Regardless of why you came to our site this is the best place to start your journey. The changes or healing that you desire for your family all start with you. You can’t control or change others, but you can improve yourself. This phase is designed to help you identify threats that are causing division in your family. And to develop a plan to assess their impact and overcome them.
Step 1 – Assessing the Threats
First, you need to assess the threats that are causing division in your family.
What is the source of the threat? Is it external only or are there dysfunctional and destructive patterns within the family causing division. It may be both.
Some threats are easy to identify and understand their origin and destructive impact, while others are more elusive and complex. Gaining a thorough understanding of these threats and how to address them provides you with a much greater ability to overcome them.
You
No assessment of your situation would be accurate or complete without honestly assessing yourself. Below is a brief checklist of things to consider to discover areas that you may need to address as you move forward to strengthen or restore your relationship with others.
To be clear, there’s no one on the face of the earth that couldn’t use improvement in the areas you’re about to look at. This exercise is not meant to discourage you, but to empower you to find areas you would like to improve.
- Are there any areas that you know you need to improve in?
- What’s stopping you from making those improvements?
- Do you find it hard to control your anger at times?
- Do you say things you later regret to those that you love?
- Are you harboring unforgiveness or bitterness toward anyone?
- Do you have unconfessed sin in your life?
- Are you struggling with any addictions?
- Are you a good listener or do you tend to dominate conversations?
- Do your spouse and children know that you love them unconditionally, or do they believe they must earn your love and acceptance in some way?
- Do you hold your loved ones to a higher standard than you hold yourself to?
- Do you have any emotional triggers that cause an inappropriate response to a statement or event?
- Are there any unresolved issues from your past causing problems in current relationships?
These are a few thought-provoking questions to get you started. We’ve created a PDF of these and other questions that you can download and work from for your convenience.
Marriage
If you find yourself in a struggling marriage you know you need to “work” on your marriage. But what does that mean? And more importantly, what are the root causes that have brought you to this point?
How do you break negative cycles, develop better communication and conflict resolution skills, and deal with intense anger or unresolved issues needing forgiveness? It’s not enough to know that you should do those things, without knowing how to do them.
Divorce
Or maybe things have progressed to the point that you’re already going through a divorce. Unfortunately, we know that many times people are forced into a divorce regardless of their beliefs or efforts to save their marriage.
How do you protect yourself, your children and your assets, while keeping the cost, conflict and damage to your family to a minimum? Are those things possible even with a difficult spouse?
Children
What about your relationship with your children? Is it all that it could be or should be? Do you see obvious signs of indoctrination? Do you find it hard to strike up a meaningful conversation? Are there certain topics that seem to “trigger” them into a highly emotional disproportionate response, or oppositely, a total shutdown or apathy towards you altogether?
How is it possible that their views on gender and sexuality could be so different than yours? How can our culture say, “follow the science” about the latest experimental “vaccine”, yet refuse to follow the science of basic biology and physiology as it pertains to gender? Or constantly telling us to sacrifice and give up rights for “the greater good” while promoting radical laws that would force us into compliance for a microcosm of our population?
Do you recognize the great risk your child is at emotionally and spiritually as well as their physical and mental health? I’m sure we all agree that protecting our child from harm should be one of our highest priorities.
If your children are still living at home, you have a much greater responsibility to guide, protect and nurture them. But you also have a greater opportunity to influence them.
If they’re already out of the home you may have less influence than you once did, but you likely have more than you realize. Learn how to draw them out and engage them at a deeper level about subjects that matter without an escalation of tempers or conflict.
Faith
Speaking of relationships. How’s your relationship with God? Do you have one?
On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the highest, how would you rate your walk with Him right now?
Are you a follower of Jesus Christ?
Notice that I didn’t use the term, Christian. The reason I didn’t is because many people consider themselves Christians because at some point they made a profession of faith. They believe that Jesus saved them from the penalty of their sins because of that. And they might be right. But according to scripture, there’s one way to know for sure. Examine your life.
Is Jesus your Lord and Savior, or just your Savior? If He isn’t your Lord, then how could He be your Savior? Do you follow His commandments and instructions for how to live to the best of your ability? Are you regularly in His word? Do you spend time in prayer? Are you in community with other believers, or are you isolated? Do you believe what the world and culture say about how to live, or do you believe God?
Do you pick and choose what you’re willing to believe from His word based upon social issues, politics or the latest cultural or scientific agendas and interpretations? Or do you believe what God has revealed about Himself. He is perfect. He is always right. And what He says is truth no matter who disagrees with Him and His word.
Do you consistently seek His will and direction for your life looking for opportunities to serve Him? Or are you constantly asking God to serve you? If He doesn’t answer a prayer the way that you think He should, does that damage your faith, or draw you closer to Him to understand Him better? Are you watching and longing for Jesus’ return daily? These are a few helpful indicators that can reveal where you’re at in your relationship with God.
If you have a lukewarm relationship with God, it isn’t because He doesn’t love you or want a deeper relationship with you. You need to be willing to invest the time, effort and obedience necessary to build a close relationship. He will meet you much more than halfway!
You may already be a devoted follower of Jesus Christ. If that’s the case, you’re ready to move on. If you aren’t, I suggest you get serious about following Him because if you’re searching for answers on this site, you’re going to need His help moving forward.
If you would like to know more about God’s forgiveness or developing a relationship with His son Jesus Christ, feel free to contact us. We would be happy to help you.
Step 2 – Educate Yourself
Once you determine what the threats are, you need to learn the best ways to protect your marriage, children and family from these attacks. You will likely need to learn better communication and conflict resolution methods. As well as to better govern your own emotions and speech when interacting with others.
You also need to understand how you arrived at this point in your marriage or relationship with your child. As well as what has contributed to the division you’re experiencing and how you might undo or overcome the negative influences damaging the relationship.
Step 3 – Develop a Plan
Once you’ve identified the threats to your family, you need to take what you’ve learned to develop a plan of action to reduce or eliminate them. And then execute that plan.
- Assess each relationship for potential areas of improvement.
After you discover (or verify) what areas need improvement, commit yourself to do everything in your power to heal, restore and strengthen the relationship. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.
- Select the resources and tools you will utilize to improve those relationships.
Resources: Reading, listening to experts, seeking advice from a mentor. Or possibly individual, marital, or counseling for your child.
Tools: Communication and conflict resolution skills, such as using questions that lead your child or spouse to come to their own conclusion instead of them feeling that you’re “ramming your views down their throat”. Setting healthy boundaries. Strengthening your faith. Techniques and processes to work through anger and forgiveness issues.
Set goals for what you hope to accomplish in the relationship.
Ex: You ultimately want a close and loving relationship with your child. But your initial goal might be to get them to stay in the same room with you for more than 5 minutes! Or to get them to engage in a fun light-hearted conversation about a memory or another family member, or perhaps one of their interests (hobbies etc.).
You would build from there using the tools you found to discuss deeper more important subjects. Until finally you can work through the differences and programing that are currently dividing you and damaging the relationship.
Challenges to Implementing Your Plan
Acquiring the knowledge and developing the necessary skills you need will require learning something new. This will take time and effort on your part. Many people want change, but few are willing to work for it.
You will need to consistently apply the skills and techniques you learn when interacting with your loved ones. Sorry, but this will not be a one-time conversation that will solve all your problems. You’re developing a better relationship. Not winning an argument.
This may sound easy, but we all know that being our best can be very difficult, especially when intense emotions and strong opinions are involved on both sides. Unfortunately, your loved ones won’t start out conducting themselves by the new standards that you’ve set for yourself. Especially if they’ve been indoctrinated (programed) to view you as inferior or even the enemy. You’ll need to model communicating in a loving and respectful way to regain their trust and respect, or credibility about a subject coming between you. If you’re consistent, they will usually embrace a similar style of interaction with you.
Truth and Hope
But the uncompromising truth is this. You can do everything right and still not be able to successfully heal the relationship.
Seeking God’s help, using the best resources and tools, and becoming the best person, parent, or spouse that you can be is no guarantee of successfully achieving your relationship goals. I know that’s a harsh reality but it’s true. But then, you probably already knew that.
The person you’re trying to improve the relationship with has free will and they get to make their own choices. They have also likely been heavily influenced by the spiritual battle we’re in, our culture, politicians, academia etc.
In the case of children, never give up on trying to protect or rescue them from influences that would try to manipulate or drive a wedge between you and them. The same advice may apply to a spouse, but those divisions are usually driven more by internal rather than external issues.
But there is hope. Going through this process can provide many more benefits than you originally hoped for.
- Healing or strengthening the relationship with your child or spouse.
- Protecting your child from those that would mislead or manipulate them for their own purposes, which could ultimately cause harm to or destroy them.
- Bringing healing and restoration to your entire family because of the primary relationship that is healed.
- Strengthening your relationship with God.
- Applying the communication and conflict resolution skills and tools you’ve learned to other relationships, friends, family, work etc.
- The knowledge that even if you’re unable to bring about the changes you desire, you will be able to look back without regretting that you didn’t make every effort to change the situation.
- Having the knowledge to help others in a similar situation within their families.
We hope you’ve found the information in our discovery phase section insightful, helpful and encouraging. Here are links to sections focused on your specific area of need.
Marriage Resources
Divorce Advice
Protect and Reconnect with Your Child
Parental Alienation
Indoctrination
Gender and Sexual Confusion
Bookmark this site and come back as often as you need to while going through the process of healing and restoration. You will find many other wonderful resources for you and your family on our resources page.
Please consider supporting our ministry. Keeping Families Connected is supported solely through donations.
FAQs
1. Why is the discovery stage necessary?
Our Discovery Phase is designed to help you identify threats that are causing division in your family. And to develop a plan to assess their impact and overcome them. Working through this information will provide the insight and tools necessary to address issues that are causing division.