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

by Lysa TerKeurst

I know what it feels like to be paralyzed by another person’s choices that break your heart over and over and not know what to do about it. I know the frustration of saying something has to change but feeling stuck when the other person isn’t cooperating with those needed changes. So while some relationships become unsustainable to the point that it’s necessary to move beyond a good boundary to a goodbye, you don’t have to become someone you were never meant to be. When we’re hurt, good boundaries and goodbyes help us to not get stuck in a perpetual state of living hurt.

I accept that I am powerless to control other people. Instead, I use my energy to limit my interactions with difficult people, remove myself from destructive relationships, and pursue loving well the people in my healthy relationships that deserve the best of me.

Remember, you set boundaries to help you stop feeling so stuck and powerless and allow you to get to a healthier place.

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.

If we want to stay healthy, we have to use our limited energy in the right way. We could waste years putting all our efforts into trying to change the other person’s mind or prove to them why we need the boundary, or worst of all, we could drop the boundary altogether and continue living in dysfunction.

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.

All that a seed goes through to grow into a plant is part of the process of becoming what it was designed to be—not a process of determining its worth or value (1 Corinthians 15:38–44).

Other people don’t get the final say about who we are. God does. Therefore, what makes it possible to not fall apart into a fractured and frail shadow version of the woman we are meant to be is this: we must place a boundary around our identity, protecting it and guarding it, using God’s truth to inform and stabilize what we know, what we feel, and what we do.

Healthy relationships don’t feel threatening. Loving relationships don’t feel cruel. Secure relationships don’t feel as if everything could implode if you dared to draw a boundary.

There’s a big difference between waiting for a breaking point and establishing a breaking point. A goodbye shouldn’t sneak up on us because if we set boundaries with consequences, breaking points are established ahead of time.

What am I willing to live with? What is and is not acceptable behavior? What are my deal breakers that would pull me from a place of health into unhealth?

It’s so hard to recognize what is when you’ve been persistently trying to get someone to step into what could be. You can see it so clearly. It’s 7:30 EST to you. But it’s still just 4:30 PST to them. And unless you can alter the universe and wrangle the sun, you just aren’t going to be able to get your vision and their vision to align.

And the worst part of it all is that you feel guilty for wanting to make changes. Actually, you feel awful. And it’s not just because of what they’ve said to you. All the most hurtful statements are what you say to yourself because you’re a woman who wants desperately to do the right thing.