77lots of love and lots of forgiveness would help her be the adult
she needed to be.
So whenever Eileen didn’t pick up after herself, her mother
would cover for her. When she wrecked the family car three
times, her dad got her her own car. And when she overdrew her
checking account, her parents quietly put more money in it.
After all, isn’t love patient? they’d say.
Eileen’s parents’ lack of limits on her hurt her character
development. Though she was a loving wife, mother, and
worker, others were constantly frustrated at her undisciplined,
careless way of living. It cost others a lot to be in relationship
with her. Yet she was so loveable that most of her friends didn’t
want to hurt her feelings by confronting her. So the problem
remained unsolved.
Lack of parental boundaries is the opposite of hostility.
Again, biblical discipline would have provided the necessary
structure to help Eileen develop her character.
Sometimes a lack of parental limits, coupled with a lack of
connection, can produce an aggressively controlling person. We
all know the experience of going into a supermarket and observ-
ing a four-year-old in total control of a mother. The mother
begs, pleads, and threatens her son to stop having his tantrum.
Then, at her wits’ end, she gives him the candy bar he’s been
screaming for. “But that’s the last one,” she says, struggling for
some control. But by then control is an illusion.
Now imagine that four-year-old as a forty-year-old man. The
scenario has changed, but the script is the same. When he is
crossed, or when someone sets a limit with him, the same
tantrum erupts. And by then, he’s had thirty-six more years of
having the world cater to him. His recovery program will need
to be very strong and consistent to help him. Sometimes recov-
ery comes in the form of hospitalization, sometimes in divorce,
sometimes in jail, and sometimes in disease. But no one can
really escape the disciplines of life. They will always win out. We
always reap what we sow. And the later in life it is, the sadder a
picture it is, for the stakes are higher.
How Boundaries Are Developed