July 27th - Are my boundaries helping me?

The story...

I've frequently bounced into other people's boundaries without a conscious understanding of what they were or why they were built.  Maybe a definitive book on boundaries, backed up by research, would be helpful.  The twelve chapter headings might be titled:

• Barbed wire
• Body armor
• Breakable
• Concrete
  
• Criticized
• Expanding
• God's
• Low
• Missing
• Movable
• Safety
• Transparent

Honestly, I need personal boundaries. It seems reasonable that I'd actually clarify them and review them periodically - I might even need a new one.  Boundaries seem to help us develop those healthy relationships that are key ingredients to the "good life." 

Yes, there'd be healthy boundaries within the only church in town.  People would be allowed to be themselves and grow at their own pace.  Visitors will likely enter the church with boundaries that help them cope with and work out their current lives.  Those boundaries will probably change as the Spirit of God penetrates their lives and as they grow within the safety and grace of God.

Just for today...

"I believed it was my responsibility to help others who could not or did no want to help themselves . . . Doing for other didn't allow them them to be responsible; it enabled them to be irresponsible. Caretaking robs others of the self-esteem that comes from struggling with and conquering the challenges that God has planned for their lives."  Hope for Today (p. 209)

"We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another."  William Law