The DNA of Relationships (18 page)

The Bible insists that every Christian—more specifically, the
body
of every believer—is a divine temple, holy to God. So I have a question: Do you not have a solemn responsibility to take care of the
only
place where God has chosen to dwell among his people?

Have you ever thought about the personal implications of being made into a “holy temple,” a “dwelling where God lives by his Spirit”?
²²
Have you pondered what it means to “honor God with your body”?

Too often we limit our thoughts on this topic to the obvious: We shouldn’t sleep around, we shouldn’t smoke, we shouldn’t take drugs, we shouldn’t get drunk. Rarely do we focus on all the positive things it takes to care for and maintain these temples of ours.

That’s exactly where good self-care enters the picture.

When you take good care of the temple God has loaned you, you honor him. When you do not take good care of yourself—when you constantly get to bed late because you’re too busy taking care of others, when you ignore the warning signs your body sends you, when you wake up feeling terrible and tell yourself it’s the price you pay for serving God—then you dishonor God and disobey his commandment. As far as I know, no one has yet to discover any Bible verse that commands us to “stay fatigued for Jesus!”

One woman who just went through a marriage intensive finally understood that she did not have to feel constantly depleted and ignore her own needs in order to honor God. Once she began to grasp this concept, all the things that had stood in the way of her taking good care of herself suddenly evaporated. She looked at us, full of surprise and joy and hope, and said, “You mean, I could do this and actually honor God?” She paused for a moment, smiled, and declared, “I can get behind this!”

Can’t we all?

Three Components of Good Self-Care
Good self-care has three main components, and every one is important. Neglect or overlook any of the three, and you’ll soon be heading for trouble. When you keep close tabs on each component, you’ll vastly increase your chances of strengthening and deepening the relationships that mean the most to you.

1. Receiving.
To stay healthy, you have to receive from others. You need the resources that God wants to give you as well as the help and assistance he wants to provide through others. You must open your heart to God and to others in order to receive what you need. To practice good self-care, you must learn to let the love of God and others penetrate. You must allow God’s love to sink into your soul. You must receive.

2. Attending.
Good self-care means that you must learn to attend to your own legitimate needs. That means that you have to understand what your emotions are telling you about your circumstances. Remember, your feelings provide information essential for effective self-care.

Jesus himself, you’ll remember, “grew both in height and in wisdom, and he was loved by God and by all who knew him.”
²³
Christ grew up and matured as a whole man. His body grew. His mind grew. His heart for God grew. His relationships with people grew. He allowed all the “data” he received from his environment to help him grow into a mature person.

All of these sources—signals from the body, mind, and heart—provide helpful information that can guide and direct your self-care process. Do you want personal harmony in your life? You’ll get it only by paying balanced attention to all of them.

3. Giving.
When you keep in mind that God made you for relationships, you stop self-care from degenerating into selfishness. Why? Because you realize that you take care of yourself so that you have something to give to others.

Let me say it as strongly as possible: there’s no way that you can really take care of yourself without truly giving and serving others. If you’re not giving—if you’re focused only on receiving and getting full—then you’re working against your own best interests.

You are like an open, rooftop water well. Although in our country we don’t rely on open wells for water, many people in arid countries around the world still get their water from cisterns—large catchments that hold water from rainfall or other sources. The well is useless if it has no water in it. But the well is also unhealthy if the water in it becomes stagnant and stale. That happens when the water just stays in the well and never flows out. Only when water flows out can new, fresh water come into the well and keep the water healthy. Your goal must be to get full, get poured out, and get full again, in a never-ending cycle of giving and receiving God’s love. This is the essence of good self-care. By caring for others, you care for yourself.

Receiving, attending, giving—if any of these is missing, you’ll develop a big hole in your self-care. But when you pay careful attention to all three, you set yourself up to develop deep, lasting, fulfilling relationships in all walks of life.

How Do You Show Up?
How do you show up for your relationships? Are you healthy or crippled? Are you prepared or needy? Are you ready to give or too tired to talk? Solid relationships require the old Boy Scout mentality: Be prepared!

My friend Scott Sticksel comments about being prepared: “When my dad and I would go on fishing trips, he would show up prepared. He’d have all our fishing gear, food, even a good first-aid kit containing everything in it: needle and thread, scissors, matches, gauze. He was ready.”

Then Scott adds, “That’s how I think we need to show up for our relationships. That way, when unexpected stuff happens, we’re ready and prepared to do something about it.”

Believe me, I know the wisdom of Scott’s words, because recently I got a wake-up call that showed me I
wasn’t
ready and I
wasn’t
prepared. And it almost cost me my life.

A Wake-Up Call
In November of 2003 I underwent kidney transplant surgery. A few days after the operation, I started reading a book that prompted me to completely retool the way I operate.

Dr. Don Colbert’s
Deadly Emotions
helped me to see what may have contributed to the heart attack I suffered a couple of years ago and to the autoimmune disease that destroyed my kidneys. Without realizing it, for the past ten years I regularly allowed myself to get upset, frustrated, and even hostile about everyday events. My stress level skyrocketed and remained at perpetually high levels. I continuously pumped into my body two major stress hormones, an unwise action that, according to Dr. Colbert, “has a very damaging effect on our body.”
²⁴
In fact, “If left unchecked, the perpetual release of the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol can sear the body in a way that is similar to acid searing metal. Even hours after any immediate stress producing incident has subsided, these hormone levels can remain high and can continue to do their damaging work.”
²⁵

My unrelieved stress placed my immune system on hyperdrive. It finally turned on my normal cells, no doubt significantly contributing to my heart attack and kidney disease. The biggest problem with what I was going through is that I didn’t recognize what was happening to me. I didn’t even see my high level of stress. I thought it was normal and that everyone has this level of stress.
Gut it out, Smalley,
I told myself.

Do you see what happened? I had not been taking care of myself: listening to my emotions, letting them inform me of situations that needed my attention. I had allowed stress to hijack my body.

What causes stress? In general, stress results from unmet expectations. Stress is the
gap
between what we expect ourselves and others to do and what actually happens. The bigger the gap, the greater the stress. The result is hurt feelings, frustration, irritation, hostility, guilt, and unforgiveness. Unrelieved stress often keeps one awake at night, worrying and overly concerned about the future.

I have lain awake a lot at night over the past two years.

During that period, I retired and then unretired. I signed the biggest publishing contract of my career. I dealt with major ministry reorganization. I spoke at many large conferences. I managed some sticky neighborhood and family problems—and on and on it went. I had too much on my plate and failed to effectively manage my stressed-out emotions. One of Dr. Colbert’s statements really grabbed my attention: “If we don’t control our stress level and reduce the flow of these damaging hormones, there are many other diseases we can develop.”
²⁶

I already have two diseases; I don’t want any more.

Dr. Colbert’s book gave me a wake-up call. I realized that I had more to learn about healthy self-care. I prayed, “Lord, teach me from this day what I need to do to start managing my stress.” The insights I’m sharing with you in this book have completely changed my life. Today I feel much more relaxed, at peace, resting. In fact, my blood pressure has returned to what it was in high school!

These days I’m adding the following four actions to my self-care program. These steps work together to drop my stress to manageable levels. I make these four steps part of my prayer every morning before I get out of bed.

1. I start off my day by reducing all my earthly expectations to as close to zero as I can get.
I no longer expect life to unfold according to my will, my timeline, and my desires. Whether it be traffic, income, ministry plans, the behavior of others, or anything else, I want all of my expectations to be in line with God’s expectations and his timetable.
²⁷
I want to wait on God for everything.
²⁸
I’ve started making a list of my expectations and giving them over to God. I still have strong passions, dreams, and goals about loving people and ministering, but I am willing to wait for God’s timing. It was the timing issue that nearly killed me. From now on, the Lord is my shepherd and I will never want again. I will graze in green pastures, by quiet waters, expecting only that God will continually restore my soul and guide me every day to righteousness.
²⁹

2. I receive everything that happens to me as filtered by God.
If God chooses, he can block any bad experience from reaching me. So if he allows it to hit me, I will receive it as something he allowed to pass through his filter. And what’s okay with God is okay with me! If a single sparrow can’t drop from the sky without his knowledge and consent, how much less could something hit me without first passing through his filter?
³⁰

God tested me on this conviction a few days after my transplant. My doctors and nurses had instructed me to keep away from animal waste, especially bird droppings—highly toxic to a kidney-transplant patient. One day, since I was allowed to walk around a bit, I left the hotel where I was recuperating. I didn’t walk more than twenty feet before I felt something plop on my head. I reached up to feel what it was and saw a dark, black substance all over my fingers…bird droppings! I had never had this happen to me—
why now
? Two weeks earlier, I might have gotten angry. I might have felt frustrated. But instead I relaxed and said, “God, somehow you let that happen. So if it’s okay with you, it’s okay with me. In fact, God, that was a good one!” And I actually saw the humor in it. By the time I showered twice, I was over it.

3. Every upsetting experience is an opportunity to worship God.
When I face a frustrating experience, I ask, How is this thing good for me, and how is it bringing me closer to Christ, making me more loving and more like him? And I remind myself of three truths:

• God causes all things to work together for good to those who love him. If I let them, all trials can result in more love for him and others. I become complete in him through trials.
  ³¹
  
• Emotional disturbances remind me that God is all I need. I can use difficulties to recall my love for him and my utter dependence on him. He will go ahead of me and protect me from behind. He is my very sustenance. He will guide and comfort me. He is everything I will ever need.
  ³²
  
• I get a chance to hunt for “treasure,” to recognize all of the benefits of my stressful experiences. God turns ashes to beauty, sorrow to joy. Through my pain, he transforms me into something strong.
  ³³
  

4. I rest in God, listen quietly, and ask him what he’s telling me to do.
I ask God to reveal his will for me, and then I ask others if they can confirm for me what I thought I heard. I want to be more like my wife, Norma—careful and thoughtful. I don’t want to be in a hurry anymore. I want to wait for God to renew my strength.
³⁴
My biggest change is listening to my wife more.

You want to know something embarrassing? Twenty years ago I not only knew these principles, I lived by them. Twenty years ago, every morning before I jogged, I would say, “Lord, thank you that you are my life. Thank you that all I need is you. Thank you that all my needs are met in Christ Jesus.”

But that was twenty years ago. Somewhere along the way, I let those lessons slip away from me—and I wound up with a body full of stress, resulting in one heart attack and one pair of failed kidneys. But God is gracious! And he’s given me yet another chance. I now have the rest of my life to get up each morning and practice healthy self-care.

Even though you may not be on the brink of a heart attack or kidney failure, you may be danger in other ways if you are not taking good care of yourself. Remember the advice in this chapter: listen to your emotions, let them inform you about danger signs. Then tend to yourself spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, and physically. Keep your battery charged. And when you do, you will be prepared for deeply satisfying relationships.

I believe the next chapter offers the greatest communication method on earth. By using it, you can eliminate the main causes of strained or broken relationships.