The DNA of Relationships (25 page)

What Power Do You Have?
If you find yourself saying, “It’s not working,” then it may be time to ask, “What am I trying to accomplish? What is my goal or objective?”

If your goal is to change the other person, then you have set yourself up for frustration. Instead, try asking yourself, “What power do I actually have?”

It seems to me that the best answer to that question—the greatest goal with the highest likelihood of success—is to become the man or woman that God has created you to be. You have a lot of say and a lot of power over your own personal transformation. Your choice to focus on yourself certainly has the potential to affect the other person, but only as a secondary consequence—a serendipity—rather than as a goal.

Does this feel like a difficult challenge? I don’t deny it. If the other person has checked out of the relationship, you naturally want to do something to bring him or her back. But if you make that your major objective, understand that you’re setting yourself up for frustration.

I’ve even seen people insist that their main goal was to become the man or woman God wanted them to be—even as they continued to pursue the other goal. All of us are fully capable of playing mind games with ourselves. But what happens when we do this? The other person usually senses the manipulation, and so all our efforts fail.

Panicked, Tim called me one morning, expressing his fear that his wife was leaving him that very day. Tim didn’t know that his wife, Sarah, had already told me. Two days before she left, she said, “I tried on numerous occasions to get Tim’s attention. But he never seems to hear me.” When she finally took off, Tim just came apart. He felt crushed, broken. At that point, our conversations took a completely different turn. Finally I could say things that Tim had refused to hear many times before.

One of the chief topics we discussed involved Tim’s need to focus on the things he had the power to change rather than on the things out of his control. “You can stay where you are if you want,” I said, “but the problem is, if you stay there, you instantly put yourself in a powerless position. As long as you think of everything that’s going on as outside of you, you remain a victim. You have no control over anything, no power in your situation at all. You can stay there if you want—but I know I would prefer to focus on the things I do have power over, so at least I can have some say or some hand in making things better for me.”

Even with the Best of Intentions
Let me clear up one more possible misconception before we move on to the final chapter. Some people get discouraged, not because they fail to get the relationship they always desired, but because they don’t enjoy such a relationship all of the time. They wrongly think that once they understand and put into practice the principles in this book, they can kiss all relationship conflicts good-bye.

The truth is, it’s possible to know all about the Fear Dance and what pushes your own button. It’s possible to become skilled at all the new dance steps that allow you to do a new dance. But any of us can fall back into the hurtful steps of the Fear Dance, even when we have the best of intentions.

Michael and his wife, Amy, are very aware of the Fear Dance and of their personal core fears. Yet sometimes, they—like Norma and me, and anyone else—still fall into the old patterns.

Sundays are usually pretty hard for Michael and Amy. Every Sunday night about fifty high-school students from their church meet at their house. Michael and Amy have to get ready for the group at the same time that they take care of their own young family.

One day Michael and Amy got home from church and immediately had to start cleaning. They both felt very tired, but since Amy had been up much of the previous night with their baby, Michael said, “Why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll start cleaning now, and when you wake up, everything will be fine.”

“That would be great,” Amy replied. So she slept for two hours. Meanwhile, Michael cleaned. He cleaned the whole time. But because he takes after his dad (I’m ADHD), he doesn’t clean the way Amy does. He goes from one thing to another; he never completes anything in one sweep.

Finally Amy woke up. She came upstairs, saw that Michael had made the bed and picked up Cole’s shoes, but he hadn’t yet cleaned up the mess on the floor. She was frustrated that the job had not been done well, and she reacted by accusing Michael of loafing.

“Wait a minute!” Michael said. “Let’s be fair. You’ve been sleeping for
two hours
while I’ve been cleaning the whole time. Why are you so upset?”

His question didn’t make her mood any better, and she started belittling him and his efforts at cleaning. He soon felt hurt and bruised emotionally. Finally he decided to gather the kids and leave the house, which by this time felt totally unsafe to him. When he announced his plan, Amy protested, so he and the kids ended up staying.

Later that day, after things had calmed down, Michael thought he would be Mr. Helpful. He approached Amy in the bedroom and said, very softly, “Hey, can we talk about today? I’m really hurt and confused over what happened.”

“Sure,” she replied.

“Look,” he said, “here’s the deal. The way you treated me today made me feel bloodied and bruised. I felt like a corpse lying in its own pool of blood. When you treat me like this, it makes me want to die to you or to desensitize myself to where I just don’t want to care.” He figured he spoke the truth, and that this was a good thing.

Amy didn’t.

She reacted with strong words, and her negative reaction totally baffled Michael. When he saw this conversation going nowhere, he dropped it.

The next day they didn’t talk about the incident. Then came Tuesday, the day they help lead a small group from church. Michael asked Amy, “I think we’re stuck on our conflict. What if we ask the group to help us?”

Not only did Amy not want to discuss their conflict with the group, she didn’t even want to go to the group meeting. “But Amy,” Michael pleaded, “this is what the group is all about. We can’t avoid it.”

They ended up going to the group and telling their story. Their pastor, who is very aware of the Fear Dance, said to Michael, “Don’t you see how you tapped into her fear when you acted as you did?”

“No,” Michael replied, completely unaware. “What are you talking about?”

“Well,” his pastor reminded him, “her fear is fear of abandonment or rejection.”

Suddenly everything made total sense. When Michael threatened to leave the house, he pushed Amy’s fear button, big time. It took a third person to bring clarity. Their pastor’s comments opened up both Michael and Amy and produced a very powerful moment for the two of them.

“Here I thought I had been so perfect and nice and healthy,” Michael said, “when I hadn’t been at all.” And Amy also saw how she had gone on the attack.

Even with the best of intentions, even when we know this material backward and forward, we can still slip into the old patterns and make a mess of things. But, thank God, when we realize our mistake, we have the ability to stop the madness and get back to sanity—and back to building a healthy, safe, satisfying relationship.

One More Time
I could not feel more strongly that the five new dance steps to healthy relationships I just told you about in this book give us all the best chance for relationship success. We greatly increase our odds for achieving great relationships if we put into practice the new dance steps—even though I can’t guarantee that either you or I will always get everything we want.

So let me say it one more time. I have no magic pills. No secrets of guaranteed relationship success. Even so, I do have some solid and strong reassurance for those who may feel uneasy at the thought of a world without guarantees. I feel so confident because the reassurance comes straight from God’s Word. And it drips with sweet serendipity:

Even though the fig trees have no blossoms, and there are no grapes on the vine; even though the olive crop fails, and the fields lie empty and barren; even though the flocks die in the fields, and the cattle barns are empty, yet I will rejoice in the Lord! I will be joyful in the God of my salvation. The Sovereign Lord is my strength! He will make me as surefooted as a deer and bring me safely over the mountains.
⁶

You and I can literally start a relationship revolution together—as long as we go with God. And so to the heights we set our gaze. May I tell you about the most important opportunity and exciting challenge I’ve been called to do for the next decade or more?

1. 1. You can’t force the other person to change.
   It is futile to try to make the other person change.
   
2. 2. The only person you can change is yourself.
   The only responsibility you have is to change yourself. Allow God to change you, then leave the rest up to him.
   
3. 3. Leave room for serendipity.
   Allow change to happen in unexpected places.
   

If you still don’t believe me, just ask someone on death’s door about what is most important. I will never forget that moment—the time my life almost came to an end.

As a fresh morning breeze brushed my face, the music of birds and of water splashing over stones in the nearby creek produced a soundtrack of sheer delight. I took a deep breath. The sweet scent of flowers and plants filled my senses, and I thought,
It’s so very good to be alive
. Except for the sounds of nature, all was quiet. As I stood there that morning and gazed out across the landscape, I took another deep breath as a new day dawned. A sense of completeness and satisfaction flooded my spirit.

A twig snapped beneath my feet, and as I stopped, my hunting partner, Junior, and I spotted a wild turkey off in the brush. Although in my boyhood years I used to be an avid hunter, I fumbled with my gun—
has to be the excitement of my first turkey hunt,
I thought. But as I took aim, an unfamiliar unease gripped me; I could hardly breathe. Junior anxiously motioned with his finger pressed against his lip. “
Shhh,
stop breathing so loud!”

As the trophy-sized turkey inched closer, I lowered my gun.
What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I have any strength?
Junior’s raspy whisper urged me on: “Shoot! Shoot!”

Pressed into action, I again lifted my gun and aimed. I pulled the trigger. At the same moment the turkey fell over, I also crumpled. As I lay moaning on the ground, Junior assumed that a rush of adrenaline had overwhelmed me, and he reached down to help me to my feet. Yet I could feel that something far worse had happened. Later I learned that a major artery near my heart had torn.

I was having a heart attack.

My father died of a heart attack at age fifty-eight; my older brother died of the same thing at age fifty-one. Another brother has endured triple-bypass surgery three times. Years ago I radically altered my eating and exercise habits to fend off this moment. But at age sixty-one, I found myself unwillingly conforming to my genetic heritage—yet another Smalley victim of heart disease.

As Junior ran for the truck, I lay motionless on the ground, paralyzed by the pain. And yet, I’ll never forget the peace that overcame me. I felt ready to die. “Lord,” I whispered, “I’m ready to come home.”

At that moment I had but one desire: to see my wife and kids one last time. None of the books I’d written, videos I’d made, conferences I’d addressed, couples I’d counseled, awards I’d won, or any other accomplishment mattered. I longed for only one thing: to be with my family, the people who mattered most to me.

As Junior carried me out of the woods, I didn’t know if I would live or die. Truthfully, I didn’t understand why I hadn’t already died.

Back at our vehicle, precious moments ticked by as we discovered that our remote location put us out of cell phone range. Halfway down the mountain, we connected with the paramedics on a two-way radio. Emergency vehicles rushed to meet us. I hung on to every breath; I just had to see my family once more.

I finally reached Norma by phone, but before I could tell my wife what had happened, she said, “I have someone in my office; I’m putting you on hold.” As I listened to the “on hold” music, I thought,
Perfect! I’m going to die while my wife has me on hold.
When she finally picked up the line and I explained my situation, she yelled, “Why didn’t you tell me?” Then she hung up and raced toward the hospital.

Paramedics flew me to a hospital about fifty miles from my home. Greg, my older son, lived there, so he arrived first at the hospital. As they wheeled me into the emergency room, my eyes locked onto Greg.
I made it!

I don’t remember much of what happened next. No, my life didn’t flash before my eyes. But I recall frantically trying to tell Greg what to say to each family member. It felt like trying to cram sixty-one years of relationships into several sentences.
What should I say?

I’m sure my instructions sounded like the ranting and ravings of a lunatic. The more I tried to articulate my good-byes, the more frustrated I became. Finally, Greg leaned over me and said something that instantly calmed me down. “Dad,” he whispered ever so gently, “we know.”

At that very moment—when I thought I was about to die—I realized that my family already knew everything I wanted to tell them. They knew how proud I felt of each of them. They knew how valuable they were to me. But most important, they knew that they were loved.

As I held my son’s hand, everything seemed to slow down. I thought about how much happiness and laughter had filled my life as a husband, father, and grandfather. Even as I wondered whether my life had come to its end, I felt fresh appreciation for the love I had been able to receive and to give. And over the next forty-eight hours in the hospital, I paused frequently to ask myself what I had lived for and what had given me such a sense of completeness and satisfaction.

I realized anew that the most important thing in my life is relationships—not only with my family and friends and the people I meet all over the world, but with the God who walks with me even “through the dark valley of death.”
¹
The rest is just details.

The Need of the Hour
My brush with death convinced me more than ever that we cannot simply go on doing business as usual.
Something
has to change.

We face relationship crises everywhere we look. Perhaps we see it most clearly in marriage. Nearly all of us have been touched somehow by divorce, either in our own families or in the lives of close friends. And Christians are not immune from the crises. Did you know that “Baptists have the highest divorce rate of any Christian denomination and are more likely to get a divorce than atheists and agnostics, according to a national survey”? George Barna, president of Barna Research Group, said about this report, “While it may be alarming to discover that born-again Christians are more likely than others to experience a divorce, that pattern has been in place for quite some time.”
²

Barna’s report stirred up many people in the Christian community and earned him a few angry retorts. In response he wrote a letter to his supporters, declaring that he stood by his data, even though it upset many. “We rarely find substantial differences” between the moral behavior of Christians and non-Christians, he said. Barna Project Director Meg Flammang added, “We would love to be able to report that Christians are living very distinct lives and impacting the community, but…in the area of divorce rates, they continue to be the same.”
³

But serious relationship struggles are not limited to marriages. Most of us also have experienced strained parent-child relationships, broken friendships, unresolved conflict in our workplaces and our churches. The front pages of our newspapers remind us every day that relationships are in crisis.

What will we do about it? How should we combat these relationship disasters? What can we do to make sure our fractured relationships don’t stand in the way of God’s bringing a mighty and much-needed revival to our churches and to our land?

In response to the crisis in marriage, Mike Huckabee, governor of Arkansas and an evangelical Christian himself, has declared a “marital emergency.” He has set a goal to reduce the divorce rate by half in his state by 2010, from 6.1 per thousand to about 3. Frank Keating, former governor of Oklahoma, has initiated a similar campaign in his own state. By 2009 he wants to reduce the divorce rate by a third, from 6 per thousand to about 4 per thousand.

Similarly, Kerby Anderson of Probe Ministries has said, “I think it is time for the church to get back to basics. Pastors must preach about marriage from the pulpit, and churches should encourage their members to attend marriage conferences that provide God’s blueprint for marriage. Christian marriages should set the example for the world.”
⁴

But addressing the marriage problem is only the beginning. We must do more to strengthen families, friendships, work relationships, and others.

I want to extend a challenge. I want to encourage you to get “life-on-life” with others, to help those outside of your closest circle to enjoy the benefits of strong, healthy relationships. The need of the hour cries out for you to do what you can to help multiply healthy, satisfied, revitalized relationships among the people all around you. Together we can lock arms and work toward change. We’ve done it before in our country’s history.

A Revolution in the Making
“We have it in our power to begin the world anew,” wrote Thomas Paine in his 1776 instant best seller,
Common Sense
, a potent little book that rallied fellow patriots and fired them with resolve to change their world. His inspiring words moved the people of the American colonies to organize, band together, and fight for their freedom.

Today we need another revolution—a relationship revolution. We need a revolution to free us from the chains of relationship discord, misery, and collapse.

I believe the American Revolutionary War provides several strategies that will help us in the relationship revolution. Several historians believe the Revolutionary War succeeded for at least three reasons:

• The average person understood what was happening and where events appeared to be leading.
  
• The people learned how to get their leaders to address their growing problems with England and to nurture a grassroots response.
  
• The people took decisive action.
  

If we are to respond effectively at this historical crossroads to the relationship crisis we face—if we are to succeed in bringing about a relationship revolution—then we must do as America’s first patriots did.

1. We must open our eyes to the relationship crisis.
If we are to succeed in bringing about a relationship revolution, we must also recognize what is happening to relationships all around us and realize where we will end up if we do not take steps to prevent the disaster. Throughout this book we have noted the alarming relationship collapse that continues to grow more frightening with each passing year. Do you see what is happening all around you? Can you envision where these appalling trends will take us if we do nothing?

2. We must connect with leaders and nurture a grassroots response.
In an age when women had no role in combat, Deborah Samson disguised herself as a young man and presented herself as a willing volunteer for the American Revolutionary army. She enlisted as Robert Shirtliffe and went where the action was, serving for the whole term of the Revolutionary War. She offered her services, giving whatever she could to the cause. Why did she do it? She was afraid of what would happen if she did nothing. She allied herself with a grassroots effort, knowing that if people worked together, they would succeed.

If we are to successfully pull off a relationship revolution, we must connect with our leaders, the opinion makers, as well as the movers and shakers to craft a plan of action, understanding that lasting change must happen from the bottom up. And that means you and me.

3. We must take action.
The American Revolution lasted more than six bloody years and cost the lives of thousands of people on both sides of the conflict. It wasn’t quick, and it wasn’t easy—but history reveals what an enormous and vital role it played (and plays still) on the world’s stage. The patriots who dreamed of freedom did more than talk; they took action. They did what they needed to do to make their dream into a reality.

So must we.

It is time to take action. We must not merely talk about a relationship revolution; we must act in decisive ways to bring one about.

We can hold meetings. We can write letters. We can hold small home groups in which neighbors and friends can come together to begin the change. We can talk with our pastors and other church leaders about igniting a relationship revolution in our community. We can teach a class focusing on relationships, or we can recruit participants for such a class.

It’s time to get busy. Will you answer the call?

What Will You Do?
We have reached a watershed moment in this country when what we decide to do now about the national relationship crisis will determine for generations to come the plight of America. Will we stand by and do nothing? Or will we take the necessary steps not only to strengthen and energize our own relationships but also to help others find the satisfaction and fulfillment they also crave from their relationships?

Consider these three important ways you can begin immediately:

1. Pray regularly for troubled relationships in your neighborhood, school, church, and community. Start a prayer journal, and have others pray for these relationships as well.
2. Go to www.thednaofrelationships.com and sign up to receive a free
 • Study guide for
The DNA of Relationships
 • Relationship evaluation test, which we have found to be 90 percent accurate with married couples
 • DNA e-letter with weekly insights for strengthening
all
your relationships
3. If you are a pastor, chaplain, or church leader, go to www.thednaofrelationships.com and
 • Download free sermons based on the principles in
The DNA of Relationships
 • Download Gary Smalley’s video message for leaders on “How to lead a Relationship Revolution”
 • Receive information on TV simulcasts and monthly conferences in the USA and Canada
 • Find information about launching a DNA of Relationships small group.