Strengthening Our Boundaries

Emily felt her life was tangled up with everybody else's. Her kids' grades were her grades. Her husband's anger was her fault. She was exhausted from trying to fill in all the gaps at church. Yet when you asked her what she wanted to do about it, she hadn't a clue. Emily's main problem was that she had no sense of boundaries, something every person needs for a feeling of peace and order. 

Boundaries are God's ideas. God took the earth which was formless and empty, separated the light from the darkness, and made a boundary between the waters and the sky. He continued creating distinct forms, calling each "good." He made the first individual, the first marriage, and the perimeter of the first garden and told the first couple the boundaries of His expectations; but Eve, then Adam, broke God's boundary, sin was born and we've been messing with the boundaries God created ever since.

Healthy boundaries protect you, define who you are and give definition to your responsibilities. Boundaries indicate to others what you will and will not tolerate. They are a part of our sense of identity. God creates us each as unique individuals with distinct eternal souls. God gave us wills with which we set boundaries, and we choose to yield to Him freely. Yet God sets limits for us - of behavior, attitude, and belief - by telling us in His Word what sin is. He also upholds our unique boundaries by giving us different gifts and different callings. All these boundaries provide us with a sense of self, clarifying who we are, what we are responsible for, what we can and cannot control. They give us a sense of security and a definition of what is expected of us. Learning self control is to practice and build healthy boundaries (Galatians 5:23) which will provide peace, protection, and respect for ourselves and others (See Galatians 6:1-10).

Similar to the black lines in a coloring book, boundaries define limits and rules. Life gets lonely when boundary lines are excessively thick and rigid, but life gets messy with blurring and coloring outside the lines.  Either extreme is problematic. On the rigid end is the hard-hearted person, the person too aloof, too busy, too perfect for you to ever connect with. This is also the person who sees everything as black and white (Hebrews 3:8). On the blurred, diffuse end of the continuum is the person who is "an open book," disclosing too much about herself or others. She can be too needy and dependent, looking for advice on everything. On this extreme would be the perpetual caretaker (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12). Like Emily, she can't distinguish her issues from her kids' or husband's.

Boundary violations happen to all of us. When they do occur, it is helpful to imagine a huge zipper encircling your body. A boundary violation would be like someone opening the zipper and telling your heart what it should value and feel (Proverbs 4:23), such as "you must value becoming rich" or "you must stop grieving your mother's death." These are violations. 

We have probably all been told not to feel sad or angry, or to quit crying. The shame we experience from that will often quell our emotions, which solidifies the boundary violation because we become controlled at a heart level by another person. 

Normally when boundaries are intruded upon or crossed without permission, the violated person feels hurt, anger, and shame. A common example of this would be receiving unsolicited comments about your weight. Another intrusion would be for someone to touch or hit your body without your consent. 

Now imagine this zipper around you again, only this time the zipper pull is on the inside. Now you can control the decision of whether or not to ignore or take in other people's advice, or when it is safe to draw emotionally or physically close. It is safe because you know that person will love and respect you, and won't try to change, fix, shame, or control you. Connections like this are deeply treasured. This leads to acceptance and understanding, even if there are significant differences between you (Romans 12:15-16).

The zipper line also distinguishes what is in your realm of responsibility and control, and what isn't.  We are not responsible for how others choose to think and behave. We have no power over other peoples' emotions, situations, or choices, but we can love them and pray for them. We also can't stop other people from trying to control us, but we can politely say "no thank you!" This is often referred to as staying in the truth, the truth of what we know, and honestly acknowledging our own feelings thoughts, and opinions (1 Peter 1:22, Ephesians 4:25).

We are to open ourselves up to Christ and not to the teachings of this world. Good boundaries require us to choose what teachings, what books, movies or philosophies will influence our thinking (Romans 12;2). We have choices. When we exercise our choices, we are responsible before God for ourselves -  for what we believe, say, and do (Romans 12:18, 2 Corinthians 5:10).

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen