Pause a minute and focus on that picture. What do you see?
Seriously, pause and look. What story is it telling about the two women pictured there?
Maybe it’s a moment of sisterhood and delight. Two friends, caught in dusky sunset light, leaning into a glad future with just a bit of nostalgia.
Maybe the blond–I’ll call her Susannah–is headed off to college in the morning. Amy’s giving her a last hug, resting her head on Susannah’s shoulder, reluctant to let go.
Or maybe it’s a less harmonious moment. Maybe that look on Susannah’s face is about her disappointment in what she just found out. Amy just admitted she’s gone back to alcohol, or drugs, or that loser boyfriend who belittles and hits her. Maybe Amy has just asked (again) if she can stay on Susannah’s couch, just this one more time, just for a couple of nights, and would she have a few dollars to spare? Maybe Susannah is gazing at the hope she had for this friend to get her life in order, watching that hope dissolve out there in the distance.
This picture, if it’s depicting something like that moment, is why we need to spend another week with Rule #3, Good Boundaries. Last week we talked about boundaries as guardrails, addressing behavior in our midst that interferes with what we’re trying to do together. This week we’ll consider a different aspect of this Rule #3: Boundaries as our edges. Do we know where we end and other people begin?
I learned this concept many years ago from a counselor who recommended a book by Henry McCloud and John Townsend called Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life. These authors present a faith-centered explanation of boundaries that allow us to define “what is me and what is not me.” They go on to say, “A boundary shows me where I end and someone else begins” (p. 31). It’s strange that we don’t seem to know this, but a lot of the time, we don’t.
Think about where your responsibility ends and someone else’s begins in the following examples:
- A friend calls and asks you to drop everything and come pick her up after his ride fell through.
- Your son asks if you’ll care for his children during the six weeks after their daycare provider has a baby.
- On a day that’s already busy for you, your dad, or your homebound cousin, calls and needs you to pick up his medications–today, because he’s run out of a crucial one–and deliver them to his place half an hour out of your way.
- That group you volunteer with puts out a call for help at a time you had said you weren’t available. Some of the other volunteers have called in sick, and they really need help.
- That person our church has been helping has showed up–again–with a list of needed clothes, rides, and bills that need paid. You’ve donated some clothing and food, and you gave them a ride a couple of times. But you’re feeling a little frustrated with the list that seems like it will never end.
In each of these examples, the first thing to notice is that, at least at some level, you end before these needs begin. You aren’t responsible for the rides, the medications, the child care, the volunteer hours, or the donations these people are requesting. These things belong, first of all, to other people.
Identifying the basic truth of what’s yours and what belongs to someone else doesn’t answer the question of what you should or shouldn’t say “yes” to. You might be glad to help out in one or more of the ways I listed above. If you do–when you say “yes”–you’re actually moving the boundary on where you end, making your own responsibility larger, making your you big enough to encompass this additional thing.
Moving our boundaries is a big deal. It will help us if we acknowledge when we’re doing it, so that we will do it with intention and forethought.
It’s also important to remember that if we choose to move that boundary for this particular ride that’s requested today, that doesn’t mean we’re saying “yes” to a ride tomorrow, or next week, and on into the future. The items you brought to help someone out last week doesn’t mean you have to keep bringing more. You might choose to–to expand your you again, for that ongoing need–but your prior decisions don’t commit you to ongoing servitude!
Does this feel uncomfortable to you? I’m guessing the “dad and his medication” example makes some of you squirm, and even your son’s childcare dilemma. The people closest to us already have, in a way, a claim on who we are. They’re already part of our me, at least in some ways. So it might be hard to imagine saying “no” when those requests come.
We will say “yes” a lot of times in life, to all kinds of requests that come from people we care about (and even some we don’t). When we can say “yes” with joy, and do the thing asked of us with satisfaction, that’s a kind of proof that we are living within our own Good Boundaries. Where that’s true, good work!
But many of us find ourselves saying “yes” when we don’t want to. We might have said a long-ago “yes” to something we were glad to do, but over time we’ve grown tired and annoyed at the never-endingness of it. When we find ourselves dreading that thing, or resenting the person who asked us, that’s a clue that we’ve violated the Good Boundaries that Rule #3 reminds us to maintain.
Looking back at that photo above, I wonder if Susannah has gotten worn out by Amy’s needs. I imagine Susannah longs to grasp a future that doesn’t tie her happiness to Amy’s success. Letting Amy lean on her again and again, and pull her away from her own plans, makes Susannah weary and frustrated.
Not only that, but it probably doesn’t help Amy–not really, not in the long term. In spite of our best intentions, when we become the rescuers of people around us, we play into troublesome patterns that foster dependency, lack of initiative, and loss of self esteem even for people we dearly love.
This is far too big a subject to address in this space, but if this aspect of Good Boundaries feels new or challenging to you, I hope you’ll look into the Boundaries book cited above, or other resources that you can find online or at the library. You may need a friend or a counselor–or a group like Al-Anon–to help you really incorporate this wisdom. But you–and those around you–will benefit when you get clearer about what is yours and what is theirs.
Remember, none of this means that we leave aside the rest of our #FourFoolishRules that we have been examining this month. Rule #1, “Everything Belongs,” means that there has to be room for whatever that person is going through, and for their request that you help out, and for the pain they’re feeling. There’s room for your concern for them, your anger at that other person who may have failed them, and also for your reluctance to get involved. “Everything Belongs” doesn’t mean you have to say everything you’re thinking. But it does help us remember that our feelings are real and that we’ll do better to feel them than to wish them away.
Especially in a situation where we are inclined to say “no” to someone’s request for help, it’s critical to remember and implement Rule #2, “Relationship First.” You might want to skip this step and avoid the person if you’re tired of their requests, or you already feel you’ve spent too much time sympathizing with their lousy situation. Don’t fall into this trap. We must learn how to say “no” to the request without saying “no” to the person. We can remain supportive and connected even when our best instincts tell us to hold firm on our boundaries. We might even discover what they needed all along was a listening ear, more than the fix they (or we) had thought we needed to offer.
I like to think, in the photo we’ve been talking about, that Susannah can find a way to disentangle herself from the mess Amy is struggling with. Susannah can still love her friend. She can be supportive and friendly, and she might even say “yes” to Amy’s request for tangible help of some kind. I hope Amy will draw on personal and community resources that will help her through this time, and along the way she’ll identify strengths she didn’t know she had.
Maybe in the next snapshot, a few seasons hence, Amy and Susannah will be sitting side by side, neither of them leaning, both of them smiling with delight in one another and with the life that stretches out ahead of them. Those are the pictures we’re aiming to be part of, my friends. In our homes, our families, our churches, and the many ways we do Life Together.
Photo by Abo Ngalonkulu on Unsplash
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