Reading about Seven Stages to Relationship Success, you may expect to discover a set of communication skills, techniques and strategies to help you relate to your partner better.  Twenty-five years of marriage counseling has taught me that the first Stage in establishing a successful relationship is for you to Be Still. 

Let me illustrate this.  In your Upside down Relationship World, anything you do or say, can and will be used against you.  If you are quiet, your partner will ask, “Why are you mad at me?”  If you are kind and thoughtful, your partner will ask, “What do you want from me?”  If you are mean and hateful, your partner will think, “You don’t love me.”  Therefore, you can go to the right and that’s “wrong.”  You can go the left and that’s “wrong.” You can even do nothing and that’s “wrong.”  I’m suggesting, the first Stage in the Seven Stages to Relationship Success is to Be Still. 

What is Being Still?  Being Still is about being in touch with the world around you: connected, yet separate from it.  It is a framework for encountering life.  Being Still is not really a stage  as much as it is a state of mind or a way of life.  As you start your day and go through your day, Be Still.  Before, during and after everything you do, Be Still. 

Being Still is about listening with your whole self.  It is about having your brain cells, your thoughts, being in your mind instead of trying to think your partner’s thoughts, using his or her brain cells and being “out of your mind.”  Actually, being still is listening to God and being open to His mind, thoughts, brain cells.  Being still is waiting for Him to reveal Himself to  you and being prepared to respond in childlike trust.

Janet Jackson is famous for her wardrobe malfunction during the halftime performance with Justin Timberlake. The networks decided to telecast future shows with a time delayed broadcast to avoid repeating similar embarrassing displays.  The halftime show appears live, but the network is actually monitoring what is broadcast into homes across the country.  This illustrates Being Still.  

The Networks observe the halftime show, tape delay the presentation, filter inappropriate material and broadcast the show “as if” it is live.  In similar ways, Being Still, you listen, observe and take in the world using a “time delayed” response that appears live to everyone else, but filters what you present to others. 

Your “camera” is focused on your circumstances, experiences and other people. But, Being Still, you display the Character of God in your responses to others.  The time delay allows you to listen and broadcast different reactions from the “naked” reactions you might have otherwise.  Your relationship with God through Christ gives you the option you would not otherwise have to respond differently.

Being Still helps you think before you speak, act or react to others based on a completely different frame of reference.  This frame of reference is not yourself or another person.  It is based on the Character of God in you being lived out as you through you because of your relationship with God.  Christ is living His life in, through and as you to the world around you.

Imagine being free to respond to your partner with humor, laughter, playfulness or teasing even when he or she is not in a good mood.  Can you imagine being free of the fear that you might say the wrong thing, disappoint your partner or anger your mate, yet still be yourself with him or her?  This intimacy is possible because Being Still to listen and display the character of God is possible in a relationship with Him. 

Emotionally Being Still can be characterized as being inquisitive, not knowing, humble, one-down, curious, and open to the world around you. It is not weakness as much as it is being open, vulnerable and conscious to the Character of God expressed in and through you.

Being Still opens the door to honoring your relationship with your partner, so that respect and love can go hand in hand.

Example:  A woman complained that her husband came in from work and tossed his loose change on the kitchen table.  She’d asked him several times to place his pocket change on his desk in the office.  Yet, he continued to toss his quarters, nickels and dimes on the table.  This frustrated her as she was preparing dinner and she felt that he was not respecting her efforts at getting dinner prepared and on the kitchen table for the family.

Encouraging her to Be Still, and consider a response that would be imaginative and playful, yet make her point.  She realized she could look at the problem from a wider lens.  She realized he was putting his pocket change in his bowl, i.e. the kitchen table.  Therefore, she decided to set dinner on the kitchen floor and apologize for attempting to have dinner in his bowl.  She said she set the kitchen floor one time with dishes, silverware and glasses. 

Everyone was intrigued by this new arrangement.  She explained she had made a terrible mistake by eating out of her husband’s bowl and that they would eat from their new table (the floor).  The kids laughed and thought she was being funny.  Her husband suggested that he might use the bowl in the office for his change and that he was willing to give up his old change bowl if she would be willing to use it as a kitchen table.   Being Still allowed an imaginative, creative response to an otherwise difficult situation. Being Still allows the Character of God to flow through you as if it is you!