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The Peaceful River
The Timeless Tools of Family Peace
A harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
James 3:18
During my forty-year journey of discovering what makes families happy—twenty years in rocky rapids and twenty years in peaceful waters—I’ve learned two things that are true about each of us and that these two things are a big part of why we say what we say and do what we do:
- Everybody wants to feel good about themselves and look good to others.
- Everybody desires grace, patience, and encouragement.
I’ve learned that the Timeless Tools of Family Peace are designed to take advantage of our drive to feel good and look good. Why? Because they’re full of grace, patience, and encouragement. Every human being is designed to respond positively to their use. The Timeless Tools are good for everyone—those in your immediate family and your extended family.
These are the tools that changed my life and the direction of my family. They’re the answer to my long-ago question, “How can my family be happy?” These are the attitudes, expectations, perspectives, and actions I learned from my friend Harold that were lost to me for decades, so lost that when I discovered them they felt like the “Lost” Tools of Family Peace.
Why Are They “Lost”?
These tools are lost to the extent that we don’t use them. Maybe we can nod our heads yes when we see or hear them, but we’ve forgotten or ignored them, not believing they’ll accomplish what they’re designed to do.
You can grab a few of the tools and jump right in, or you can explore how they all work together. Whatever method you choose, any tool you use will improve your most challenging family relationships, and the more tools you use, the better those relationships will be. Using them together builds momentum.
This list isn’t definitive; you may know other tools. Just remember: it doesn’t do any good to only know them; if they’re not used, they’re lost.
Of course, they all come from that ancient Book that’s still alive today, the most popular book in the world—the Bible. Few people read it and even fewer people follow it. That is how the tools came to be lost.
If you are one of those who reads and follows the Bible, the Timeless Tools will be very familiar to you. As your use of them increases, they will be rediscovered by you, just as they are being rediscovered by me and my family.
They are guaranteed to work. But because we are imperfect human beings, they may not solve all your relationship problems. They will, however, make things better, not worse. They’re designed by God to accomplish his purposes for good, even in what we call problems.
Following are the tools I’m rediscovering, and I’d love for you to rediscover them along with me.
The Timeless Tools of Family Peace
Woo Their Hearts
There’s the easy, everybody-does-it way that never seems to work: tell ’em what they’re doing wrong. Then there’s the harder, riskier way that takes longer but brings true satisfaction: woo their hearts.
Scolding and criticizing are family relational defaults for most of us. The mentality is “That’s not right, here’s how to do it.” I may not say those words, but that’s how it feels to others.
Wooing is an invitation that leaves people free to accept or reject what we’re saying, offering, or suggesting. Wooing is the “could” to scolding’s “should.” Of course, there’s a place for scolding and criticizing, but they are needed less often than I used to think.
The power of wooing is in its non-agenda, in the feeling it gives to others that, when I woo, I have nothing personally at stake in their response. It gives them permission to focus on what’s in their best interest, not mine.
Wooing more and scolding less has been a fundamental shift in how I think and act. In a sense, all of the Timeless Tools add up to wooing. The more you use, the more you woo.
Get Your Peace Right
Everybody wants to feel good about themselves and look good to others. This desire is built into us. It’s designed to push us to Jesus for our feel-good and look-good so that we experience his sufficiency for every need, want, problem, fear, disappointment, ambition, confusion, loss, comfort, emotion, and pain. We’re designed to get our inner peace and affirmation from the sufficiency and love of Jesus. His sufficiency gives us a bottomless reservoir from which to serve and be generous.
This idea is so important and radical that we’ll spend an entire chapter exploring it a little later. For now, I’ll summarize it this way: We are not to look to our family as the source of the inner peace and affirmation that only Jesus can give. We’re not to need our family to treat us a certain way in order for us to be at peace.
This is the core of our usefulness and influence in our families. Needing certain reactions from your family leads to manipulation to get your needs met instead of being available to meet theirs. You can’t meet their needs and your own at the same time. You have to choose.
Accept Your Family and Each Member Unconditionally
This is the opposite of PBA—performance-based acceptance from the Everyday Tactics of Family Disharmony. Acceptance says, “I love you no matter what. I accept you despite that thing you want to hide. You can’t shock me or drive me away. I’m here to stay.” Loving others unconditionally does not mean we love and accept all their conduct. Jesus did not condemn or reject the woman caught in adultery, but he did say, “Go and sin no more” (John 8:11 NLT). Acceptance of and grace for the real you from someone you love are powerful and liberating—you want that, right? That’s what they want too.
Mixed emotions are natural. I’m to accept both my positive and negative feelings toward others. God does not go back and forth between loving and hating. He loves us all the time, even knowing all the negatives about us. I want to do that.
Each of my family members is an individual on their own personal journey and accountable to God. God is not finished yet, with them or with me. Our journey is tough enough without rejection and conditional love from the ones closest to us. Unconditional love is a miraculous human offering that goes deep into souls.
I want to accept my family as they are, not as I wish they were.
Accept Your Role and Your Limits
My role is to influence, not to dictate.
I’ve been placed in my family by God so that he can influence my family through me. Yes, they’ve got the same purpose of influence with me, but I control only me.
I’m limited in that I can’t make anyone do anything, so I don’t want to act like I can. Since I control only me, not them, I want to model more than tell—that’s what Jesus did. I can take the initiative to influence for good no matter what anyone else does.
When we move in the direction of accepting our families unconditionally and in the direction of accepting our role to model what we want to see, we’re walking with Jesus. This is his direction. He’s with us.
So we want to take responsibility for our influence but free ourselves from responsibility for the results. We cannot control how others will respond to our influence.
Be Genuinely Curious and Attentive
When someone is genuinely interested in you, don’t you feel honored? Curiosity is the opposite of indifference. When you feel accepted and honored, you calm down and your self-protective exterior softens. How does a calm, soft, unselfish family sound to you?
We want to listen with no agenda other than wanting to know and understand them. We all have a sixth sense that tells us if someone is truly interested or instead looking for evidence with which to judge us.
Genuine curiosity and attention convey the message that others are valuable and worth listening to and that we believe our curiosity will be satisfied by discovering something worthy about them. This causes people to feel honored, valued, and loved. And they relax. Then we can hear their heartbeat and learn what God is up to in their lives and catch a glimpse of God’s vision for them.
We all love having someone who cares enough to commit to what God is doing in us, and your family would love to have someone like that too. Be the caring gift they long for.
Make Sure You Hear and Are Heard
Remember how it felt when you were a kid and one of your parents (or both) thought you were guilty of something you didn’t do just because on the surface you looked guilty? And you said they just didn’t understand? This tool is just the opposite. It’s the reverse of one of the tools of disharmony.
I’m always tempted to assume I know what someone else is thinking or why they do what they do. I’m learning to own that I might be wrong. And I’m realizing they might not understand what I mean or why I do what I do. I have to own the responsibility to be clear.
It’s natural and tempting to judge a person or circumstance in the first few moments, just from our own experiences. But let’s always assume there’s more to the story. While we may never know all of it, we can learn more than what’s on the surface. We can gently take the initiative to converse, ask, listen, discover.
I want to make an effort to understand my family members, and I want them to understand me. There’s an art to this, and this art is great training in patience and grace.
Embrace God’s Vision for Them, Not Your Vision
It’s easy to assume that my opinion of who someone should be and what they should do is right, but in reality, it’s hard to even know what’s best for my own self. If I’m going to embrace God’s vision for others, then I need to have a clue of God’s vision for them.
How do I get these clues of God’s vision? It’s a natural result of using certain other Timeless Tools. In the next chapter, “Contagious Momentum,” we’ll see how using a few of the tools together can multiply their effect. When I accept my family members, and I’m patient, curious, and attentive, I start to hear what God has put inside them. When I try to understand them, I go deeper into the sacred ground of God’s vision for them.
I’ll never see the entirety of God’s vision for them, but I will see far more than my own surface assumptions of what’s best for them. This helps me love them, makes them feel good, and honors God.
Be God’s Access to Your Family
I want to let God reach my family through me. Needing my family to meet my needs to feel and look good blocks God’s access through me.
You and I have been placed in our families for God to influence them through us. The influence is not so much ours as it is God’s influence through our presence. Then we cooperate with what we see him doing in our families, which ties in with the previous tool of embracing God’s vision.
When we’re patient, curious, and attentive, we begin to see inside the soul of another and see what God is up to in that person. We learn who they are and how they feel and why they do what they do. We hear their heartbeat. We then have the awesome honor of cooperating with God in what he’s doing in this person we love.
Can you see yourself as God’s hidden treasure in your family to influence those you love toward the things God has in mind? Even if you can’t see exactly how to be God’s access, can you accept that you are and that he’s put you there on purpose to do good for them?
Encourage Six Times More
When someone gives you several compliments and then mentions something negative, maybe a correction or criticism, what do you go away thinking about? What do you follow up on? “Hey, thanks for the kind words, but let’s go back to that ‘could’ve been better’ part. What did you mean by that?” Right?
No one ever says they get too much encouragement. There’s an internal default in each of us that says receiving criticism weighs far more than receiving encouragement.
From the many things I’ve read, I’ve concluded we need to encourage five times more than we criticize or correct for the person to feel the encouragement is equal to the criticism. This means that when we encourage five times more often than we criticize, people still don’t feel encouraged—it feels neutral to them. We need to encourage at least six times more often. When we feel we’re going overboard with encouragement, we’re probably getting closer.
We all have the secret superpower ability to energize and inspire through encouragement. It gives people much-needed confidence, helps them be all they can be, and connects them with us in ways good for our relationships.
Reject Passivity in Relationships and Situations
I’m naturally passive in regard to things requiring purposeful engagement. If it’s a problem, a meeting, a phone call, a conversation, I’ll put it off and hope someone else steps up to deal with it. Not everyone is like this, but I see many who are. We don’t like to raise our hands.
This behavior is not good for family relationships. Avoiding issues tends to make things worse. They rarely get better on their own.
When people are left to sort things out for themselves, they almost always come to a negative conclusion. It’s my job to take the initiative in my relationships and make sure I’m understood and give others every chance to be understood.
I can’t say, “You should have told me what you thought I meant.” I need to take that first step and ask questions and ensure understanding. I’m not to just let things go. I’m to engage people and issues and handle them with grace, patience, and confidence. I’m to accept responsibility for my role of influence. This doesn’t mean I confront; it means I am aware and sensitive to what is happening in my family.
Model What You Want to See
Modeling works better than telling, speechifying, or scolding, not only with attitudes and behavior but also with embracing the Timeless Tools.
Telling people what to do and how to do it is a default in most of us. It comes easily and naturally. Modeling requires humility and is more difficult—it’s often tougher to actually have the right attitude or behave appropriately myself so others can see how it’s done. If you’re getting agitated and raising your voice, I can’t just say, “You need to calm down.” I need to be calm myself.
Jesus modeled how he wants us to live. Show family members what modeling looks like in your life and watch it become contagious.
Be a Safe Place to Launch and a Soft Place to Land
Family is most satisfying when it’s a safe place to launch (with encouragement and rooting for each other) and a soft place to land (when learning to handle failure and disappointment without shame or condemnation).
Family is designed to be a place of honest vulnerability without rejection, disagreements without anger, foolish mistakes without embarrassment—the place where people know you best yet love you most.
I can control how I respond to situations out of my control. I don’t have to make things worse. I can be an example of a soft attitude when offended or hurt. I can be unshockable and shockingly graceful. I can show that I believe this family place is safe by being vulnerable myself. Grace and vulnerability are contagious.
Don’t Keep Score
As we discussed in chapter 4, no one keeps score of how many times they’ve been wrong or offended someone. They only keep score when others wrong them.
Since we like to keep score and we like to win, here’s a radical score we could keep: Whoever gives the most grace wins! Turn around how you usually think of winning. I want to win at giving grace. To give grace, I will need to experience offenses and unfairness.
I can be a ruthless competitor in this. I can make sure I err on the side of too much grace and generosity to make sure I win. This is not just a game; I’m making a serious point.
I can never be taken advantage of if my goal is to out-give and be more generous than everyone else. If someone experiences unfairness, I have to fix it by making it fairer to them and less fair to me.
I want to trust that this one thing—humbly refusing to keep score—will kill the seed of bitterness and create a growing garden of grace in my family.
Be Unoffendable
If you’re ignored, marginalized, or insulted, and you handle it as if nothing happened, you’ve just done something supernatural. In our world, people are supersensitive to their rights and easily offended. Remembering offenses in families is a main cause of division and pain.
For me, being unoffendable is only possible because I find my value and peace in the never-ending love and sufficiency of Jesus. When I get my feel-good and look-good from Jesus, I am secure. Therefore, I’m not easily offended when harmed or wronged.
This tool also ties in with accepting others with no PBA and with releasing everything to God. It’s the opposite of tactic #6 of the Everyday Tactics of Family Disharmony.
Not being easily offended makes you easy to be around, easy to talk to, and easy to connect with. It also helps you to remain calm in challenging situations and to keep things from escalating. And it’s contagious.
I’ve read that helping others, or volunteering, is one of the most practical things people can do that makes them happy. So it makes sense that if my family and I help others together, it can bond us closer together as we share the joy and experience of serving.
There’s something about doing good for others that makes us feel better about ourselves and more valuable. When we do it together, it subtly works on relationships as well. Who has the inclination to disagree or get offended when we’re in public doing good? If we can do this outdoors, it’s even better—being outdoors is another thing that makes people happy. To be outside with my family as I help someone means that bonding and happiness are multiplied.
It’s great to do anything together as a family, but helping someone together as a family—whether it’s your entire family or only part of it—has the most beneficial effect.
Sprinkle Drops of Grace
Small touches add up. Words, actions, and favors send the message that people are loved and valued. When these small touches are unexpected and more than deserved, they create even more value.
I am confident that when I’m generous I am cooperating with and trusting a great law of creation that is built into humans: God has wired us to be sensitive to generosity so that we might be sensitive to his generosity to us in Christ.
Generosity is part of God’s image, and he has stamped us with his image. The image is corrupted by the fall, and we’re all now naturally selfish, but the seed and echo of generosity remain. You can water the seed with a little grace to get it to grow.
Little practical and thoughtful touches add up over time, and all those drops of grace create an environment for growth, which leads to more seeds and more growth. When I find ways to show my family that I’m their biggest fan, grace becomes contagious.
Release the Results, the Other Person, and Your Role and Limits into God’s Hands
God loves more, cares more, and wants better for my family than I do. I’m realizing the great impact on others that comes from a peaceful attitude of trust. The burden of making things happen is on the Lord, but we have the privilege of cooperating with him and watching what he does.
He knows your family and you and your situation better than you do. He can do anything he wants, and he can be trusted to do what is right. Maintain a trusting attitude and watch peace spread.
Use a Mentor—for the Highest Use of the Tools
Everything I’ve been discussing so far has been influenced by a mentor. My mentor was Harold, but he preferred the term discipler. I use mentor only because I think it will be more familiar to you.
Before I met him, I didn’t know the Timeless Tools of Family Peace existed. When I was first introduced to them, I didn’t know how they worked, or why they worked, or which ones to use in various situations. But you’ve already seen through my story some of the difference a mentor can make in a person’s life. Everybody needs help seeing and thinking. We all have blind spots. Often we need someone to simply affirm the importance and value of something we already know but are underestimating. One mentor for life is probably not the norm. Usually, we have several over the many seasons of life, each one helping with a certain season. They are invaluable and are a part of God’s design for how he uses us in our families.
Obviously, these tools have not been handed down from on high on stone tablets. These are the ones that I have rediscovered and that contribute to the journey my family is on today. You probably have already thought of others that are contributing to your family’s journey. But these tools are enough for us to see how God has designed our family relationships to work, and they’re enough to keep us busy the rest of our lives.
And good news—these tools can build on each other, reinforce each other, and add up to an effect in your family far greater than you can imagine. That is what I call “contagious momentum.”