Boundaries

Something that has been weighing heavily on my heart lately is boundaries. Seeing there place where you end and someone else begins is so important to how we interact with the world around us and, most importantly, with God. 

I could go on and on about the book I’ve been reading, Boundaries by Henry Cloud, and I do in my daily life, but for right here and now, I’ll stick to this important lesson that I’ve been learning. 

Your feelings are 100% your responsibility. 

No one can “make you” feel a certain way. That kind of statement places the blame on someone else. Sure, people’s choices and actions can cause feelings to arise within you, but you are totally responsible for how you go about fixing that. 

For example, if a friend of mine constantly talks about herself and never allows me to talk about how I’m doing, that will probably hurt my feelings or cause me to feel resentful towards her. However, if I just constantly say “So-and-so makes me so upset” but never do anything about it, then I am passing blame on to her, thinking that she will fix my feelings. 

What I should do in this situation is confront her—tell her that I feel like she only talks about herself and doesn’t care to hear about me—and set a limit—say that I will no longer tolerate her apparent lack of caring for me. If she will not reciprocate the listening I do for her or ask about my life, I will not let her go on and on about herself. I will distance myself. 

This doesn’t mean I don’t care about her or her friendship. It just shows that I have a boundary—an expectation—that I expect her to respect. And if she doesn’t, there are consequences. 

Now, this was a very specific example (a fictional one, btw), but it applies in lots of areas of life, and I think if more people understood how to set these boundaries, there would be a lot more loving going on in the world. 

Taking responsibility for our own feelings is one of the most important steps the book talks about. If you don’t take responsibility for your feelings, you are allowing someone else to control you. 

God doesn’t even use our feelings to control us. He doesn’t control us at all, even though he can and has every right to. He allows us to choose how we live our lives, and he wants us to align with Him out of love, not because we feel out of control. 

There is so much more that I learned from this book, and I’m looking forward to finishing it up in the next week or so, but this is by far the most important lesson I’ve taken away so far. I hope it helps you recognize some things you can take responsibility of and makes you want to pick this amazing book up for yourselves!

Written April 2021.