Love and Boundaries: Resetting Relationships in Real Time

Boundaries are the limits that mark our responsibility in relationships, to others and for ourselves. They serve to protect our hearts, our most important asset. When we govern the core of our being well, it frees us from the destructive potential of damaging emotions and relationships. Scripture encourages us to guard our hearts, recognizing that every issue pertaining to life flows through this critical filter.

The Bible on Boundaries

Unquestionably, we are called to love, as it is our Father’s nature. Loving God involves reciprocity. We return that love by sharing it with others. We receive His love for ourselves. That aspect of welcoming His compassion to love ourselves has not always been part of faith conversations. Yet, what causes us to excel with loving others well is the degree to which we allow the Father’s love to fill us, so we can effectively pour His grace and glory.

Loving ourselves well means that we acknowledge the treasure within, even as we esteem it in others.

Boundaries in Action

Jesus exemplified the value of boundaries.

• There were multitudes who followed Him, observing miracles, receiving the benefit of His mission on the earth.
• There were many others that He dispatched to share the message of the gospel.
• Whittle that down to a smaller number of followers, and you will encounter the women who supported His ministry, and His disciples.
• Further distilled, Peter, James, and John were in the core that He drew into closer fellowship.

This picture of narrowed access and engagement reveals that even the Savior recognized the need to distinguish certain relationships. He loved everybody and came to save all, but He also exercised boundaries. He assigned position and proximity, based on the relevance to the assignment from His Father.

Mind and Communicate Your Boundaries

Sometimes, what flows through our hearts has the potential to expose us to unnecessary injury when we don’t honor our boundaries. As great a risk as it may seem, people won’t know our needs or the boundaries that nurture them if we don’t communicate. Part of being in fellowship involves caring for yourself enough to be present and state what you need, while affording others the opportunity to be who they are, in a relationship with you.

This mutuality fosters interdependence. Since life and death rest in the power of the tongue, we can healthily engage with others by verbalizing and minding our boundaries. When we develop incorrect assumptions and form expectations without honest communication, offense, unforgiveness, and unresolved anger can fester.  The resentment and bitterness that follows can drive a wedge in connections that otherwise could have been nurtured by healthy space and communication.

Don’t Minimize Others’ Boundaries

Likewise, when we dismiss other people’s needs, we dishonor them. Minimizing or ignoring their boundaries fails to love others as we love ourselves. It carries the capacity to wound people when we discount the value of their borders.

Scripture indicates that we can’t love God who we don’t see while hating (or dishonoring) our fellow human who bears God’s image. When we subtly manipulate or coerce others, we deny the good within that God created. While we may not agree with decisions or ideas, bulldozing others’ boundaries puts our own desires above others. It counters the gospel and all that Jesus purposed to do in their lives.

Minding Boundary Changes

It takes discernment and sometimes counseling to set and tend healthy boundaries. It is possible to learn. Scripture informs us about navigating the blurred lines.

Jesus highlights the value of communication when we experience issues with one another. Whether we cringe at the thought of confrontation or we pounce to give “a piece of our minds,” we all can practice and benefit from the skills vital to relationship building. We ultimately seek the peace of God to rule in our hearts.

When we are unable to find resolution with an individual, even following a third-party mediation, we might consider releasing ourselves from contact, if for a season. We don’t often discuss this reality in faith circles, but sometimes, the most honorable way to resolve conflict involves letting it go or taking a break. These are boundary changes that can bring health in some cases.

Leaving it (on the Altar of) Alone

Unfortunately, when we perpetuate or enable boundary breaking behavior, we fail to see the damage we cause to ourselves and the people we love. In scripture, Jacob, whose name meant supplanter, had built a life around deception and manipulation. He had an encounter with God on the eve of reconciling with his twin brother, after having swindled Esau out of blessing and birthright many decades prior. Jacob dispatched his family in caravans ahead of him, leaving him alone.

This solitary space allowed God to meet him and transform on the altar of “alone.” Jacob wrestled with the angel of the Lord through the night until the angel touched him in a way that rendered Jacob with a permanent limp. Not only did he leave that God encounter with a gait change, but also a new name. From a cheat to a prince, marks the kind of transformation that only God brings.

We can testify to His goodness, even in the lives of others without overreaching and trying to shape them in our image. We can witness and walk with others to a point, but just like Jacob’s life reveals, there is something that only God can do in the secret place of the soul.

We all may have “Jacobs” whom we want to rescue, which would result in overstepping their boundaries, absolving their agency, and taking responsibility and liberty that isn’t ours to mind. It takes God and His grace to surrender our attempts with muscling someone into change, even if we do have hopeful intentions. Honoring other people’s boundaries removes us from the throne of control, so God can flex His sovereignty and be glorified all around.

Boundaries and Growth

Transition is disruptive, accompanied by the discomfort of changing seasons, settings, and shifting boundaries. As essential as change is, we often resist it, though this is the means by which we grow. God’s Word reveals truth that we may bristle against receiving. Nonetheless, it teaches us how to grow.

Let’s acknowledge and honor this as nature demonstrates. When a plant outgrows the capacity of its container, it can’t be fruitful by remaining in its original place. Repotting it into a larger vessel provides space to breathe and reproduce, and to perhaps, propagate and populate elsewhere.

When we consider the need to revise and update relationships and roles from this framework, it prepares us for the inevitability and the good produced through change. Adjusting boundaries from the perspective of growth disentangles our hearts from offense as life’s seasons change. It frees our roots to anchor rightly in the present, while stretching into new spaces where we bear fruit and give life elsewhere.

Next Steps

The boundaries we determine take time, support, and counsel. Therapy can provide a safe space to work through underlying issues that make establishing, maintaining, or honoring boundaries difficult.

The healthiest place to begin is within your own heart. Talk it through with the Holy Spirit, allowing His guidance to nudge you toward healing from muddled boundaries and changing relationships.

Often, experiences with poor boundaries have emerged from a sensitive place in the past. Sometimes, this is not always readily discernible. However, with reflection and help, you begin to see how poor boundaries have impacted your relationships.  Relationships fraught with miscommunication and misunderstanding can often be rooted in a blurred boundary. It may be time to consider gathering essential support.

The counselors in our directory are able to come alongside you to help you reset your relationships in real time, with spiritual and practical tools and resources. We recognize that you probably don’t want to push people away, but neither do you want to be taken advantage of in all of your relationships. Navigating the spectrum of extremes is possible with a therapist who appropriately fits your particular concerns.

Reach out to us today to identify a professional who will support you on this journey. A new path awaits, as you define the markers for your heart’s territory needed to reset your relationships with yourself and others.