Forgiveness and opening up to more abuse are not the same thing. Forgiveness has to do with the past. Reconciliation and boundaries have to do with the future. Limits guard my property until someone has repented and can be trusted to visit again. And if they sin, I will forgive again, seventy times seven. But I want to be around people who honestly fail me, not dishonestly deny that they have hurt me and have no intent to do better.
For love to work, each spouse has to realize his or her freedom. And boundaries help define the freedom we have and the freedom we do not have. Marriage is not slavery. It is based on a love relationship deeply rooted in freedom. Each partner is free from the other and therefore free to love the other. Where there is control, or perception of control, there is not love. Love only exists where there is freedom.
Trying to get through life on your own limited strength, knowledge, and resources leads to futility and a loss of hope. But in God’s economy, getting to the end of yourself is the beginning of hope.
What does “work out your salvation” mean? It means that now that God has delivered and saved us, we are to take responsibility to live a life that reflects him and his ways: daily dependence on God, trust, love, honesty, and all the things that are of him. And while we are doing that, he is doing miraculous, divine things to achieve his ends.
Parents get into trouble when they don’t empathize with their child’s pain. They either overidentify with the pain of the child and give in, or they get angry at the child’s pain and go to war. Empathy and keeping the limit is the answer for both extremes.
Blocking a child’s ability to say no handicaps that child for life. Adults with handicaps like Robert’s have this first boundary injury: they say yes to bad things.
It’s hard to give up playing God when you’ve been doing it a long time.
People who apologize quickly may act like they are sorry or as if they are interested in holiness, but they are really leading someone on. They may say all the words, and some are taken in by their tears and “sorrow.” But in reality they are more sorry about getting caught. They do not change, and the future will be exactly like the past.
Good boundaries, both those that help us manage ourselves and lead others, always produce freedom, not control.
Someone who does not own his need to change does not change, and the hurt is likely to continue.
Don’t let life pass you by as you shrink back. Don’t let passivity create a mummylike, survival-type existence for you. Find people who want to help you enter the world, encourage you to take action, and support your attempts to regain control over your life and relationships.
Psychologists call this dynamic a “not me” experience: People have a character structure that does not allow them to see certain realities as part of themselves. They project things onto others and cannot own their own flaws.
Unsafe people only apologize instead of changing their behavior.
But in reality they are more sorry about getting caught. They do not change, and the future will be exactly like the past.
Unsafe people blame others instead of taking responsibility.
With reactive boundaries, you fight the friend who constantly bugs you. With proactive boundaries, you decide you don’t need that kind of a friend.
Unsafe people lie instead of telling the truth.
We were made to take in those patterns and to live by them. That is what parenting is about. We internalize the ways of our parents, and then live by them. Thus, we are destined to repeat troublesome internalized patterns of relating or performing until we become aware of them and change.
God will match our effort, but he will never do our work for us.
Just like an unpruned rosebush, your endeavors will be merely average without pruning.