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

by Lysa TerKeurst

I can so desperately want things to be better that I try to reframe reality and convince myself that the person has changed when they haven’t. My confusion or exhaustion,...

the absence of boundaries means the presence of chaos.

keep remembering that good boundaries originated with God and are modeled by God.

Boundaries define and protect freedom.

Access requires responsibility. Remember those three words we’ve talked about before: access, responsibility, and consequence?

We are to guard and protect our hearts and our minds to make sure we keep good in and evil out. We are to guard and protect our testimony and make sure our lives produce the fruit of God’s Spirit in us. And we are to guard and protect our calling to love God and love people.

Broken boundaries bring consequences.

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.

Consequences should be for protection not harm.

We do want to remember why we need the boundary so we will keep the boundary and its protection in place.

Healthy changes in someone can’t be measured just by the words they speak. There must be evidence of changed thoughts, changed habits, changed behaviors, changed reactions, and changed patterns demonstrated consistently over a long period of time. How long? As long as it takes.

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.”

If someone’s actions toward me are hurting me, they’re hurting me. If it’s concerning, it’s concerning. If it’s wrong, it’s wrong.

But if the issues are ongoing and continuously harmful, we must acknowledge that and act accordingly. It’s not that we don’t want to be prayerful and hopeful and eager for positive changes in the other person’s life. But we don’t want to become so eager and overcommitted to their health that we stay undercommitted to our own.

So, if we draw a boundary and someone says we aren’t “acting like Jesus” we can certainly check ourselves—our tone, our words, and our actions. But remember to consider the source of that statement. The problem isn’t the boundary, it’s that the other person won’t respect the boundary.

Remember, boundaries aren’t going to fix the other person. But they are going to help you stay fixed on what is good, what is acceptable, and what you need to stay healthy and safe.

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.

When we allow a boundary to be violated, bad behavior will be validated.

The absence of boundaries means the presence of chaos.

The problem isn’t the boundary, it’s that the other person won’t ...

Boundaries aren’t going to fix the other person. But they are going to help you stay fixed on what is good, what is acceptable, and w...

When we allow our emotions to be misused and abused, there will be consequences.

The person who continues to break your heart isn’t in a place to properly care for your heart.

the person causing us anxiety in our relationship must start being more responsible or we must reduce their access. If someone is unwilling or unable to stop misusing the personal access we’ve given them, then we must change their access to match their level of responsibility.