Boundaries

As I look over the last year, I find a peaceful stillness in the awareness that I can change my mind and opinion.  I can change who I am.  I can give up being invested in outcome.  So much of what I thought was black and white has proven to be just variations of gray.  The real truth...the only light...is God is love and He loves me.

All this other stuff has proven to be another type of idolatry...that which you bow down to in order to feel significant, validated, of value, secure, safe, worthy, worthwhile, deserving, etc.  Opinions are dressed up as if they are Truth.  Our wounds are demanding that others take care of us in some way...fill up all the voids and empty places of our souls.  Man-centered coping strategies are made to seem like common sense, practical approaches.  Not!

I am amazed at how God pulls off redemption of so much of our past if we will quit defending our positions and opinions that developed as a consequence of that past.  The extreme of not setting boundaries is to see that boundaries need to be set everywhere.  Both extremes are telling us that we have not yet found out who we are in God.

Not setting boundaries and being overly concerned about boundaries is coming from the same level of pain...one extreme is doormat and the other is the person who walks on the doormat.  They are both defensive strategies for having personal needs met. 

The doormat is afraid of people, what they think, etc.  The person who walks on the doormat is an "angry" doormat.  They think they  no longer care what others think, and instead of catering to others, they become abrasive or aggressive in their anger.  They are tired of being walked on and they kick into walking on others before they are stepped on again.  Neither is a place of redemption.  Neither speaks of personal freedom.

Freedom from the past occurs when we quit letting this past rule how we live the present.  The only way we can do this is to be observant of how we are feeling about "present" situations and get quiet with God about those feelings and learn His truth.  If we find we are making excuses or explaining away our feelings and behaviors, we can be sure that we have not reached that place of redemption yet.

In our day, we are blessed to know about physical ways to eliminate negative feels and even change our programming.  Some of my favorite, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and TAT (Tampus Acupressure Technique) helps us be proactive.  I see it as a reaching out for the hem of the garment like the woman in the Bible when she needed healing.  She embraced a physical process after the established her intention.  This is the stuff of miracles. 

 How grateful I am for a patient, magnificent God who will guide us into all truth and freedom...and who has given us a physical way to touch the hem of His garment.  Praise God!