The DNA of Relationships (16 page)

You know what happens, don’t you? He ends up rejected and alone, the very thing he most fears. Why? It’s sad, but simple: He has not yet learned to create a safe environment that invites others into a relationship with him, where they can feel safe and confident and secure. He’s looking through the wrong lens. He fails to see himself as God sees him: a valuable, precious person.

When people feel safe in our presence, they naturally open up. And when they open up, connection naturally occurs. You don’t have to force it. You don’t have to coax it. You don’t even have to encourage it. It just happens.

Do you want it to happen in your own life? Then get to work at creating a safe environment. And get ready to discover how to love yourself the way God loves you.

1. 1. When you create a safe environment, relationships flourish.
   
2. 2. Respect the wall.
   When people are threatened, they build a wall. Instead of trying to knock down the wall with a sledgehammer, respect the wall. Create a safe environment in which the other person can gradually take down the wall.
   
3. 3. Honor others.
   When we honor others, we see them as valuable. We see others as God sees them. Honor creates a safe environment in which people can come together.
   
4. 4. Suspend judgment.
   When we express genuine interest in people rather than judge them, relationships have a better chance of growing.
   
5. 5. Value differences.
   When we value our differences rather than make them the focus of our conflict, we create safety.
   
6. 6. Be trustworthy.
   When we are trustworthy with others, we dedicate yourself to treating them as the valuable and vulnerable people that they are. When we are trustworthy with ourselves, we act in ways consistent with our own value and vulnerability.
   

Several months ago I tried something that appeared to be very safe and fun, but I almost lost my life. Norma and I took a vacation to Mexico. We rented a great little place right on the beach, where we could feel the cool ocean breezes and stretch out in the warm, subtropical sun. It provided the perfect setting to unwind and recharge.

One day I decided to go swimming. As I walked toward the sea, I looked around and saw no one else on the beach. No tourists, no surfers, no beachcombers. No one, not even a lifeguard. I had the whole, glorious, sparkling sea all to myself!

I plunged into the inviting waters and started playing in the gently rolling waves. The sand felt good between my toes, but I wanted nothing more than to swim for a while in the gorgeous, azure waters. So I headed out a little distance from shore—not too far—to get some good exercise. As I swam, I wondered about the red flags planted prominently on the beach, but I disregarded them.
Must have some meaning to the locals,
I thought.
Or maybe some family left the flags behind.

It never dawned on me that the flags might have been meant for people like
me.

Before I understood what had happened, a swift-flowing undertow swept me out into the open sea. I had been having too much fun to notice that powerful forces had sucked me far out from shore. Fortunately, I could still touch the bottom, but I finally noticed how small and distant the beach appeared. I thought,
Hey, this looks dangerous.
So I started to swim back—but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get any closer to shore. In a few minutes I could feel my muscles growing weary and my lungs giving out as I struggled against the force of the tide. But nothing I did seemed to make any difference. And I could no longer touch the bottom.

Before long, I lost all my strength and slipped beneath the waves. Moments later I popped back up, sputtering, gasping, and waving my arms wildly—but still I saw no one. As I started going down again, I thought,
I’m done! Here I’ve changed my eating habits, I’m exercising every day, I’ve done whatever the doctors told me to—and now I’m dying in this water. And nobody even knows where I am!

(Later I found out that Norma had taken a break from reading a novel and, at that very moment, was watching me struggle—although she had no idea that I was the one struggling.)

I went down again, bobbed up, and frantically waved my arms. Just before I sank for what probably would have been the last time, I saw him. Somehow a burly lifeguard had seen me in the throes of drowning and had raced to my rescue. I have to tell you, while I like lifeguards, I absolutely
love
this one. Had he not been there that day, I would not be here today. He quite literally saved my life. (Incidentally, his name was Jesus—pronounced
Hay-soos.
)

But you know what? As grateful as I feel for his heroic work, I never should have met the guy. He never should have had the opportunity to become my personal hero. Why not? If I had taken the time to find out what the red flags meant, I wouldn’t have needed a rescuer. If I had made the effort to learn about the dangerous ocean currents in our Mexican paradise, I never would have found myself exhausted, gasping for air, and drowning within sight of my almost widowed wife.

In other words, if I had noticed the red flags and taken appropriate care of myself, I could have avoided my near-death experience.

Good self-care makes sense not only for me but also for all of my loved ones and for everyone else around me. The same is true for you and all your relationships. Good self-care is vital for satisfying interpersonal connections. Ignore it, and in no time at all you’ll find yourself sinking and gasping for relational air.

Take the word of someone who knows!

A Revolutionary Way of Thinking
Self-care is one of the most powerful dance steps that Greg and Bob teach couples in conflict. Without the least bit of exaggeration, I have to tell you that the practice of self-care has had a profound impact on our staff and the whole Smalley family. In fact, this dance step is quite literally saving my life. It is my personal lifeguard. In a few pages I’ll tell you more about my own life, but for now, I want to emphasize the crucial place of self-care in creating, sustaining, and growing healthy relationships.

What is good self-care? Picture yourself as a large battery. Pretend you have two terminals on the top of your head and several sockets on your sides, where people can plug in to you for their own needs. You get fully charged as you carefully maintain those top terminals and get regularly connected to God through them. As God’s love recharges you daily, you in turn can relay that love to others. You could even put a sign on yourself: “Plug into me. I’m here to show my love for you.”

If, however, you allow anger or resentment to corrode your supply line to God, or if you get so busy caring for others that you forget to connect regularly to the power and wisdom of heaven, what happens? You soon become a dead battery, of no use to anyone. Good self-care ensures that your power levels stay high, making it possible for you to continue to bless others.

Far and away, good self-care is the dance step that most profoundly changes the people who come to the Smalley Marriage Institute. While they benefit tremendously from understanding and putting into practice the other four dance steps—the Power of One, Safety, Communication, and Teamwork—it’s this one, self-care, that most often stops them in their tracks. It truly is a revolutionary way of thinking for many people; they almost never anticipate it. In fact, they almost always “trip” when we start talking about good self-care.

Many people react strongly (at first) against the idea that in order to enjoy healthy relationships, they first have to keep themselves healthy. “That is so contrary to what I’ve been taught all my life!” they tell us. But once they “get it,” once they see why and how good self-care sets them up for relationship success, they almost invariably say something very different: “Why hasn’t anybody ever told me this?”

Self-Care and the Great Commandment
I’d like to start our discussion about self-care by rehearsing what Jesus called the greatest commandment: “ ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”
¹
You might not realize it, but these words point us to the heart of good self-care.

Take a look at them again. First, Jesus teaches us to value God above everything else. We are to love him with all our
heart
, all our
soul
, all our
mind,
and all our
strength
. Jesus refers to the four key areas that make us human: the spiritual, the emotional, the intellectual, and the physical. More on that in just a bit.

In the same breath, Jesus also teaches us to highly value our neighbor
in the same way
that he expects us to highly value ourselves, as God’s very special creations. Jesus assumes that we want the best for ourselves; that’s how he created us. He instructs us to pursue the best interests of others with the same energy that we pursue our own best interests.

When you love God with every part of your being, he fills you up to overflowing with his amazing love. Out of that overflow, you give to others. This is the balanced life, the only kind of life worth living.

But notice something crucial: If you don’t take care of yourself, you have no overflow. Without an overflow, you find it very hard to take care of others—and almost impossible to obey Jesus’ command! If you and I want a healthy and satisfying life, all three pursuits must remain in balance: loving God and loving others with the same energy that we love ourselves.

What Does It Look Like?
Since Jesus closely linked loving God with loving others as we love ourselves, it makes sense that in your self-care you need to pay close attention to the four areas he explicitly mentioned: the heart (spiritual), the soul (emotional), the mind (intellectual), and the strength (physical). In a word, God expects you to attend to your whole being.

Most people have a pretty good idea of what attending to their body means, even if they don’t do it well. They have a general idea, at least, of what it ought to look like: regular exercise, eating right, getting enough rest. And even if they’re not attending to the physical side of things as they know they should, they still recognize its importance.

Most people also acknowledge the necessity of keeping a sharp mind. They recognize the importance of a good education, of developing strong thinking skills, of a regular reading program. Again, they may not follow through on their good convictions, but they freely admit the importance of the intellectual part of themselves.

Most faith-based people also have a basic idea of what it means to attend to their spirit. They admit the importance of prayer, of regular Bible reading, of getting involved in church, and of developing sensitivity to spiritual things.

When it comes to the emotions, however—the soul—people tend to go totally blank. Most have no clue what this means. And so they do a lousy job of caring for themselves emotionally. I know I did.

Most of us simply do not understand the role that emotions are supposed to play in who we are. We do not appreciate how God designed us to function as fully emotional beings.

Why are the emotions so important? Think of your emotions as God’s information system. They inform you about your needs and your deepest beliefs. When you feel a strong emotion—fear, let’s say, or grief—your body is trying to tell you something important. Without your emotions, you’re like a bicycle trying to function on only one wheel.

Look at it this way: Your brain is the processor, the decision maker. But without the good data supplied by your emotions, the processor has little to work with. And of what use is a processor without good data?

God designed you to work best when your mind and your soul work together. You make the best decisions when you use your feelings to inform your brain. To get the best result, you need both your emotions and your intellect.

Yet it’s here the problems often surface. What if you have been ignoring this major part of who God created you to be? What if you don’t know what to make of your emotions, or even how to tap into them? What then?

Listen to Your Emotions
If you’re not sure what to do with your feelings, a good place to start is to simply ask yourself, “What am I feeling?”

Since emotions always have a physiological expression, try to name the feelings in your body. Do a total body scan, starting from the top of your head, and think carefully about what you are feeling. Do you feel any tension anywhere, any butterflies?

As you do this, remind yourself that you’re after information. Don’t judge your emotions; just see them as information. What is your body trying to tell you? If your chest feels tight, if your stomach feels in knots—what could it mean? What is your body trying to tell you? Just look and listen, without chiding yourself, “I really shouldn’t be feeling this way.”

IDENTIFY YOUR EMOTION

Suppose that my stomach is in a knot and full of butterflies (believe me, I know the feeling!). Since I choose to see such emotions as data, I ask myself, “Okay, what are these emotions trying to tell me? I
am
feeling kind of nervous—but what am I feeling nervous about?”

I might be worrying that I’m about to let a whole lot of people down at work, that some of my ministry plans might fail miserably. I might be questioning whether I really heard from God. I might be nervous that people will see me as a phony.

Once I identify the feelings, I ask myself, “So, what am I needing right now? What do I need from others? What do I need from myself?” I also want to ask, “What am I doing that might be causing this? Am I doing or thinking anything that could be prompting these feelings?”

Let me give you an example. Suppose that you’re married to a man with a terrible sense of time. He tells you that he’s going out to the store to get something and will return at eight o’clock in the evening. Soon eight o’clock rolls around, and no husband. He doesn’t call to say he got delayed.

For a while, you feel fine. But when another hour goes by, you start to get a little irritated. Then you feel angry.
He is so inconsiderate!
you might think.

But when another half hour creeps by, you start to feel afraid. You wonder if something terrible happened. You begin to rehearse all of the awful possibilities. And by the time he finally gets home, you are about to burst. As soon as he walks through the door, you blast him.

“You are so inconsiderate! All you had to do was call! Do you realize that I have been sitting here, worried sick that you were lying in a morgue somewhere?”

Do you want to know the truth? You really should have said, “Do you realize that I was sitting there,
terrorizing myself
into imagining all the horrible things that could have happened?” Yes, your spouse should have called to say he would be late. But did you really have to terrorize yourself into worrying about tragedies that have practically no chance of occurring?