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Evil can take over the empty house of our souls. Even when
our lives seem to be in order, isolation guarantees spiritual vul-
nerability. It’s only when our house is full of the love of God and
others that we can resist the wiles of the Devil. Plugging in is
neither an option, nor a luxury; it is a spiritual and emotional
life-and-death issue.
- How do I begin? Once you have identified your boundary
problem and owned it, you can do something about it. Here are
some ways to begin practicing setting boundaries on yourself.
Address your real need. Often, out-of-control patterns dis-
guise a need for something else. You need to address the under-
lying need before you can deal with the out-of-control behavior.
For example, impulsive eaters may discover that food is a way to
stay separate and safe from romantic and sexual intimacy. Their
fear of being faced with those kinds of emotionally laden situa-
tions may cause them to use food as a boundary. As their internal
boundaries with the opposite sex become firmer, they can give up
their destructive food boundary. They learn to ask for help for the
real problem—not just for the symptomatic problem.
Allow yourself to fail. Addressing your real need is no guar-
antee that your out-of-control behavior will disappear. Many
people who address the real issue underneath a self-boundary
problem are often disappointed that the problem keeps recur-
ring. They think, “Well, I joined a support group at church, but
I still have problems being on time, or viewing pornography, or
spending money, or talking out of turn. Was all this for naught?”
No. The recurrence of destructive patterns is evidence of
God’s sanctifying, maturing, and preparing us for eternity. We
need to continue to practice to learn things. The same process
that we use to learn to drive a car, swim, or learn a foreign lan-
guage is the one we use for learning better self-boundaries.
We need to embrace failure instead of trying to avoid it.
Those people who spend their lives trying to avoid failure are
also eluding maturity. We are drawn to Jesus because “he
learned obedience from what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8). People
who are growing up are also drawn to individuals who bear bat-
tle scars, worry furrows, and tear marks on their faces. Their
Boundaries
