289“But I need to talk to you now,” came the sullen response.
“Lois, call back if you want to. Here are some better times.”
They said their good-bys and hung up. Maybe Lois would
call back, maybe not. More likely Lois’s other friends were all
busy, and Sherrie’s name had come up next on the call list. Well,
I’m sad that Lois isn’t happy with me, Sherrie thought to her-
self. But people probably weren’t too happy with Jesus when he
withdrew from them to be with his Father. Trying to take
responsibility for Lois’s feelings was trying to own something
God never gave me. With that thought, she went to lunch.
4:00 P.M.
Sherrie’s afternoon passed fairly uneventfully. She was on
the way out of the office when her assistant, Jeff Moreland,
flagged her down.
Without stopping her pace, Sherrie said to him, “Hi, Jeff—
can you leave me a message? I need to be on the road in thirty
seconds.” Frustrated, Jeff left to write the message.
What a shift in the last few months. For Sherrie’s boss to be
her assistant wasn’t something she had expected. Yet, when she
had begun setting limits in her job and not covering Jeff’s bases
for him, Jeff’s productivity had dropped dramatically. Jeff’s irre-
sponsibility and lack of follow-through emerged. His own supe-
riors had, for the first time, become aware that he was the
problem.
They had discovered that Sherrie was the driving force
behind the design department. She was the one who made
things happen. While Jeff took credit for all the work, he let her
do it while he talked to friends on the phone all day.
Sherrie’s boundaries had done their job: they had exposed
his irresponsibility. They had clarified where the actual hole in
the wall was. And Jeff had begun changing.
At first, he had been angry and hurt. He’d threatened to
leave. But finally things had settled down a bit. And Jeff had
actually begun being more punctual. He’d buckled down. The
A Day in a Life with Boundaries