Protecting Love

If you have followed my blog or facebook status updates lately, you already know I'm thinking a lot about the idea of boundaries--what they are, how to use them, why they are important etc. In my conversations with people I am often amazed to hear that "boundaries aren't biblical," and I've seen people be convinced of this by the church. I really disagree with this, and think we do a lot of damage to people and families when we support this kind of rhetoric. I think boundaries are very biblical--Jesus set them all the time with people, he definitely did not give every person he encountered exactly what they thought they wanted from him. He withdrew to be alone many times. He chose three individuals to share special information with that others were not privy to. He rebuked behavior when people were acting outside the lines of their allocated sphere of power or responsibility.

In my reading on the topic I have found several things to be helpful as I think through why this is so important, and I thought I'd share just a couple of the things I'm chewing on these days. What I'm really learning is that we are never able to control another person's choices or behavior. I know, duh, right?! Sounds so simple, but how often do we attempt to manipulate, coerce, or bully others into changing something WE want them to change? A lot! This is what I am really really trying to hard to remember. I am in charge of me: my feelings, emotions, reactions, and behavior. I am not able to change or control anyone else no matter how badly I may want to. Therefore, since I can control what I do, I need boundaries in place because I cannot control what others do. It essentially works like this. Say I am in relationship with someone who does nothing but gossip or talk about others all day long and I'm tired of listening to it. We'll call her Terry because, well I don't know a Terry. Spending time with Terry listening to her gossip all the time is making me feel guilty, it's negatively influencing my opinion of the poor people Terry continues talking about, and I am generally feeling more and more negative as I spend time with her. I can't make Terry stop talking about others. I can't control what comes out of her mouth. But, what I can do is choose to not listen or engage in this gossiping behavior any longer. I can tell her, "Terry, I love you and value our friendship. I want to stay in relationship with you, but I'm not comfortable engaging in conversations with you about other people. If you would like to change the subject and talk about something else, that would be great, but if not, I'm afraid we can't meet for lunch each week any longer."

Some of you probably think that sounds pretty harsh, like I might hurt her feelings if I actually had this conversation with her. Well, that's the other big thing I am learning from studying boundaries: hurt is not always bad. Harm is bad, but hurt is not necessarily bad. When we set boundaries, we will probably hurt people's feelings. But more often than not, that hurt might inspire a person to look at the behavior they are engaging in that is causing damage in relationships, and can possibly inspire change. Harm is when we purposefully and maliciously try to hurt a person. This is wrong, but hurt isn't always wrong. We can't go through life never hurting a person's feelings, and I don't think that should be our goal. If we hurt someone's feelings by setting a limit with them, again, we can't control that--we can't control other people's choices or reactions, only our own. We can choose to live in a sober environment. So if we are living with an alcoholic, we can say "I choose to live in a sober home, you may join me and get help, or you may choose to drink, I can't control which choice you're going to make, but I can choose to live in a safe, sober environment." Sure, the alcoholic may have their feelings hurt, but are we harming them by protecting ourselves? I don't think so, not at all.

"Scripture is full of admonitions to separate ourselves from people who act in destructive ways. We are not being unloving. Separating ourselves protects love, because we are taking a stand against things that destroy love." (Boundaries, Henry Cloud & John Townsend page 46) I am coming to believe this strongly. I have experienced this week how hard this is to do, but I have also seen first hand the pain that can come from not telling people "you're out of line. We love you, but we can't continue to engage with you as long as this behavior is not changing." I'm curious though, what have you been taught about boundaries? What do you think?