Good Boundaries and Goodbyes Quotes

“God calls us to obey Him. 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.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“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.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“Relationships often die not because of conversations that were had but rather conversations that were needed but never had.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“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.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“So, lesson learned: some goodbyes are not for a season, they are forever. but 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…..
…..Remember, some people appear to say the right things, but their actions betray their words.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“The person who continues to break your heart isn’t in a place to properly care for your heart.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“A hurtful statement can be called a mistake. But a repeated pattern of hurtful statements or uncaring attitudes or even unjust expectations is much more than a mistake. These patterns are misuses of the purposes of a relationship. Why is this so crucial to understand? Because unchecked misuse of a relationship can quickly turn into abuse in a relationship.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“Somewhere in all the looking around at others for validation, we’ve stopped looking up. If we are living honest lives that honor God, we must not forget that people not liking our boundary does not mean we aren’t living right before God. When someone says something that hurts or offends us when we draw a boundary, it can be good to check ourselves. Is any part of this an attempt on our part to do harm, control, retaliate, check out, or give ourselves permission to be irresponsible? While checking ourselves is healthy, questioning our identity is not. Checking ourselves means looking at a current attitude or behavior to see if it is in line with God’s instructions and wisdom. Questioning our identity is doubting who we are because we have given too much power to other people by letting their opinions define us. I don’t know any other way to say this except to be absolutely direct: 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. Remember, we talked about personal access and responsibility in previous chapters. When we give people personal access to us, those people must be responsible with it. And emotional access to our hearts is especially important.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“And when their level of responsibility is a zero, their level of access to you should also be a zero.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“When we allow a boundary to be violated, bad behavior will be validated.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“What hurts us will not be our full story.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“If someone is getting in the way of you becoming the person God created you to be or frustrating the work God has called you to do, for you that person is toxic.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“Remember all the work you've done to draw boundaries was not about controlling someone else's behavior. It's about paying attention ad being hones 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 greater risk of lacking self-control. When a relationship shifts from being difficult to being destructive, it's the right time to consider a goodbye.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“Love can be unconditional but relational access never should be”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“Memories are both our greatest treasures and our greatest sorrows.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“My counselor, Jim, always says, “Say what you mean, mean what you say, and don’t say it mean.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“Again, 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.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“I think her wisdom should be considered for all relationships. When we give people relational access to us, it should never lead to “less safety, less sanity, or less strengthening for the individuals in that relationship.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“Adults inform. Children explain.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“Love can be unconditional but relational access never should be.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“If you are smelling smoke, there is fire. And the only reasonable option at this point is to either put out the fire or get yourself out of the fire.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“Love must be honest. Love must be safe. Love must seek each person’s highest good.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“don’t have to overexplain or even have a big, sit-down conversation about boundaries. You can simply state that you don’t have the capacity right now, thank her for understanding, and offer to help in other ways that don’t hyperextend you.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“Boundaries protect the right kind of love and help prevent dysfunction from destroying that love. Boundaries help us say what needs to be said, do what needs to be done, and establish what is and isn’t acceptable.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“It’s immaturity that creates the crazy-making effect of causing you to doubt reality, second guess what is true, and get yourself so off-kilter you stop addressing what obviously needs to be talked about. Another person’s immaturity will always be felt by a mature person. You may not be able to put your finger on it, but you will ask, “What’s going on here?” The person may be extremely intelligent and successful and even quote Bible verses left and right but lack emotional maturity. That doesn’t mean we should leverage this in judgmental or demeaning ways against them. Remember, but for the grace of God, we could be doing some of the same things they are. We don’t want to grow hard, angry, or develop an attitude of superiority when setting boundaries. We must stay humble and surrendered to Jesus in this process. So, let them have their own journey and revelation. Be wise with setting and keeping your boundaries and remember that you don’t have to stay in the same place the other person is in. And use these insights to help you become more aware of what’s at play, so you don’t keep feeling like the crazy one and discounting your discernment.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“That’s why we have to work through these things and grow into a maturity enabling us to use restraint. Mature people can disagree but still respect the sanity of the other person. Mature people are willing to see the impact their actions are having on the other person and make reasonable adjustments. Or, if they are unwilling to adjust, mature people at least communicate their unwillingness and acknowledge that the relationship may need to change significantly. They do all of this without accusing, abusing, or losing it.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“The feeling of anxiety is like an alarm bell alerting us to remember the Lord is near, so we don’t have to overreact; we can let the peace of God protect our hearts and minds, and intentionally direct and filter our thoughts, factoring in what is still good. And keep putting into practice these good principles.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“instead of feeling stuck because I can’t control the choices of the other person, I take control of reducing the access to the level of responsibility they are capable of. That solution is called a boundary.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“Like I said before, boundaries aren’t just a good idea, they are a God idea.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“While checking ourselves is healthy, questioning our identity is not. Questioning our identity is doubting who we are because we have given too much power to other people by letting their opinions define us.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are