Setting boundaries teaches others how to treat you

Have you ever felt like you needed to get somewhere and be left alone? Not necessarily leave your house, but just be left alone.

Not even left alone meaning total solitude, I mean left alone where maybe the T.V.'s are kept off and the radio isn't glaring and the kids are stilled—playing or doing something quietly.  Husband too.

This is the sort of quietness that my soul longs for today. My depths need to be searched, scanned so that decisions can be made wisely and insightfully.

He has told the heart on many occasions and reiterated it again this morning: set some boundaries.

Boundaries are our life savers.  They are what stops the ocean waves from rushing in carrying us away.

God has drawn lines in the sand.  He's set boundaries 'cause He knows their importance.

Look at the expanse ... the horizon.

Throughout our lives there are things that separate, bound us by various means for various reasons.

Take our homes for instance, in our homes are rooms with their lines, curves and walls.  Those lines, curves and walls are there to prevent one room from engulfing into another, they prevent the elements from outside coming within, the lines are there to say where the doors belong, where the ceilings go, and where the privacy starts and stops.

 Boundaries abound.

Our life is no different ... our personal being and space need boundaries, yet when it comes to setting personal boundaries often times we become timid, fragile and scared.  Why is that?

Could it be that we feel we are unworthy?  So unworthy in fact that we will be left ... abandoned if we don't allow certain people to have their way with us?

It is true you know?  "We do teach people how to treat us."


I'm one guilty of allowing certain people to behave in certain ways out of fear ... 

... fears that I've only now had the courage to admit to myself.

Now I'm at the point where I say if my having boundaries for myself makes you want to leave, "then leave 'cause you were not worth me anyway."


To someone like me that sounds arrogant and mean, but I'm not bothered by it anymore 'cause I know that the last thing I ever mean to be is arrogant and mean.  I say it for sanity.

I've gotten too old to fret over who leaves me and who stays.

During my prayer time God has showed me how if I want what I say I want, I will need to set boundaries. Period.

The other day I was reading Beth Moore's blog, Beth wrote that her daughter Melissa said she no longer had any friends only her family.

Beth asked her why that was so and Melissa said because the only thing she's been doing lately is writing and ministry work.

She had not been able to be as her friends once knew her to be.  She had become unavailable because she'd been busy writing and what have you.

Beth went on to say how she could relate with what her daughter was saying and feeling.  She said that she too had lost some friends for the same reason, but that after 30 years she still had some time-trusted ones.  Ones who understood and respected her boundaries.

She had friends who understood and respected the boundaries that she needed to set due to the calling that God has placed on her life.

My point, I guess is that we all need to set boundaries.  God may not have called you to write, but He has called you to something so if you aren't a person who sets boundaries: start.  If you're a person who sets them, but doesn't adhere to it.  You are a person cheating yourself.

Start today afresh and anew set some healthy boundaries for yourself.  And if you happen to loose a few friends in the process because they couldn't respect your boundaries—then hey, "maybe they weren't worth you anyway."




Today's post was inspired by Dr. Carolyn's radio program "Boundaries: breaking free from the disease to please."