A boundary is simply that — a limit we enforce in order to protect our mental health and our identities as children of God who have a right to be the fully autonomous and creative beings we were designed to be. However, we need to square that prerogative with the idea that we should be un-offendable, or at least not very easily offended. We are not chained dogs that need to reflexively bark every time something passes by our yards, but we should be highly trained to sense real danger that we fend off in order to protect our territory, whether that territory be our physical bodies, our families, or our mental and emotional well-being.
I’m writing this now because, at the age of 42, I have just now become aware through working with a therapist that I am entitled to enforce personal boundaries. (While all this is new to me, I may be telling you what you already know.) I am quickly learning that I do not always have to live life on everyone else’s terms. That is not to say that I should try to make everyone subservient to me but that I have the right to protect myself and put my preferences ahead those of others as long as I am not violating their boundaries. This is a type of freedom I have never known, a freedom that allows me to more clearly tune into the call of God on my life.
I believe that the reason I am late to the game is because I was raised as a twin, which programmed me for codependency. That codependency carried on into my failed marriage, which caused me to lose myself and my very identity in that of another. Think of it as the worst form of compromise: compromising the fabric of what made me an individual for the sake of not violating the boundaries of another. While this can work for a while, ultimately, no one respects a person whose sense of self is completely given over to the preferences of another for the sake of maintaining “harmony,” which, by definition, is not possible in a group unless all participants are acting out of self-interest.
But is “self-interest” a Christian concept? As a Christian is conformed increasingly to the image of Christ throughout life, might one argue that he or she should sacrifice his or her self-interest for the sake of serving others? I would argue that serving others is not a blind endeavor. That is to say, we must maintain the self-interest inherent in maintaining a highly specific and personal faith in order to carry out that service. Jesus did not sacrifice his self-interest because his interest was in saving the souls of men. His self-interest led him to sacrifice something real: himself. (Can you imagine believing in something so much? Yet that is what we are called to.)
So I think that serving without self-interest is serving to gain because it is serving without boundaries, serving codependently in a way that demands others to be indebted to our purposeless giving. Remember that giving is better than receiving, and often what others expect to receive from their giving is not material, it is the ego’s construction of a stairway to heaven that God does not endorse. As you also become more aware of your boundaries, remember that enforcing them is a vital part of your spiritual journey. You are entitled to release situations, people, and so on because, as the Body of Christ, we are instruments in a symphony: we all must play our parts well; otherwise, this music that God’s composing suffers.
Blessings.
Photo Credit: https://news.masterworksfineart.com/2023/05/11/keith-harings-barking-dogs