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Rollin’ Down Your River
Where You Are Now, What You Want, and What It Can Look Like
Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.
James Baldwin
There was a moment after I first met Harold when he told me, “You could call me.” It was an invitation to connect with him to answer questions and make theoretical things real in my life. I had a choice. Call or don’t call. Get some answers or keep going the way I was.
What if he tells me something I don’t want to hear? What if I have to change something I’m doing? Maybe thinking about change is enough.
I called. That was the beginning of understanding I had choices—choices to adopt simple attitudes, perspectives, and expectations. Then I had the choice to learn to think and behave consistently with those new attitudes, perspectives, and expectations. Over the next ten years, I called him hundreds of times. He called me maybe three or four times. He would not chase me. I had to want it. If I didn’t want it, I would not make the commitment to the change I said was needed. If I had not made that choice, if I had not started calling him, if I had not chosen to put myself under his influence, I don’t believe you would be reading this right now. It would still be 1985.
By reading this far you have made a choice to put yourself under the influence of the same simple attitudes and perspectives that changed me. But that’s just the beginning. I planted grass recently, and the beginning was loosening the soil, raking it smooth, spreading the seed, and then watering it. That was work, but if I’d stopped there, the grass wouldn’t have grown. I had to water it regularly for several weeks, sometimes several times a day. Beginning wasn’t enough. The grass needed my commitment.
My conversations with Harold became like a class, but the curriculum was my own personal life and issues. I ended up with a shelf of three-ring binders and manila file folders filled with notes. That was part of the evidence of my commitment.
You don’t need binders and folders and pages of notes. Well, a piece of paper or two might help—we’ll get to that in a minute. But you do have to make a commitment to adopt the same simple attitudes, perspectives, expectations, and actions that my family and I have adopted and that have made such a difference to us.
This commitment will impact your most challenging family relationships. It will influence how you see people and interpret their behavior, which will then influence how you feel. Then you will learn how to live in a way that is consistent with your new attitudes and perspectives in your everyday relationships. Over time you will learn to replace habitual emotional reactions with purposeful ones. Over time you will feel better, and your entire family will change.
This commitment does not need to add to your day. It’s a commitment in your heart and mind. You’re not adding things; you’re adjusting how you think and speak and act.
This book will help you adopt those simple attitudes, perspectives, expectations, and actions. Harold never used this phrase, but I do now when I call those attitudes and actions the Timeless Tools of Family Peace—these are the same tools that were previously lost to me. Once you see the list of these tools, you’ll return to it again and again. But a list isn’t enough; you need guidance.
So I’ll try to guide you on which ones are most important for your family. You’ll learn to know what’s normal, what to expect. You’ll learn simple steps to take. You’ll learn how to relate and respond depending on the person and situation. You’ll learn to rediscover the Timeless Tools yourself and see what they can look like in your unique family relationships.
So Let’s Get Started!
In this chapter, we’ll begin with how you currently feel about your family relationships. Then you’ll picture how you’d like any challenging relationships to change. Finally, we’ll envision what this all can add up to and see if it looks good to you.
This will be fun, and the results and your reaction will prepare you to personalize this book as much as possible. Think of this chapter as a warm-up exercise. You’re stretching before you begin paddling.
Where You Are Now
You’re going to take the Family Satisfaction Assessment. It’s easy and quick. But first, here are a few definitions:
Family: For the purposes of this book and assessment, your family is your spouse, children, brothers and sisters, parents, in-laws, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and step-everythings. Whatever relatives are your greatest sources of pleasure, pain, and concern, that’s who we’re considering to be your family.
Challenging relationship: This is any relationship with a relative that you struggle with and are sometimes preoccupied with. It doesn’t matter where they live or how they’re related to you; if they’re involved in a painful relationship with you or someone else in your family and it bothers you, then that’s a challenging relationship for you. If you see someone only once a year, but it’s a painful one time a year, that’s a challenging relationship for you. You decide how challenging it is.
The Family Satisfaction Assessment: This assessment is not an evaluation of your family or your relationships. Rather, it’s a simple tool to help you understand how you feel about your family relationships. Got it? It’s not about them; it’s about you and what you think and feel.
There are only five questions. Keep track of your responses, add them up, and find your score at the end. Then I’ll have a few more questions to help you narrow down which challenging relationship(s) you can focus on for the rest of this book. You can also download a printable version of this assessment at afamilyshapedbygrace.com.
Family Satisfaction Assessment
1. Compared to what you’d like to see, how do you currently feel about the condition of your family relationships overall, in your entire family?
2. Most families have some areas of wonderful relationships as well as some areas of challenging relationships. From your perspective, in the last five years, how have the most challenging family relationships in your family changed?
3. How hopeful are you that any further improvement needed in those challenging relationships will happen?
4. How confident are you that you can personally make a difference in the quality of your most challenging family relationships? (Don’t overspiritualize this with, “I can do nothing; it’s all Christ.” That’s true. Billy Graham could do nothing either; it was all Christ. But when he got up to speak, he made a difference. Think of the question in that way.)
5. In the most challenging family relationships referred to in questions 2 and 3, what are the relationships? (Step relationships are included and not counted separately.) Who are they with? See the following list. You can check more than one to include as your most challenging relationships:
Spouse
Children at home
Grown children
Your siblings (yes, stepsiblings too)
Between siblings at home
Between siblings outside your home
Parents
Mother-in-law
Daughter-in-law
Father-in-law
Son-in-law
Family on spouse’s side
Former spouse
Former spouse’s new spouse and family
Grandparents
Aunts, uncles, cousins
Other
Got one or a few checked? Got your score from the first four questions?
32 or above = You are feeling really good and satisfied, and I want to read the book you should write. Where is your lowest score? That’s were there’s room for even more satisfaction.
24–31 = You are definitely more satisfied than discouraged, and with a few adjustments you could feel awesome.
16–23 = You are between satisfied and discouraged and could lean either way, and you could easily become more satisfied with some consistent adjustments.
15 and below = You’re definitely more discouraged than satisfied, but be encouraged because this means even small improvements could make a dramatic, encouraging difference to you.
The point of this simple assessment is to bring to the surface your feelings about your family and your expectations and hopes for change. You already have these feelings and expectations, but you don’t usually think about them. Dust them off with one of those little microfiber polishing cloths and wear them like a pair of eyeglasses as you read this book. By doing so, everything you read in the book will be through the lens of your own feelings about and hopes for your challenging family relationships.
Maybe you agree with this statement: “I’m pretty happy with my family relationships overall, but one or two are very challenging to me.” If so, imagine how great you’ll feel when you make even a little progress in those one or two relationships.
Or maybe you agree with this statement: “One or more of my family relationships are so challenging to me that they are negatively affecting my entire experience of family.” If so, imagine feeling more satisfied in your experience of family—not perfect, but better. That can be a fantastic result from improving just one or two relationships.
This book will show you not only that you can feel better and make a difference but also how to get there.
This is your starting point. You’re becoming more conscious of what you already feel and expect. You have an idea of your satisfaction level with your entire family as well as with certain challenging relationships. You realize how much or how little confidence you have about making improvements in those relationships. And you have in mind one or more specific relationships that are most challenging to you.
What Do You Want?
Now, you can do one more thing to get even more specific about what you’d like to see change. Writing things down helps solidify them and helps to make the thing you want more real. It implies a commitment to taking something seriously. So let’s write. The words may be few, but they will be words filled with meaning and hope.
You can do this any way you’d like. One way is to write directly in the space provided. Or you may get an expanded, printable version at afamilyshapedbygrace.com to use as a note-taking companion as you read.
This is not a to-do list. Instead, it’s more of a personal sensitivity list. It’s not something you’re going to work on. We don’t “work on” people. These are family members you love. You simply want to be open to seeing something or adjusting your attitude or discovering one thing you can do that might make a difference.
You’re choosing to be purposeful.
Think of the relationships and people who came to mind during your assessment. For now, limit the number of names you write down to not more than three, so this exercise won’t feel overwhelming. To begin, you will be learning some new habits of thinking and acting, and you don’t want to be burdened by too many people to think about. Pick the three relationships in which improvement would make the biggest difference to you. If you have only one or two names, that’s even simpler. The change in those relationships will affect others.
Write each name and very briefly describe what you would like to see and feel in your relationship with each person. You may be tempted to skim over this part and simply write a general desire and move on. Don’t. Bring your deep desires for this person and this relationship to the surface. You are worth it. He or she is worth it. Remember, there is power in writing something down. It forces you to articulate your feelings. You’re not to dredge up unpleasant words and scenes from the past; you are only to write what you want in the future. Pretend someone promised you that they would bring about whatever you want in this relationship—what would you say?
Avoid paragraphs; use words or short phrases. Let’s call this your What I Want to See list.
Name ____________
Words and phrases that describe what I’d love to see and feel in our relationship:
Name ____________
Words and phrases that describe what I’d love to see and feel in our relationship:
Name ____________
Words and phrases that describe what I’d love to see and feel in our relationship:
These are the people and the hopes that will be on your mind as you read this book. Just going through the process of writing these down has already begun to sensitize you to them. Later, you’ll have a chance to go deeper and learn exactly the kinds of things to do that can bring the relief and improvement that you desire in these relationships.
Now let’s go even larger. When you think of the river of your family and the kind of family you’d like to see flowing downstream and gathering momentum into future generations, what do you see? If you’re like I was, you’ve never thought of that. There was a time when I couldn’t describe what I wanted with my immediate family, let alone see our lives as part of a mighty river.
However, now I can describe what I want to see in the future. It’s what my family and I aim at in our everyday relationships. What an encouragement it would have been if I had been able to see this when I first formed the question, “How do you have a happy family?” I would have known what a happy family could look like. I still would not have known how to get there, but I would have at least known what to shoot for. I’ve mentioned the simple attitudes, perspectives, and expectations that I learned from Harold and adopted over time. These are now so ingrained in my family that we never talk about them. We instinctively know if any of us violates them. What are they? When adopted, what does your family look like?
I call the following principles the Family Peace Polestar. The position of a polestar remains fixed in the night sky even though the earth is rotating. It’s a dependable indicator of direction when navigating in the middle of the ocean. I believe that, ultimately, we are all looking for peace in our families.
This is the big picture. What are the values, scenes, feelings, and outcomes you want to aim for? The more your family looks like this, the more peace you’ll experience in your relationships. Small progress in just a few areas can make a life-changing difference.
Life isn’t this simple, but we need a simple place to start.
To know what you’re aiming at isn’t enough, however. Part 2 of this book shows you how to head in the direction of the Family Peace Polestar.
Here’s What Momentum Can Look Like
Together, in part 2, we’ll be reminded of the power and peace of acceptance. When I recall how God has accepted me unconditionally, I gain a peace and a security that free me to accept my family unconditionally.
When they feel fully accepted by me, they soften and open up to me. When they open up and I pay attention, I hear what God is up to in their lives. My curiosity and attention cause them to feel valued, and they trust and open up even more.
As I hear what God is up to in their lives, I embrace being God’s access to them, and I try to cooperate with God’s vision for each one. Instead of scolding and criticizing, I encourage and woo, modeling what I want to see rather than repeatedly telling.
Slowly, the atmosphere of harmony, grace, and love spreads. No matter how long it takes or what results I see, I release control of those results to God, knowing that he loves my family and wants what’s best for them even more than I do. I also trust him for what’s best for me, which takes me back to where I started—remembering God’s unconditional love for and acceptance of me. As I continue living in this way, momentum begins in them and in me.
But First
Before we begin building momentum, we’re going to make ourselves aware of what we’re up against. We all confront obstacles, the rocks and boulders that have accumulated in our river over the years. The challenges in our family relationships have been building for a long time. Our attitudes and actions have been a part of our family river for so long that we no longer notice them as part of the rushing current. We crash into them as we always have. They’ve become habits that have contributed to the rocky, dangerous river we’re in now.
In the next chapter, as we look at these obstacles, we’ll keep in mind the polestar and the people and desires we listed in the assessment. We’ll courageously confront these rocks and boulders that are in the way of what we desire in our family relationships. It took me twenty years to realize what didn’t work and that I had other choices. You might realize it in the time it takes you to read the next chapter. This could be painful because in addition to seeing your family members you will also see yourself. The good news is that it’s just you and me here. No one else will see us wincing. I won’t point a finger at your obstacles, and you don’t point a finger at mine, OK?