More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
We don’t want to be void of grace. But we also don’t want to rob someone of the good outcome that might happen if they recognize that you aren’t an unlimited source. The main point is, we shouldn’t and ultimately can’t be the one to supply all of what another person needs.
Jesus loved people enough to give them the choice to walk away.
God does not call us to obey every wish and whim of other people. God calls us to love other people. God does not call us to demand that they love us back and meet every need we have.
I need to be accepted. But I now recognize that sacrificing healthy boundaries to get someone to support me is the wrong way to get my needs met.
Loving relationships don’t feel cruel. Secure relationships don’t feel as if everything could implode if you dared to draw a boundary.
We’ve survived what we feared. But can we survive the remembering?
Might it be possible to acknowledge hurt without unleashing hurt?
when two good people part ways and don’t cause harm to each other, it may actually allow for more good to be done in their respective callings.
codependency came out of the substance abuse field and described a person struggling with drugs and alcohol. The “codependent” was a loved one or friend of the addict who was trying to help them but ultimately ended up enabling them instead. “Co” means “with,” dependency means “I’m reliant on them.”
But that’s like standing in front of a tornado with your hands out and believing you’ll be able to redirect its vicious spin away from you. In the end, the tornado will suck you in, spit you out, and give no regard to how badly you are traumatized in the process.
A renovation is a temporary setback that is actually a setup for something even more beautiful. There’s a plan and when you stay true to the plan, you know what’s being torn apart is for the purpose of being put back together better and stronger than before.
“Mental health is a commitment to reality at all costs.”
A big part of setting boundaries in even the best of circumstances is accepting the reality that when you know a change needs to happen, you need to move toward making it happen.
Remember all the work you’ve done to draw boundaries was not about controlling someone else’s behavior. It’s about paying attention and being honest about how someone’s poor behavior and lack of responsibility is possibly controlling you. And when people close to us are acting out of control, that’s when we run the greatest risk of lacking self-control.
When a relationship shifts from being difficult to being destructive, it’s the right time to consider a goodbye.
an emotionally destructive relationship is this: Pervasive and repetitive patterns of actions and attitudes that result in tearing someone down or inhibiting a person’s growth, often accompanied by a lack of awareness, lack of remorse and lack of change.2
when their level of responsibility is a zero, their level of access to you should also be a zero.
we all need grace when we mess up. But we also need the awareness that there is a difference between an occasional slip in behavior and an ongoing pattern of behavior.
if healing isn’t possible if you stay in relationship with this person, then take a separate path toward peace.
Processing a possible goodbye isn’t permission to peace out or tap out. It’s a pathway toward grieving and accepting one of the toughest realities we will ever face—an unsustainable relationship.
But when those who inflict harm aren’t horrified by it enough to get help so they don’t do it again, they most likely will do it again. And remember, the greater access we give them, the greater we will feel the impact of their harmful actions and the longer it will take us to recover from it all.
“The glory of God is a human fully alive.”
A goodbye shouldn’t sneak up on us because if we set boundaries with consequences, breaking points are established ahead of time.
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.
It will seem so senseless when your biological dad doesn’t treasure you or have the desire to protect you as you see your friends’ dads doing for them. You’ve dreamed of having conversations with him where you know he’d do anything for you. Instead, he acts rushed like you might be a bit of an inconvenience to him.
When I so very much keep wanting and hoping for someone to say something they’ve never said or do something they’ve never done, I’ve now decided to accept that maybe they never will.
Grief made me face my disappointment. Grief made me realize that my sadness wasn’t because I was wanting dead things to come back to life. I kept crying because my basic desires had never been given life in the first place.
I think we can all form pictures in our minds of the roles other people fulfill in our lives. But it’s utterly unhelpful for us to point fingers at them and try to make them change. And the longer we do this, the more we will miss getting to know and acknowledge who they really are.
The real problem was I had refused to see them as they really are.
We all cause grief. We all carry grief. But the good news is, we don’t have to be consumed by our grief.
The worst part of dysfunction in relationships is the feeling of hopelessness and powerlessness that too many of us have been swirling in for years.
Sometimes what gets me through the hardest parts of my life is knowing I’m not the only one going through it.
When set appropriately and kept consistently, boundaries really do serve to help keep us safe and our relationships healthy.
The greatest source of my suffering was my refusal to accept what I could not change.
Dang. I needed that.
The greatest joy in life isn’t when it all works out like we hoped it would. It’s when we experience the God of the universe pausing to reach us and remind us we aren’t alone.
The secret is not to get lost in the heartbreak, stuck in all that seems so unfair, or paralyzed by our own mistakes along the way.
