Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

by Lysa TerKeurst

I wanted calm, but the dilemma I was in was causing me so much anxiety because I hadn’t been willing to acknowledge where the heat was coming from. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of something that, in the grand scheme of all the schemes of life, didn’t seem like a big deal. I didn’t want to seem like “that girl” who is overly dramatic or petty or not mature enough in her Christianity to just “overlook an offense.” But I had overlooked this offense so many times and the situation still wasn’t changing. The person involved didn’t live in my house or even in the same state, but her words carried so much weight in my life that just a few harsh statements felt like daggers to the most tender places of my heart. When this person was in a hard situation, she felt it was completely acceptable to fly off the handle emotionally and verbally berate me. Or she would use numbing substances to the point that she either checked out completely or made no sense when I was trying to talk things through. That opened the door to her saying and doing things she wouldn’t normally say and do. I couldn’t predict what would trigger her. And no matter how I tried to address the issue, we didn’t ever make positive progress that stuck. This person didn’t consider how her actions and reactions were affecting our relationship. She refused to acknowledge