What Boats Can Teach Us About Healthy Relationships

Relationships can be overwhelming. We all want relationships, but how do you know if your relationship is a good one? What does a healthy relationship even look like?

We hear expressions from Hollywood like, “You complete me,” we sing along with the radio, “I can’t live if living is without you,” we believe that “love means, I should be willing to do anything for you.” Is it any wonder we are slightly confused as to how to create a healthy relationship?

Here is an excerpt from my new book, Peace For a Lifetime, that shares what boats can teach us about healthy relationships. Yes – boats. Boats are interesting things. They have an individual identity. They have to maintain their seaworthiness and safety in a sizeable and often turbulent ocean. Boats can teach us a lot about how we as individuals engage in relationships. Boats can also offer us a better understanding of what healthy relationships should and should not look like.

I describe a picture of myself in a relationship as if I were in a boat that is floating in the ocean. I as an individual am in the center of my boat. I may be in a relationship with others, and if they are healthy relationships, they are in the center of their boats, too. Everyone is safe, anchored in Christ, connected with one another.

However, there are many relationships I encounter where someone I love is not in their boat. They are treading water in the ocean surrounding the boat. They do not realize they are drowning, but from my position in my boat, I can see they are drowning. The waves are crashing all around them. The wind is blowing, and the powerful current threatens to pull them under the water.

Because I love my family and friends, I desperately want these people in the boat with me. I know the boat is good and strong. The boat provides the necessary safety and security for my journey. So I make my way to the edge of the boat in order to throw out a life preserver. I try to lean over the edge to reach out to them, but they are just beyond my reach. My efforts are noble and helpful, but at the point I risk falling out of the boat myself while trying to rescue them, I am then useful to no one and in jeopardy of drowning myself.

In order to be the most helpful to the ones I love, in order to have the greatest chance of successfully rescuing or influencing them, I must remain safely centered and stable in my boat. I must make sure I am healthy before I can ever attempt to establish a healthy connection with someone else.

How could I love my family and friends well if I am not able to love and care for myself well? The answer is, I couldn’t. I must make sure that I am safely grounded in my boat, that I know my identity and have created a safe place for my authentic self to flourish, that I am actively pursuing my passions and purpose as I live out my beliefs and values with clarity and courage.

For many of you, that concept sounds terrifying, completely foreign to anything you’ve ever experienced. You are not alone. You don’t have to continue living in relationships that demand too much, give too little and leave you feeling hopeless that life could be different.

Life can be different! I share simple, practical life steps in my book, Peace For a Lifetime, that can help you understand the life God desires for you. This material can help you create and experience an indestructible peace in your life and relationships; peace – not just for today, not just for tomorrow, you can experience peace…for a lifetime!

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Why We Are the Common Denominator in Our Relationships

 Do you ever find yourself having the same problems in every relationship? Does it seem that you are attracted to the same kind of people, no matter where you go?

We typically spend most of our time focusing on all the ways others need to change in order to solve our relationship problems, without ever looking to see how we contribute to the negative dynamics in our relationships.

It takes two healthy people to have a healthy relationship, so the greatest gift we can give all of our relationships, if we want them to be different, is to focus on changing ourselves. As we become healthier, our relationships naturally become healthier.

If you’re tired of the status quo, if you’ve given up hoping that things can change, you’re ready to take the next step God has for you. He wants you to experience peace not only with Him, He wants you to experience peace within your own heart and mind. He longs for you to discover your true identity, your beliefs and values as you passionately live out your purpose. Then you will be empowered to experience abundance and peace in your relationships.

Here is an excerpt from my new book, Peace For a Lifetime, that highlights why we are the common denominator in our relationships and guides us on our journey toward creating peace within ourselves. Peace does not have to be something out of reach, it doesn’t have to be something just for others, peace is possible for you!

Our relationships will only be as healthy as we are as individuals. Look around you. Does drama seem to follow you? Does everyone seem to want to use you? Do you find yourself being abandoned or rejected in multiple relationships in your life? Are you the one doing the abandoning or rejecting? Are you exhausted in trying to be everything for everyone while never being anything for yourself?

Usually, we are the common denominator in our relationship problems. That is difficult to acknowledge, I know, but if we can accept and digest that truth, we are one step closer to becoming emotionally abundant individuals and developing healthy, peaceful relationships with those we love.

In an earlier chapter, we discussed how life and the negative forces at work around us write on the slate of who we are as children. We all grew up in families that fell somewhere along a continuum of what is defined as normal. We developed certain coping skills to adapt to the family dynamic that surrounded us. Certainly, dysfunction is more severe in some families than in others, but all of us began to assemble in childhood an emotional tool belt that contained the tools we needed to deal with life. We did the best we could. We survived.

However, what began in childhood as a set of tools necessary for our adaptive functioning, or perhaps our very survival, we have carried with us into adulthood even when there is no longer any threat to our physical or emotional well-being. In short, most of the coping skills that worked for us in our childhood no longer work for us in our adult lives and relationships. Those coping skills may become defense mechanisms that can be quite destructive to us in how we relate to ourselves, as well as others.

Though we all develop defense mechanisms in childhood that have impacted our adult lives and relationships, this does not have to be our ultimate destiny. You can experience healing. You can lay down the anger, the defensiveness, the criticism and experience the relationships you’ve always wanted. You can embrace a life of emotional abundance and peace.

In my book, Peace for a Lifetime, I share simple, practical life steps that can help you discover healing and wholeness within your heart and mind. This material can help you create and experience an indestructible peace – not just for today, not just for tomorrow, you can experience peace…for a lifetime!

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How The Power of Relationship Can Help You Overcome the Monsters In Your Closet

Were you ever afraid of the monsters in your closet as a child? Are there monsters in your life today, areas of your life that you have been too afraid to face, too overwhelmed to muster the courage to conquer?

Me, too. I spent much of my childhood afraid. I was afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone, afraid of being rejected, of being ridiculed, of not being enough.

My fear followed me, like my childhood monsters, into my adult life. They paralyzed me. They crippled me, until I was able to find the key that empowered me to face my deepest fears. It was so simple, right under my eyes, but I never saw it.

Here is an excerpt from my new book, Peace For a Lifetime, that shares how the power of relationship can help us overcome the monsters in our closets. We know running away from our fear doesn’t work. We know mantras don’t work. Pills only work for a brief period of time. It is intimate relationship that holds the power to break through the fear that holds you captive and build a foundation for your life that will stand solid and strong.

As a small child, I remember being afraid of the dark. I would get so scared before bed that every night I would scour the closet, search under the bed, and peer in every nook and cranny to make sure there were no monsters or ghosts hidden anywhere in my room. At bedtime, my mother would pray with me, and all would be well until she said goodnight and turned out the lights ... then things would get worse.

I could see the outline of the monsters moving through the shadows as the clouds passed over the moon in the night sky. I could hear creaks in the floor, and I would stay there with my fear rising until I could take no more. Then I would run to the safety of my mother’s room. I remember lying beside her bed on a blanket and thinking that as long as I could feel her hand rest on mine, I was okay, and I was safe! You see, my fear didn’t need a formula; my fear needed a person.

As an adult, what I need is not a mantra, nor a theme song, to pep me up for a few moments. What I need first and foremost is a relationship, an intimate encounter with the God of the Universe, who is so intimately acquainted with me that He numbered the hairs on my head.

Perhaps as we start our journey there, we will be able to muster the courage to face the monsters in our closets. I’m not saying this is a three-quick-steps-and- you’re-cured program. What I am proposing is a lifetime journey that begins with a relationship with your Heavenly Father.

I sometimes wonder what life would feel like today if I could actually feel God’s hand rest on mine, quietly, simply, as I make my way through the ordinary and sometimes unbearable tasks of the day. Though I cannot tangibly feel Him, He wants me to know Him intimately and to rest in Him just the same.

God wants to be more than a distant judge with a set of rules. He is so much more than a genie in a bottle. God wants to grow a relationship —an authentic, powerful relationship with you that will change your life forever. Being with Him, knowing Him, trusting Him will give you the strength and confidence to face whatever challenges or fears that threaten to overwhelm you today.

I share simple, practical life steps in my book, Peace For a Lifetime, that can help you understand the life God desires for you. This material can help you create and experience an indestructible peace – not just for today, not just for tomorrow, you can experience peace…for a lifetime!

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How Trauma Can Wreak Havoc in Our Lives and Relationships

 It takes two healthy individuals to create a healthy relationship, experts say. But what happens when our early childhood experiences seep into, contaminate, or even destroy our relationships?

As children, we absorb a world of big and small hurts (traumas) that we didn’t ask for, we couldn’t help. We didn’t have any adult tools to help us deal with those traumas, so we developed tools of our own, coping skills that would help us survive, help us deal, the best way we knew how.

But what worked to get us through our childhood years, doesn’t usually work for our adult lives or our relationships.

Here is an excerpt from my new book, Peace For a Lifetime, that shares how trauma from our childhood can wreak havoc in our adult lives and relationships.

Kevin was thirty-two years old when he and his wife, Stacy, twenty-eight, came to see me for their first counseling session. They had been married for six years, but they were on the verge of divorce because of Stacy’s control issues. Kevin alleged Stacy controlled everything in their marriage, including the finances, household chores, and parenting of their three- and five-year-old girls. Stacy decided what and when they ate, what movies they saw, their activities, and their friends. If everything went according to Stacy’s plan, the family could enjoy a pleasant afternoon. But if something didn’t fall in place perfectly, Stacy usually became agitated, critical, and often enraged at Kevin or the girls. Whenever Kevin wanted to offer his opinion or make a suggestion, he was ignored, belittled, or threatened. Those experiences left Kevin feeling resentful and bitter toward Stacy.

During their initial visit, I discovered that Stacy’s mother had been brutally murdered when she was twelve years old. After the loss, she was taken to a counselor once, but shortly after that, her father remarried and moved the family several states away. Since she wasn’t getting into trouble and appeared to be doing okay, her father didn’t see the need to continue her counseling sessions.

In therapy, Stacy revealed she began having terrible nightmares of something happening to her after her mother’s death, or, even worse, to her father. He was all she had left. If something happened to him, what would she do? Who would look after her?

She began pulling her hair out several months later, a habit she was continuing at the time of our sessions. Her anxiety was at an extremely high level and was accompanied by severe periods of depression.

Stacy is an example of how a Big-T trauma during childhood can dramatically impact how we function in relationships as adults. However, Big-T traumas are not always from exposure to a single traumatic event. Big-T traumas may also result from sustained exposure to significant physical or emotional neglect or abuse over a long period, or repeated incidents of sexual abuse or sexual molestation. Big-T traumas can occur if we are loaded with an overwhelming amount of emotional baggage in childhood. Should there be no one to help us unpack and detach from those situations, we are left to carry this baggage with us into our adult life, our jobs, our marriages, and our relationships with our children.

Kevin and Stacy are just one of several stories I chronicle in my book, Peace for a Lifetime, that shows us how we can not only heal from our childhood wounds, but we can build a life that is radically different from anything we may have experienced. We can build life differently. We can build a life of hope, wholeness and harmony that will bring us peace – not just for today, not just for tomorrow, we can experience peace…for a lifetime!

We are not chained to our past. Through Christ, we have been freed to build a

foundation of peace that will last a lifetime!

 To learn more about the book, click HERE!

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