211spend inordinate amounts of time on irrelevant details. He
couldn’t seem to get to the point. Other members were spacing
out, dozing off, or becoming restless. Just as I was about to speak
to the man’s struggle with getting to the point, a woman in the
group spoke up, saying bluntly, “Bill, talk net, will ya?”
“Talking net,” putting a net or boundary on their words, can
be a struggle for many. How we use language can deeply affect
the quality of our relationships. The tongue can be a source of
both blessing and curse (James 3:9–10). It can be a blessing
when we use our tongue to empathize, identify, encourage, con-
front, and exhort others. It can be a curse when we use it to:
- Talk nonstop to hide from intimacy
- Dominate conversations to control others
- Gossip
- Make sarcastic remarks, expressing indirect hostility
- Threaten someone, expressing direct hostility
- Flatter, instead of authentically praise
- Seduce
Many people who have difficulty setting verbal boundaries
on themselves aren’t really aware of their problem. They are
often genuinely surprised when a friend says to them, “Some-
times it seems like you interpret my commas as periods.”
I knew a woman who was desperately afraid that others
would get to know her. She asked questions and talked quickly
so that no one could turn the conversation toward her. She had
only one problem: she had to take breaths to continue talking,
and the breath created a space for someone else to say some-
thing. The woman resolved her problem, however, in an inge-
nious way; she drew her breaths in the middle of her sentences,
rather than at the end. That kept people sufficiently off-balance
so that she was rarely interrupted. An effective strategy, with
only one problem: she had to keep finding new people to talk to.
After a few rounds with her, people disappeared.
The Scriptures tell us to treat our words carefully: “When
words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue
is wise” (Prov. 10:19). “A man of knowledge uses words with
Boundaries and Your Self