Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life

by Henry Cloud

admitting your need for others may be even more difficult.

Even when our lives seem to be in order, isolation guarantees spiritual vulnerability. It’s only when our house is full of the love of God and others that we can resist the wiles of the devil.

We need to embrace failure instead of trying to avoid it. Those people who spend their lives trying to avoid failure are also eluding maturity.

Our ability to trust ourselves is based on our experience of others as trustworthy.

We often fear being honest because it was not safe to express honesty in our earthly relationships.

One of the most astounding teachings of the Bible is that we can influence God. It wouldn’t be a real relationship if we couldn’t.

There is no unity without distinct identities, and boundaries define the distinct identities involved.

If we are trying to do God’s work for him, we will fail. If we are wishing for him to do our work for us, he will refuse.

We need to see that what is right is also good for us. And we usually only see these good reasons when we’re in pain. Our pain motivates us to act.

There is great power in inactivity. Do not let an out-of-control person be the cue for you to change your course.

Forgiveness takes one; reconciliation takes two.

True repentance is much more than saying “I’m sorry”; it is changing direction.

Giving up boundaries to get love postpones the inevitable: the realization of the truth about the person, the embracing of the sadness of that truth, and the letting go and moving on with life.

Confess that you do not want to set boundaries because you are afraid. You sabotage your freedom because of inside resistance

Identify whose love you are going to have to give up if you choose to live.

To let go of what you never had is difficult. But in the end you will save your life by losing it.

Letting go is the way to serenity. Grief is the path.

It may comfort you to know that if you are afraid, you are possibly on the right road—the road to change and growth.

You may lose something, but you gain a new life of peacefulness and self-control.

Rework the past and do not let it become the future.

Hope is rooted in memory. We remember getting help in the past and that gives us hope for the future. Some people feel so hopeless because they have no memory of being helped in the past.

But I want to be around people who honestly fail me, not dishonestly deny that they have hurt me and have no intent to do better.

It is hard to love from a condemned place. We need to feel not condemned so that we can feel “godly sorrow” that looks at the hurt we have caused someone else instead of how “bad” we are.

They would rather have no boundaries and some connection than have boundaries and be all alone.

Running into resistance is often a good sign that you are doing what you need to do.

An inability to get angry is generally a sign that we are afraid of the separateness that comes with telling the truth.

We become attracted to boundary lovers, because in them we find permission to be honest, authentic, loving individuals.

Grace must come from the outside for us to be able to develop it inside. The opposite side of this truth is that we can’t love when we aren’t loved. And taking the thinking further, we can’t value or treasure our souls when they haven’t been valued or treasured.

Our real target is maturity—the ability to love successfully and work successfully, the way God does.