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

by Lysa TerKeurst

They are unwilling to honor or respect any communi...

They do not take responsibility for themselves or their actions and expect yo...

They rewrite history to prove a point that serves only them or their version of the truth.

Their version of reality is not consistent with facts.

Their version of the truth is what protects them, and they really can’t discern what...

They let their emotions get the best of them and sabotage what otherwise should have...

It’s important that I let truth guide me and quite honestly boss me around a bit. Because here is what I know I’m in danger of: My personality leans in the direction of being more passive than aggressive. I want things to just resolve on their own and get better over time. Then there is the pressure I feel as a Christian woman to turn the other cheek, be gracious at all times, and do everything I can to smooth things over. But if I’m honest, overly passive reactions haven’t been serving me or others very well. While being passive may look good at first, if I’m letting the tension of the situation build and intensify, I run the risk of getting so worn out from the hard dynamics at play that I start slipping back into immature reactions and unhealthy patterns.

God has a part, and we have a part.

This means to be sober-minded has to do with maintaining control over ourselves.

to be sober-minded means regaining control over our actions and reactions.

we have an enemy who doesn’t just want ...

He wants us to act and react out of control. And he wants our thoughts t...

Both words sober and watchful warn of losing control. Peter reminds us how important it is for us to play an active role in our lives as we fight against the enemy and his various tactics to lure us into a loss of self-control.

Just like gravitational forces help the water achieve equilibrium, so will the pressures of life make it evident if there is equilibrium in a relationship or not. Healthy equilibrium in a relationship is possible only when both people are equally committed to these things: healthy habits self-awareness empathy for the feelings of the other person

What people don’t work out, they act out. When someone doesn’t work through their issues, they’ll make their issues your issues.

When someone has internal chaos from what hasn’t been worked out internally, they will often stir up external chaos and point the finger of blame. Blame is an attempt to medicate unhealed pain. So, when you try to establish boundaries to protect yourself from the chaos, they’ll see this as an extremely offensive move and will try to manipulate you into feeling guilty, so you drop your boundary. A manipulative person has never met a boundary that they liked!

A manipulative person will see your boundary as a yellow light while you intended it to be a red light—with a full stop—to ensure your safety. A manipulator will intentionally speed through that intersection, risking whatever damage may happen to themselves or to you. A manipulative person will do anything to resist feeling controlled.

The boundary you see as a protection to keep the relationship healthy, they will see as a personal rejection.

The mindset I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter is this: people’s opinions define who we are. If we live with this mindset, we will be desperate to try and control people’s perception of us. We will spend our lives managing opinions to always be favorable toward us so we can feel good about ourselves. But think about the tragic reality of that mindset. Being too concerned with gaining the approval of others can give us a divided heart with God. Galatians 1:10 points out this issue: “Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

Plus, it’s impossible to please all the people all the time.

am I more or less likely to live out these verses without a needed boundary? My answer is that I’m less likely so I must keep the boundary until the Lord tells me otherwise.

See if you’ve heard any of these types of statements from others. Assess whether these statements have contributed to you giving up on setting boundaries with certain people.

“And you call yourself a Christian?! Jesus wouldn’t treat people this way.”

“I thought Christians were supposed to be forgiving.” “You’ve got such a hard heart. Jesus would have never walked away.”

“Seriously?! How can you be so mean after all I’ve done for you?”

“But you’re my (wife, daughter, best friend, mother, sister). Acting this way toward me is out of order and unacceptable.”

Being misunderstood is so brutal because someone else is taking liberties with our identity.

We can easily start to wonder if the real problem is us rather than considering the source and why we are in this hard dynamic in the first place.

Unhealthy people typically don’t manage their emotions and expectations (self-regulate) very well and can easily get offended when their lack of responsibility doesn’t become your emergency. Their thought process is often that their need trumps your limitations. And the telltale sign of their unhealthiness is their unwillingness to accept no as an answer without trying to make you feel terrible, punished, or unsure about the necessity of the boundary.

we have to remember that biblical love is an intentional action where we want what’s best for us and the other person. Keeping this in mind, when setting boundaries our heart posture should be one of wisdom and discernment for the sake of true and healthy love.

Hebrews 5:14 reminds us that mature people “have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” That word distinguish means someone can discern more readily what is the right way to treat someone and what is not acceptable. What someone should say and what someone probably shouldn’t say.

And just because a person can do something, doesn’t mean she should do that thing. Discerning and choosing one’s actions carefully leads to a wisdom that those around them can trust.

Checking ourselves means looking at a current attitude or behavior to see if it is in line with God’s instructions and wisdom.

If our identity, the foundational belief we hold of who we are, is tied to an opinion someone has of us, we need to reassess. We must be honest with how much access to our heart we’ve given to this person. It’s not bad to give someone access to our heart but when we give an unhealthy person too much access, it can shake us to our core. When their opinion of us starts to affect how we see ourselves, we can lose sight of the best parts of who we are because we get entangled in the exhausting pursuit of trying to keep that relationship intact no matter the cost. And when this is the cycle we are caught in, sometimes we would rather manage people’s perceptions of us than care for ourselves and the relationship by putting appropriate boundaries in place.

Therefore, because of Christ in me (Galatians 2:20), I am empowered to be the version of me God intended when He created me. I’m kind, creative, caring, generous, fun, and loyal.

I have those qualities, but they aren’t what is most apparent when people use me, take advantage of me, make unrealistic demands of me, and make wrong assumptions about me when I say no. In other words, when I’ve let someone violate my boundaries, I can get so frustrated that I act in completely opposite ways from the woman I really am. This type of reaction is on me—and I need to totally own it—not what someone else does, but my reaction to what they do.

In a biblical sense, it’s me not allowing another person to make me betray who I am in Christ.

just like a seed contains everything in it necessary to bloom, so do we.

If we don’t know who we are, we will constantly be manipulated into who others want us to be or become enmeshed in the needs of other people.

When we know who we are, we are whole and available to love, serve, and give to others from that fullness.

If we don’t know who we are, then we will love, serve, and give, hoping people will fill our empty places and make us feel whole. And in doing so, we will always be defined by h...

We want to let God’s Word become the words of truth for our identity. When God is the source of our identity, we are much less prone to others feeding our insecurity.

As you let all these words sit with you, pray and ask God to help you receive from Him who you really are. He created you and made you in His very own image. Capture an image of His goodness and you’ll find some part of you there.

Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:10)

Jesus, thank You for being such a safe place for me to return to when I’m struggling with my identity. When I’m tempted to look to others for validation and acceptance, please remind me to look up at You.

Thank You for the grace and patience You have toward me as I grow and learn on this journey.

Without stopping the cycle by establishing appropriate boundaries, either there will be an eventual emotional explosion of frustration, which you’ll later regret, or simmering resentments that will silently eat away inside of you until you truly can’t stand that person at all.

Sometimes the worst kind of anger and bitterness happens when you feel forced to smile on the outside while you are screaming on the inside.

I allowed things to get to such a bad place, I couldn’t hold on to the real me.

Someone else being disappointed doesn’t make us a disappointment. We can listen to the statements of others for the purpose of considering if there’s any truth in them and if so, what we may need to receive in humility. But we can’t hold onto someone else’s disappointment as an indictment of who we are.