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

by Lysa TerKeurst

The more vulnerable we become, the more exposed the tender places inside of us become.

We set boundaries so we know what to do when we very much want to love those around us really well without losing ourselves in the process. Good boundaries help us preserve the love within us even when some relationships become unsustainable and we must accept the reality of a goodbye.

But we can’t enable bad behavior in ourselves and others and call it love. We can’t tolerate destructive patterns and call it love. And we can’t pride ourselves on being loyal and longsuffering in our relationships when it’s really perpetuating violations of what God says love is.

When we’re hurt, good boundaries and goodbyes help us to not get stuck in a perpetual state of living hurt.

Love given is wildly beautiful. Love received is wildly fulfilling. But for love to thrive as true and lasting, it must be within the safety of trust. Without trust, love will die. So, I had to say it: “You cannot build trust that keeps getting broken.”

I now believe we must honor what honors God. And in doing so, we must not confuse the good commands to love and forgive with the bad realities of enabling and covering up things that are not honoring to God. When someone’s dishonorable actions beg us not to stay, this should give us serious pause.

Health cannot bond with unhealth. So, either I had to get unhealthy and enable this cycle to continue, or I had to follow through with the boundaries we had agreed upon.

I knew at some point I would stare at my face in the mirror and wonder, But what if I rescued him this time and it finally turned everything around? Or what if I don’t rescue him and something terrible happens? Will I regret this for the rest of my life? Is there anything else I can do?

You can’t reason with a person caught in the addiction cycle any more than you can try to talk a live grenade out of exploding. When the pin is pulled a chain of events is set off that creates destruction. Most people struggling with addictions will have irrational justifications that will never make sense. They don’t factor in others. They truly think their choices only affect them.

And the only reasonable option at this point is to either put out the fire or get yourself out of the fire.

The real issue was I started to resent the amount of emotional access to my life I had given to her.

We don’t want to get so consumed with the pain and chaos of unhealthy relationship patterns that we become a carrier of human hurt rather than a conduit of God’s love.

Then, as we keep reading through the Bible, the access to God became more restricted and conditional. His love was unconditional but access to Him was not.

“Continued iniquity leads to irregular desires, which leads to a degenerate mind. Romans 1:28–32 describes this deviation in graphic detail.”3

Have we required people to be responsible with the amount of access we’ve granted them? And, do we have the appropriate consequences in place to help hold them accountable if they violate our boundaries?

Or, maybe you have a friend you spend a lot of time with and you give her details about hard situations you are walking through. But, over and over, she slips and shares those details you didn’t want shared with others. The more this happens, the more unsafe you start to feel. Even when you address the problem, it still happens. So, if you don’t want details shared, you’ll have to reduce the access you give to the more private aspects of your life.

Boundaries aren’t meant to be weaponized. They are meant to be used to prioritize keeping relationships safe.

This revealed for me personally that I had some codependent tendencies I hadn’t realized. In other words, if she wasn’t okay with me, I was having a hard time being okay with me.

I have rewarded people for disrespecting my boundaries. A classic line I’ve used: “But they didn’t mean it this time. I’ll just love them better and things will get better.”

I wrongly believe someone’s pushback is an indication that I’m doing something wrong. I don’t like the drama and complications that can happen when I establish a boundary and the other person continues to ask things of me that aren’t in alignment with that boundary. Or they just flat-out ignore the boundary. And when they do, my natural inclination is to take the blame.

“Adults inform. Children explain.”

It’s like I have temporary amnesia and start thinking the boundary is hindering peace instead of remembering the boundary is the only fighting chance we have at reclaiming our peace.

People who are genuine and honest don’t go on and on trying to convince you what a good person they are. Proverbs 31:30 reminds us that “charm is deceptive.”

Adam and Eve had great access to God and the garden. And they had a great responsibility that came along with that access.

keep in Hebrew, samar, can also be translated as to “guard” or “protect.” It’s used of priests guarding and protecting the temple (Numbers 3:38; Numbers 18:7).

It’s also used of the guards who were to keep watch at the watchtower (Nehemiah 13:22).

And we are to guard and protect our calling to love God and love people. (Note to self: that doesn’t say love God and enable people.)

He loves us unconditionally and He will not tolerate our sin. Both are true with God and both can be true in our relationships as well. God had grace but His grace was there to lead people to better behavior, not to enable bad behavior. And the same should be true of our grace as well.

They were in the process of dying. To eat of the tree of life in that state would have perpetuated them for all eternity in sin, depravity, decay, and therefore eternal separation from God.

Don’t continue to excuse negative or destructive patterns of behavior or addictions, as if they are just occasional slip-ups and isolated mistakes. There is something deeper going on in the foundational thinking and processing of someone who has been hurting you with their poor choices over and over. “Things are better” is not the same as “things are healed.”

I am not honoring Jesus when I give permission for the other person to act in ways that Jesus never would.

Proverbs 15:1 says, “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”

Colossians 4:6 says, “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”