Disrespect the Boundary

Obviously, I’m doing something wrong. I think I’m drawing a line with guideposts and lighted signs. And yet these people, like a stubborn three-year-old, keep stepping on and over it. If their audacity could speak, it would say, “I dare you to say something.” Oh, believe me, I intend to.

I remember visiting my counselor one day, and I had to bend down and pick my chin off the floor. I was describing a scenario in my life where yet again, another person had intentionally intruded stuff into my space (when mind you, it had a location before they moved it) and told me to deal with it. I was already overwhelmed with the things on my desk and down the hallway, and now I had a mountain of things crowding an already narrowing space called my capacity. As I described the situation with exasperation, my counselor looked at me and said it wasn’t them; it was me. Something about me was inviting this intrusion and disrespect of my person and borders because it was happening in multiple areas of my life. That hurt. But it was surely the wake up call I needed to make some major life adjustments.

It’s been years since that incident, and I can say that there has been improvement. One of the first works I had to do was on myself. Finding identity and value in the woman I was and then carrying and treating myself like I knew who she was and what she was worth. I remember I had written out some affirmations that I recited for some time until they helped me readjust my vision of self. One in particular proved pivotal in a relational encounter in which me and the relationship had been discounted and dismissed. Because I had been speaking, “My friendship is valuable, and so I offer it selectively,” when the person decided he was done with me because I would not do and become what he wanted, I didn’t harbor it. I let him be done, and I shut the door.

I get that some relationships need to end or shift, sometimes for a lifetime or sometimes just for a season. I value friendships, and yet I understand when a decision must be made to let them go or grow into something different than what they were before. It wasn’t the fact that he wanted to end the friendship; it was the why and the how. This person had begun to incite my feelings for him and then ghosted me. When he came back, it took me some time to reopen the door, but eventually I did. Yet this time, the terms of engagement had shifted completely. I mean I praise God for that interruption! I came to my senses and realized I was just in a season, and my fleeting desires for this person were simply a byproduct of it. When I looked at him, I knew this was not a man I desired or could see me subjecting my life and heart to lead.

He wanted to begin where we had left off, as if nothing had happened, because his situation had changed. That in itself was a disrespect to me. Yet I kindly drew the boundary, informing him that I saw our relationship only in a brother-sister context and could interact with him as such - because he truly was a brother in Christ. For a season, he got that. Life continued for us both, and we didn’t chat as much, but eventually we reconnected some time later.

When that time came, I was cool with connecting in a platonic and familial way, as we often had sharpening and encouraging conversations with one another. Yet again, he began to push my boundaries seeking to engage me in a way beyond friendship. At several points I addressed this, but it was as if he was determined to win me over because he had decided that I was what he wanted… at least for right now. When I discovered how wide open his doors were to unresolved relationships from his past, it spoke even more loudly to me that this man does not respect me. He may want me, but he does not truly value me. How a person prepares their heart and space for you is evident of how they see you; and often, it is how they are able or not able to see you because of lack of wholeness in their own life.

This is why it is so important to have godly brothers and sisters in our lives who can discern the things we cannot because we’re too close to them. It just so happened my sister had my phone when this person messaged me, and she began to ask questions. By the end of that conversation, she had clearly discerned from the Lord that this was not a friendship I needed to continue in. She said that he was a hopper, and I was just an available woman who if not careful, would become the collateral damage of his woundedness and rejection. Even though I had a firm boundary to only pursue friendship with this person, it was evident that he wasn’t respecting it. He would persist in his pursuit of me because of the internal and relational dysfunctions he was experiencing, when the only solution and healer to his struggles was Jesus. And I needed to pop him back over to God.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only person who had crossed my boundaries recently. There were several others; and even I was one of them. I remember a friend becoming exasperated with me because he was trying to honor my boundaries, but I was the one disrespecting my own. I realized that I couldn’t expect anyone to respect my borders if I didn’t first do so myself. And I realized that I couldn’t hold myself to any limits, if I didn’t know what they were. As of late, I feel the Lord drawing me back to Good Boundaries and Goodbyes by Lysa TerKeurst because I still need some practice in this area. Two pivotal points I gained the first time I read her book is that 1) Boundaries are for us and not for other people. We don’t try to enforce our boundaries onto others and make them adopt or worse, obey them. We maintain our own boundaries. 2) We grant access to ourselves by the level of responsibility the person shows they have for us and the relationship. If a person only exercises this much responsibility with our heart, mind, body, space, stories, and so forth, then we only give them access to the point where those things are still protected and safe.

In the beginning of her novel, TerKeurst says, “This isn’t a book about leaving people. It’s a book about loving people in right and healthy ways. And it’s about communicating appropriate boundaries and parameters so that love can stay safe and sustainable. Boundaries aren’t meant to shove love away. Quite the opposite. We set boundaries so we know what to do when we very much want to love those around us really well without losing ourselves in the process. Good boundaries help us preserve the love within us even when some relationships become unsustainable and we must accept the reality of a goodbye.”

What I have learned over the past seasons of rediscovering Whitney Nicole is that I must first know, love, and value me. I must communicate the woman that I am and desire to be with and without words by how I show up in spaces, respond, and retract myself from things unbefitting to me preserving her. I so want to be a woman who is gracious and kind to others. So, when I have to address difficult things, like boundary infractions, I want to do so with tenderness without negating the firmness I need to communicate, “this is not okay.” Over the past couple of months, I’ve had practice. I allow for grace. And I also allow myself to no longer be disregarded and disrespected when I have given room for my grace to abound. Now, if only I could keep that same energy with the man I find attractive that I do with the ones I simply do not. God, help me not to disrespect my own boundaries.