Intentional Boundaries

"Boundaries define us.  

They define what is me and what is not me.  

A boundary shows me where I end and someone else begins..."   

~Henry Cloud

Can I be real for a minute?  Boundaries are really hard for me.  I really struggle with the feeling that I am failing in life when I set them.  I do not think I am necessarily alone here either.  I think we often associate boundaries with "mean" people.  You know those people who are the last to help anyone ever.  We think of boundaries as the meanest rendition of Ebenezer Scrooge.

God has been teaching me a lot about needing to establish boundaries over the past few years, but the last couple of months have felt like boot camp in boundary setting!  Which then results in incredible guilt that I am upsetting people....

"A boundary shows me where I end and someone else begins, 

leading me to a sense of ownership.

Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom"

~Henry Cloud

Imagine the United States without state boundaries....
What kind of chaos exists in that scenario?
Now image each state without county boundaries....
Now think of you neighbors....
What happens if you neighborhood has no boundaries?
What if those property lines did not exist?
Who is responsible or weeding what flower bed?
Who is responsible to mow what part of the lawn?

Boundaries in real life help us recognize what we are responsible for maintaining.
This applies to the scenario of your neighborhood, but also to our personal life.
Boundaries help create order.

If you think about it God starts our story with boundaries.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"
Genesis 1:1

God starts the story of all creation by defining two separate entities.
Heaven and Earth.
They have a distinct different role to play in the story that is beginning to unfold.
They have boundaries that set them apart from one another.

It is out of this story that creation continues all the way to you and I.
God created us distinctly separate.
God created us with natural physical boundaries.
The crazy thing is that God creates us with boundaries for a really good reason!

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6:
"There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them.  There are different kinds of service, but the same LORD.  There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work."

So here is the amazing thing that God has been showing me about boundaries.
They are there so I do not have to do it all and be all things to all people.
It is humanly impossible for me to help everyone I want to help.
And that is ok.

Boundaries are God's way of encouraging me to recognize my limits and be the best version of the person he created me to be.
When I recognize and set my boundaries from a better understanding of how God created and gifted me, my boundaries will actually benefit others.
Those boundaries will keep me out of their gifting.
It will keep me from interfering in the lessons God is trying to teach them that I with my human understanding will try to "fix".

Healthy boundaries can create the opportunity for amazing community.

"Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it."
1 Corinthians 12:27

What happens if we each begin to recognize what our part in that body is and stop trying to the part of another?  What if rather than a group of people spread thin, the church begins to develop into a group of people living from their gifting and strength?  What kind of community do we begin to create?  How does it change how we share God's love with the world?

Intentional Love

My heart hurts today.  In the past four days, I have seen anger, bitterness and hatred run rampant.  I have heard words thrown as daggers at those we call friends, but who see the world differently from us.  I have watched as our country begins once more to take sides and wonder how after fighting a Civil War which was bloody and ugly have we come to this place once more as friends turn on one another in the aftermath of tragedy.

My heart goes out to the families who even now sit in hospital rooms with their loved one's, who were injured.  My heart breaks for the families that must make funeral preparations for a life cut short.  But the truth is that these figures are mere names to me.  I know nothing of their story.  I have no idea about what their favorite food was, whether they loved movies or a good book better.  What were their dreams?  What was their most embarrassing moment?  All of the things that make us human are things that I do not know about any of these people that I have read about over the weekend no matter what side with which they were aligned.

After college I visited Washington D.C.  the Vietnam Memorial was one of the "must see" places.  I remember visiting the wall and wanting so badly to experience emotion, but I felt a detached sadness.  I could appreciate the sacrifice of all of the lives represented on its long length, but I had no one represented in the letters carved onto the face of the stone.  It impacted how I experienced something that creates such an emotional experience for some.

Events like those our country has experienced in the past few days is similar to my experience in Washington D.C.  They happen someplace separate of ourselves and they can have the impact of a detached sadness or outrage because of the very same reason, we do not know the stories that go with the names.  This detachment allows us to label those faceless names and masses.  We lose sight of the very real fact that each and every one of them is someones father, brother, mothers, sister, son, daughter or friend.  They each have a story in the same way we have a story.

It takes an intentional attempt to be self-aware to view any of these people as more than faceless names on a paper.  It takes intentional effort to slow down one's reaction enough to act and speak in love rather than expressing anger brought on by our fear at those things out of our control.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.

But the greatest of these is love.

~1 Corinthians 13:13

Paul reminds us in I Corinthians that love does not dishonor, nor is it self-seeking or quick to anger.  Rather it is patient and kind.  It loves and protects, trusts, hopes and perseveres.

The Gospel of John reminds us that God sent His Son out of love, not to condemn humankind, but to offer a means of reconciliation with Him (John 3:16-17).

Reconciliation...  Sounds hard doesn't it?  Reconciling with people who don't see things the same way we do...

Mother Teresa once said, "I have found the paradox, if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love"

What happens if each of us as individuals begin to love unconditionally like that?  What if when we experience hurt we make the intentional decision to love more?

The more I study Scripture the more I become convinced that the lasting power of Jesus ministry is not his miracles.  It is not his dynamic parables or even his resistance to the legalistic model of religion practiced by the Pharisees.

It was the strength of the love he practiced and taught.  

My husband shares a piece of wisdom from his counselor

 "Anger is fear trying to control something". 

I think we see that in full display in moments such as those we experienced as a nation this weekend.

We see it in our own reaction to these events.  It can be a little disheartening...  How are we suppose to deal with the anger that we experience from the varied perspectives that run rampant in the aftermath?  It can be so easy to become fearful and then to watch that quickly morphs into anger as we try to control the opinions of others, who think differently than we do.

There is no fear in love;

but perfect love casts out fear:

because fear has torment.

~1 John 4:15

The only true response to these events is love.  By all means hold your family and friends a little closer, but stretch out your arms to those who see the world differently from you.  The most effective way to defeat the anger that surrounds us is to overcome our fear with love.  When we learn to love people who see the world through a different lens, truly love them without the caveat of "maybe they'll come to see it my way", we embrace the love that Christ emulated for us.

The funny thing in Scripture is that we never really find out whether the woman Jesus saved from being stoned to death really left her life of adultery.  We do not see the full story of those that Jesus cast demons out of, but we seem to just assume that they walked away from their encounter with him changed.  That is the power of the strength of the love He demonstrated.  Even centuries later we feel the love in the pages of their stories and cannot help, but believe that they were forever changed by that encounter. 

So who can you intentionally choose to love this week? 

Today? 

This moment?

Relationships

Life has been crazy the last couple of weeks!

Oh, in one sense it is been that way because my husband had to travel for work.

But the other way it has been crazy is that I have interacted with multiple of my neighbors during this period!

Now this is huge because I am an introvert.

Sadly, I often have an intense desire to run into my house after extroverting myself for any period of time.  

This last week though, I decided to push myself to not do that so much.  Instead I began crossing the driveway away from the door to my house that was so enticing and instead I got to know my neighbors a little better.

Guess how much training that took?

None. Nada. Zilch. Zip. Zero.

Photo by Makole Photography

All it took was using the skills we learn as children.

It always stands out to me in Scripture, how much we try to complicate the messages of Jesus.

Matthew 18:3 says:

"Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, 

you will never enter the kingdom of heaven"

I have often heard this verse spun to emphasize the humility we are suppose to demonstrate as believers.

That sounds good, but if we go back and look at what is going on around this verse we start to see that this verse is more radical than humility!

This verse is set in the middle of a community that is dominated by the Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire was an environment where position was valued.  

Throughout the Gospels, we see examples of tax-collectors, these were Jews who turned on their own for position with the Roman government.  

We see the Sadducees, who cemented their position by social, political and religious means.

Into this society comes Jesus' disciples with the question "Who, then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" (Matthew 18:1b)

When Jesus calls a child to him to answer this question it is a radically different message than society has presented.  All around them his disciples are seeing a struggle for power.  Into that struggle for greatness comes Jesus, who points them to a child.

I have a soon to be 3 year old and a 1 year old.  

At our house we are constantly living in the world of a child.  

Do you know how uncomplicated that world is?
Somehow as we become adults things change.

There are now complex steps and formulas for making friends.

Social class does not effect them.

I took my 1 year old to the grocery store yesterday and everyone was a friend to wave at no matter what they looked like, how old they were or what position they held in society.

Somehow over time we seem to have complicated the idea of relationship.  

We have books and formulas telling us how to use this skills we developed as a child that we have lost as adults.

We have complex formulas for how to make disciples.

We rate people on scales creating a hierarchy to determine how we "should" relate to them.

We approach relationships in a detached formal manner, completely forgetting that these words for the disciples are for us also...

"Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, 

you will never enter the kingdom of heaven"

What happens if we forget the formulas and charts?

What happens if we discard the hierarchy?

What happens if we just start waving to people in the grocery story like a 1 year old?

What happens if we follow the example of a 3 year old and ask everyone we meet there name?

Ok, so maybe that might be a little creepy for adults, but what if we start by being aware?

What if we start by setting the goal to find one person wherever we go to say hi and learn their name?

Will we do it perfectly?  Probably not, but if we get it just some of the time we give our forgotten relational muscles a work-out.

One small way to start is to walk away from your door the next time you get home and walk toward the neighbor, who just got home also.