The “Pink” Elephant 🐘
“Wisdom will extend your life, making every year more fruitful than the one before. So it is to your advantage to be wise. But to ignore the counsel of wisdom is to invite trouble into your life.”
Are you familiar with the phrase, The Elephant in the room? Or, the Pink Elephant in the corner? Wikipedia describes this as:
The expression "elephant in the room" (usually "the elephant in the room") or "the elephant in the living room"is a metaphorical idiom in English for an important or enormous topic, problem, or risk that is obvious or that everyone knows about but no one mentions or wants to discuss because it makes at least some of them uncomfortable or is personally, socially, or politically embarrassing, controversial, inflammatory, or dangerous.
It is based on the idea/thought that something as conspicuous as an elephant can appear to be overlooked in codified social interactions and that the sociology/psychology of repression also operates on the macro scale. Various languages across the world have words that describe similar concepts.
What does this have do to with Proverbs and wisdom? EVERYTHING, and let me unpack that. Yesterday I had an opportunity to meet with a young, fairly new Christ follower who is on fire for the Lord and is experiencing God’s hand and favor in a great way. As he was sharing his story, and how God is moving and working in his life this young man came alive, and was so expressive and detailed...it was moving! As he was describing situations, and events the words were robust and well thought through, I was really inspired and impressed. I was listening, asking a few questions and engaged in his story. A few questions lead us to a topic that slightly shifted the atmosphere, and his demeanor. We landed on a topic that his words became more sharp, and his expression was very limited and there was a bit of defensiveness. It wasn’t anything on the surface significant, but it was enough for me to notice. He continued with his amazing story, and wanted to move through this topic and get to some other highlights, but I just had a gut check, and a nudge to circle back to the less comfortable topic.
What we stumbled on was a Pink Elephant, and he was tucking this pretty large issue away in the corner of his mind. The interesting part of dealing with the Pink Elephant is our ability to take something that actually is a significant issue, and we can minimize it to really being nothing. I believe this is a tool our enemy can use against us. When He can take some thing large and get us to minimize it to nothing, to sweep it under the rug to convince us its not a problem then He wins! We have to pull the Pink Elephant out of the corner and talk about them.
Here is the issue you face, and I face this as well. Our Pink Elephants more than likely have been with us for a long time. More than likely we have reduced them to nearly nothing in our minds and for days, weeks or years swept them under the carpet and have avoided talking about them or facing them. What are those things with you, what are the topics or things you just are not willing to share or discuss. What is the issue that comes up that brings uneasiness or creates tension in your body and draws out defensiveness? With soul searching, prayer as well as really having the right people in our lives that are willing to see the Pink Elephants and appropriately talk about them (not just tell you what you want to hear, and make you feel good) we can rid our lives of the Pink Elephant. But let me be clear, riding our lives of the Pink Elephant doesn’t mean the issue goes away. What it means is now we can face the issue, and now God can work in our lives and we can overcome whatever has been holding us back.
So where did it all land with my conversation? Come to find out the Pink Elephant for him, something that was being shoved off in a corner and not really wanting to be dealt with or even acknowledged was actually the biggest roadblock for him moving forward. We unpacked this for a while, and helped him see some simple steps forward that included dealing with some issues that were being buried and blamed on others. It’s our pray and hope that just by acknowledging and facing this Pink Elephant that God will open some amazing doors for him to continue with a calling God has put on his life.
God give us the wisdom to see and face our Pink Elephants.