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Forgiveness gives me boundaries because it unhooks me from
the hurtful person, and then I can act responsibly, wisely. If I am
not forgiving them, I am still in a destructive relationship with them.
Gain grace from God, and let others’ debts go. Do not keep
seeking a bad account. Let it go, and go and get what you need
from God and people who can give. That is a better life. Unfor-
giveness destroys boundaries. Forgiveness creates them, for it
gets bad debt off of your property.
Remember one last thing. Forgiveness is not denial. You
must name the sin against you to forgive it. God did not deny
what we did to him. He worked through it. He named it. He
expressed his feelings about it. He cried and was angry. And
then he let it go. And he did this in the context of relationship.
Within the Trinity, he was never alone. Go and do the same.
And watch out for the resistance that will want you to stay in the
past, trying to collect what will never be.
External Focus
People tend to look outside of themselves for the problem.
This external perspective keeps you a victim. It says that you can
never be okay until someone else changes. This is the essence of
powerless blame. It may make you morally superior to that per-
son (in your own thinking, never in reality), but it will never fix
the problem.
Face squarely the resistance to looking at yourself as the one
who has to change. It is crucial that you face yourself, for that is
the beginning of boundaries. Responsibility begins with an
internal focus of confession and repentance. You must confess
the truth about the ways you are keeping your boundarylessness
going, and you must turn from those ways. You must look at
yourself and face the internal resistance of wanting the problem
to be on the outside of you.
Guilt
Guilt is a difficult emotion, for it is really not a true feeling,
such as sadness, anger, or fear. It is a state of internal condemna-
tion. It is the punitive nature of our fallen conscience saying, “You
Boundaries