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DESPERATE HOUSEHOLDS
1. Communication
Looking down Wisteria Lane, we find perfect homes in a quiet suburb. But the whole show is about finding out things are not always what they seem.
- Susan, the divorcee and single mom who will go to extraordinary lengths for love, or
- Lynette, the ex-career woman who traded the boardroom for boredom,
- Or Gabrielle, the ex-model with everything she’s ever wanted – a rich husband, a big house – but always searching for more
- Or Bree, a sort of Martha Stewart on steroids, whose family is unraveling around her.
The lives they lead are much different than a surface glance might reveal.
Why is Desperate Housewives the hit show of the year? Is it because we can all relate? Our perfect suburban homes often belie the much less than perfect relationships going on inside. For the next four weeks, we’re just going to take the lid off all that and reveal the hidden desperation that we feel in marriage and relationships.
Today we ask, how is bad communication making us desperate?
To answer that, we have to define good communication. In a talk given recently by Mark Beeson, I was reminded of business guru Pat Lencioni who gave some tips about good communicating in organizations. The advice works desperate households as well as businesses.
His 3 keys to communication are…
- repetition
- simple messages
- multiple mediums
I’ll elaborate on these ideas and then apply them with some biblical insight for our homes.
- First, repetition means we need to say what we mean, often. You don’t just say something once. If it’s a critical idea, say it over and over. When I’m telling you why our church exists, I have to do that over and over again: AC3 exists to be a safe place, where seekers of all kinds can investigate Christianity and become fully devoted, spiritually mature followers of Jesus Christ. Just when I think you’re tired of hearing that, is probably about the time you’re thinking, “hey, I think I’m getting it!” Not because you’re slow, but because passion and vision leak!
o The other day I was putting my boys to bed. And I usually leave them with an, “I love you, good night” – sometimes I don’t say that which I figured is no big deal. Until one night, one of my son’s said, “are you mad at me?” No son, why? “Because,” he said, “you told my brother you loved him, but didn’t tell me.” Wow, he noticed! I mean, it was important to him. He needed the repetition. The important things have to be said again and again.
- Second thing Lencioni said was simple messages. In other words, say it clearly. Don’t muddy it up. Don’t bury it under a host of qualifiers and excuses or rationale. Just say it! I talked about this two weeks ago how easy it is to be misunderstood.
o When Orville and Wilbur Wright finally succeeded in flying the first airplane for fifty-nine seconds on December 17, 1903, they rushed a telegram to their sister in Dayton, Ohio, telling of their amazing accomplishment. The telegram read, "First sustained flight today fifty-nine seconds. Hope to be home by Christmas." Their sister was so excited she rushed to the newspaper office and communicated the telegram to the editor. The next morning the newspaper headline carried a small article headlined, "POPULAR LOCAL BICYCLE MERCHANTS TO BE HOME FOR HOLIDAYS." The scoop of the century was missed because someone wasn’t clear. The editor missed the point.
- Third thing Lencioni said makes for good communication is multiple mediums. Meaning, we’ve got to say it every way we know how. Again to use church as an illustration: I’m not a very complex guy – which can’t mean much for my IQ – but as a leader, I’ve basically got one life changing idea that rocked my world and I have to share it: We matter to God, but we are lost rebels, yet God – in love – made a way to cover our guilt, sending his Son Jesus Messiah who died on the cross to pay for human sin, once and for all. And now the choice is yours, to receive that debt payment and welcome God’s grace and forgiveness and the power of his Holy Spirit for a changed life and hope for heaven. That’s it. That’s all I got. Some of you have figured that out. You go home and say, “Hey Bessie, that kid preacher, he’s a bit of a broken record! If he’s only got one thing he really says, why does it take him so long to say it every week?”
o I’ll tell you why! It’s because I’m trying to say it every way I can. So we say it with music; we say it with media; we say it with drama; we say it with the teaching the Bible and stories from people’s lives. We say it corporately in the way we treat each other. We say it when you come in and first Impressions people greet you, helping you find your place, helping you get your kids settled, we have people who love and teach your kids, saying the same thing.
§ We can’t afford to not communicate that well. It’s mission critical.
Now friends, there are some messages that need to get through to your spouse, and to your friends and your kids that are just like that. They are mission critical messages and they need to be communicated
- repeatedly
- simply
- in multiple ways.
So what are those things that you can’t afford to communicate badly about:
1. THE MAIN IDEA: LOVE
What are you supposed to be communicating in your marriage? What is the key communication issue? It is some tangential thing like…
be here at two?
No… it’s the stuff beneath the surface, the stuff you build your whole marriage on. And that thing is love. The Bible says, husbands and wives are one flesh teams. If you don’t communicate love, you’re a walking contradiction. You’re like a car with no gas.
- You look like a married couple,
- you live in the same house,
- you have kids together,
- but if you don’t have intimacy,
- you’re not a picture of oneness and mutuality and servanthood like God intended marriages to be.
If oneness is the goal, LOVE is the MAIN IDEA friends. Love is essential. Many things can go unspoken and unsaid, many things frankly just don’t matter, may things are not important enough to focus on (*my wife routinely lose “newly wed games”).
Many things will not matter when you hit your 50th anniversary, but one thing will ensure you get there:
LOVE 1 Cor 13:13 There are three things that will endure — faith, hope, and love — and the greatest of these is love
So love is absolutely the main idea you are always trying to communicate in a marriage. Desperate marriages have one thing in common: No one feels love.
So someone might ask, are you saying Rick that it’s NEVER important to communicate mundane messages like, BE HERE AT TWO for example? The answer is yes it is, and I’ll tell you why… if some of you don’t make more of an effort to understand things like when you’re supposed to be where, you are sending a message.
Guess what the message is?
- Is it, oops, I forgot, no biggie!
- Is it, man, aren’t I stinker?
- Is it, slipped my mind.
- NO. The message is, “you don’t love me.”
Now that’s not the message you were trying to send, was it? But that’s the message that’s received. Maybe that’s not how you’d take it, but your spouse is not like you. What communicates love to them is not the same thing that communicates love to you.
The Bible says in Ephesians 4:29
do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth but only what it is helpful for building others up according to their needs so that it may benefit those who listen.
Communicate according to their needs. What does your spouse NEED in order to feel love? It might not be the same thing you need. So think again about the MULTIPLE MEDIUMS idea. Some of you have to expand your mediums. You’re in a communication rut, and chances are, the rut you’re in is comfortable for you.
- you like to serve and do nice things for those you love. That’s says it for you, so that’s what you do.
- You like to say it, I LOVE YOU with words! That’s easy, so that’s what you do
- You like to touch the person you love. That communicates it to you just fine
- You like to be with your spouse, so you block out chunks of time to say I love you that way.
- You like to give gifts or opportunities to show affection.
See friends, these are 5 love pathways (Gary Chapman). Which is yours? Which is your spouses? Which are your kids? We should become conversant and proficient in all of them. Because not all of them communicate with equal effectiveness to every body.
- Someone you love is just terrible with verbal affirmations of love, but you’re a words kind of gal. Guess what? It’s a clean miss! Love is there, but it’s not being communicated!
- You are not particularly physically affectionate, but you are married to someone for whom touch is the main way they feel love. If there’s no touch, it doesn’t matter about gifts, or words, or time spent – they won’t catch your love.
MULTIPLE MEDIUMS FRIENDS! We can learn another love language can’t we? What do they NEED? Learn to communicate the Bible says, along that pathway.
I met a guy at our men’s retreat* who told me of a hard talk his buddies had with him about communication patterns they observed in his marriage. But he was so thankful because they showed him that love wasn’t getting through – and he really loves his wife! He WANTED it to get through. I was just so impressed by the humility and the effort he was making to learn to communicate love according to his wife’s needs.
He said, “Rick I can do better.” And he told me plans he was making. Because friends, we’ve got to get this one across. It’s the main idea. Love hopes all things, believes all things, love never fails.
2. THE MAIN TRUST BUILDER: TRUTH
The emotional impact we must get across is love. The trust we build with truth. I spent a lot of time on this two weeks ago. But let’s hear the Bible speak on this subject in its usual roundabout manner:
- Zech 8:16 But this is what you must do: Tell the truth to each other.
- Colossians 3:9 Stop lying to each other.
Questions?
This isn’t saying we’re all flaming liars in marriage, though I have lied blatantly to my wife and I’m ashamed of that and the trust damage I did. More often communication is cut off when we short circuit the truth through:
- avoidance of conflict
- stuffing a resentment
- leaving a critical expectation go unexpressed
- exaggerating in an argument to bully or make a point
Let me speak to singles for a second. You’re setting a relationship on a bad foundation if you refuse to communicate truthfully before marriage on a host of things, like
- Expectations: who will be the main care giver for the kids? How many kids do you want to have? When? How do you want to handle money, how much will you give to God, how much will you save? What will you do with your free time? Who will you hang out with? How much?
- Values: will you be truthful about your vision for the spiritual foundation of your marriage? If you’re a follower of Christ are you going to be adamant that you build a household with someone who shares your same Master? Or are you going to waffle on that, communicate fuzzy, fudge your values, justify because the person is so gorgeous, or so talented, or they’re so… breathing.
- Hurts: will you be honest with yourself and a potential spouse about your readiness for commitment, about the wounds you carry from past relationships, about your liabilities as a spouse? Will you be honest about stuff that reflects poorly on you? You say, Rick why would I want to do that? I’m trying to make a sale here.
o in the interest of trust building!
You know, if you out yourself, you take away all the power that your past or embarrassing truths have over you, right? I’ve watched so many couples build back their lives from trouble and the chaos of disappointment, when the one who has disappointed makes a commitment to open the books.
The Bible says, if we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship!
Here at our church we have open financial books. Can I tell you how many people in the last 10 years have said they mistrust our church’s use of your generous donations to the work of God here at AC3? Zero. Because openness creates trust. Hiddenness creates mistrust.
Same is true in families. Desperate Households are ones where the books are sealed. Decisions made in the dark. Information is withheld. Do this and a short term, hard conversation is avoided, true. But a long term cloud of mistrust is purchased. And then what happens? Desperation sets in:
- suspicion
- insecurity
- fear
- increased control
Is someone around you displaying these things? You can decide to do something about it. Start communicating. Open up the books. What has been a lie of omission? You didn’t doctor information, you just withheld it… open up the books! Start communicating and Jesus said,
TRUTH will SET YOU FREE.
3. THE MAIN VALUES: RESPECT and CONSIDERATION
So the main idea is love, the main trust-builder is truth and the main values are respect and consideration. Some of you saw the episode of Desperate households where Bree’s son yells some vile invectives at his mother and then runs to his room and slams and locks the door.
Can I just say, that if that’s my kid, the door is coming off the hinges. I had some friends tell me they actually did this when their kid slammed their door. Thot they were making a really strong statement. Thot they were withdrawing to a private area. Thot it was THEIR room… uh, neg-a-tory.
Being disrespect and inconsiderate is pandemic in modern households and it just has to be checked if we want things to feel less desperate! Consideration and respect are so key in proper communication!
But we must understand that husbands and wives have a unique communication challenge because it’s like they come from different cultures, different tribes. Watch when women talk to each other and men talk to each other.
- In the woman tribe, women use the language of consideration – “your hair looks cute; have you lost weight!” Imagine a man saying, “your hair looks great!”. No! Women touch and talk about deep things and feelings and cut past the superficial stuff pretty quickly.
- In the man tribe, men use the language of respect – “what’s up at work? I used to do that myself!” Can you imagine a woman saying, “man, I sure schooled you scrap-booking last night – 5 pages to 2!” No! Men establish their value by discussing mutual accomplishments and they get the appropriate admiration and esteem from their fellow males.
So what happens when you marry people from these two diverse tribes? Combustion!
- The man feels totally disrespected. His wife is too casual with him, she says things that are designed to probe his feelings and get to his motives, but he takes these things as personal attacks. You see, she hasn’t followed the tribal customs of respect.
- The woman feels totally uncherished. Her husband is so focused on whether or not he measures up, on whether he can git’r’done, or not. She cares less about that, and more about whether or not she’s important to him. See he hasn’t followed the tribal customs of consideration.
So given this cross-cultural dynamic, the insightful instruction of God who made men and women wonderfully unique is gender specific:
- wives, respect your husbands
- husbands, be considerate as you live with your wives.
You watch a couple who has learned to decipher the tribal code of the other gender and they are not desperate. Their love tanks are full. There is still strain at times, but no feelings of mutiny.
A brief word about kids in this area. We have to help our kids communicate respectfully. Can we agree that there is a crisis in our culture in this area? If I talked to my mother the way I see some kids talk to their mothers, the next words I would be communicating would be through a slit in a body cast.
And it wouldn’t be my mom who would put me there, it would be my dad. Of course, I exaggerate – but my dad would defend my mom and there would be consequences for disrespecting her. I try to model that with my boys. For me, it’s like, hey, kid this is the woman I married, and you aren’t going to disrespect your mother because she’s my wife. And, I’m like, bigger than you.
I’m just deeply troubled about communication in our homes friends. I hear how we talk in public and, yikes, I know privately it must be far worse. We’ve justified and allowed disrespect to rule and called it ”refreshing frankness”. It’s a pretty cheap frankness if it’s purchased at the cost of the other person’s dignity.
So it just has to start now, no matter their age, you setting the tone of kindness and respect at home. We have more respectful conversations with strangers than with our family members sometimes! It ought not to be. So when you see it happening, encourage it, praise it, support it!
CONCLUSION.
For many of us, desperation brings us here. We’re not here to be religious, we just want change and we dare to hope that God has power for that. That power is available.
Through his wisdom, Christians call this the power of his Word. Just reading it, mulling it over and obeying it brings transformation. But all this change happens in relationship with God, who is such a good communicator.
- he says it over and over again in his word: YOU MATTER
- he says it simply in ways we can understand: stop lying, cherish your wife!
- He says in multiple mediums.
o He touches us through his people
o He speaks to us through Words his people recorded in history
o He serves us
o And he gave us the gift of his Son
What more could he have done to communicate his love? That God invites you off the ledge of desperation by his love and power today. Will you accept it now, even as I pray?
