Mature, healthy people need other people; they don’t isolate themselves... Needing love isn’t being immature. Rather, it gives us the energy we need to go out and slay our dragons.
Part of being made in God’s image is having a need to be in relationship.
A child needs to internalize a model of someone who has a life of her own. The parent whose life is centered around her children is influencing them to think that life is about either becoming a parent or being forever served by a parent. Let your child know you have interests and relationships that don’t involve her. Take trips without her. Show her that you take active responsibility in meeting your own needs and solving your own problems.
However, if I do not “own” my life, my choices and options become very limited. Think how confusing it would be if someone told you to “guard this property diligently, because I will hold you responsible for what happens here,” and then did not tell you the boundaries of the property. Or they did not give you the means with which to protect the property. This would be not only confusing but also potentially dangerous.
A boundary is a “property line” that defines a person; it defines where one person ends and someone else begins.
It does “take a village” to grow a person, and to sustain one.
Proactive boundaries go beyond problem identification to problem solving. Your child needs to know that in protesting, she has only identified the problem, not solved it. A tantrum doesn’t solve anything. She needs to use these feelings to motivate her to action, to address the issue at hand. She should think about her responses and choose the best one available.
Empty people can’t love others very selflessly. They’re operating out of a vacuum of insecurities and needs. You’ve seen what happens when someone who has never had a warm, giving relationship enters into marriage, where those skills are required. It doesn’t work, and just telling them to “love themselves first” won’t work either.
Love does not begin with oneself. Love begins by receiving love, internalizing it, and then giving it away to others – paying it forward.
I learned that structure allows us to invest in the things that are important to us but don’t exist inside of us yet. There are plenty of other existing tasks, challenges, and crises that threaten to derail us, but for the things we want to build – for those getting-better goals we want to achieve – we have to create a space and a routine for bringing them into existence.
You can be free from whatever situation surrounds you to the degree that you are willing to take responsibility and ownership for it, even if it’s not your fault.
Blame is a sort of comfort food for the soul. It diverts us from the effort of owning responsibility.
Our relationship with Christ – and any other successful relationship – is based on freedom.
Safe people will help you help your child.
People who are uninvolved in character growth can be unsafe, because they are shut off from awareness of their own problems and God’s resources to transform those problems. Instead, they act out of their unconscious hurts, and then hurt others.
This is a perfect picture of what you want to develop in the soul of your child: a desire to do the right things and to avoid the wrong ones because of empathic concern for others and because of a healthy respect for the demands of God’s reality.
Not Dating Sadly, some people who really want to be dating are on the sidelines, wondering if they will ever find anyone, or if anyone will find them. This is often caused by boundary conflicts, when people withdraw to avoid hurt and risk, and end up empty-handed.
Many frustrated people try to live their lives as others have defined them.
If you find passive leanings in yourself, begin looking at how costly this has been for you. Look at the opportunities missed, people who moved on, and places you never went. This may be painful, but it will help you to start moving out of the “on hold” position in life.
Endings are a part of every aspect of life. When done well, the seasons of life are negotiated, and the proper endings lead to the end of pain, greater growth, personal and business goals reached, and better lives. Endings bring hope.