessary. And, I suspect, that insight could change a lot of churches. All it would take is for a few people to say “we’re not … I’m not … fine” and the simple but dazzling grace of our Lord Jesus would start to take over.

Oh, in case anyone wants to know where I am today: “I’m fine” (he said with a grin).

Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership and lives in New Hampshire.