Boundaries Without Guilt

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Hello everyone, welcome to the Pew in the Couch Podcast, part of the Iron Forge Syndicate.
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I am your host Javier and thank you for joining us today.
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Today I want to sit with something small that happens to almost all of us, and yet it carries so much weight.
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You get a text.
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Someone asks you for your time, your energy, a favor, a yes, and before you even answer, something in your chest tightens up.
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Maybe you say yes anyway, even though every part of you wanted to say no.
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Or maybe you actually say no, and then you spend the rest of the day rehearsing it in your head, wondering if you were rude, wondering if you let God down, wondering if a better Christian, a better friend, a better son or daughter would have just said yes.
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That feeling has a name.
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Some people call it people pleasing, some people call it being a good servant.
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I think for a lot of us, it's just guilt wearing a really convincing disguise.
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So here's the question I want us to sit with today.
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Is it actually possible to protect your time, your energy, even your own heart, without it turning into something selfish?
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Can you have limits and still love people well?
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Or does loving people mean you're supposed to hand over everything, every time, no questions asked?
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I don't think this is a small question.
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I think it touches your marriage, your friendships, your job, your own walk with God.
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So before we go any further, I want to slow down on one word we throw around a lot, without ever really defining it.
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That word is boundary.
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We use it like it's obvious what it means, but if I asked ten people in this room to define it, I bet we'd get ten different answers.
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Some would say it's a wall, some would say it's a rule, some would say it's basically just a nice way of saying no.
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So let me try to say plainly what I think it actually is.
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A boundary is a limit on what you will carry or allow.
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That's it.
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It's not a wall you build to keep people out forever.
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It's not a punishment you hand someone because they hurt you.
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It's a line that says, This much I can hold, and past this point I can't, or I won't.
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And that's not a betrayal of love.
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It's actually what makes love sustainable.
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Here's where I think the confusion starts.
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A lot of us picture a boundary and we picture something cold.
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We picture someone crossing their arms, turning their back, cutting a person off.
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And sure, sometimes boundaries look like distance.
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But distance isn't always coldness.
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Sometimes distance is the only way a relationship survives.
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Think about it this way: a riverbank isn't an insult to the river.
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The bank doesn't hate the water.
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The bank is what keeps the river a river, instead of a flood that destroys everything around it.
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The boundary isn't fighting against the love, it's what lets the love keep flowing without wrecking everything in its path.
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So a boundary and a grudge can look almost identical from the outside.
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Both might involve saying no, both might involve stepping back, but underneath they come from completely different places.
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A grudge says, You hurt me, so now I'm gonna make you pay for it, maybe by punishing you with silence, maybe by holding it over you later.
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A boundary says something much simpler, it says, I love you, and because I love you, I also have to be honest about what I can actually give right now.
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One comes from a wound that wants payback, the other comes from a clear-eyed honesty about your own limits.
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You can absolutely tell the difference over time, because a grudge tends to grow, it picks up more reasons to stay angry.
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A boundary tends to stay pretty steady because it's not about the other person's punishment, it's about your own capacity.
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I want to say something gently here because I know this word boundary didn't exist in a lot of our childhoods.
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Some of you grew up in homes where the expectation was just you give what's asked of you, and you don't ask questions about it.
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Maybe that was a parent who needed you to manage their emotions.
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Maybe that was a church culture where saying no to a ministry request felt like saying no to God Himself.
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Maybe it was just a family rule that was never spoken out loud, but everyone understood.
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You don't disappoint people you love.
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Whatever it was, if that's you, I want you to know something.
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Not having the language for a boundary doesn't mean you didn't need one.
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It just means nobody ever handed you the words for what you were feeling.
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And that's part of why this is so hard now.
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If you grew up believing that everything you had was expected to be given, on demand, without limit, then setting a limit as an adult doesn't feel like health.
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It feels like rebellion.
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It feels like you're breaking a rule nobody ever officially wrote down, but everybody somehow agreed to.
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So even a small no, something as simple as, I can't make it this weekend, can feel enormous.
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It can feel like you just did something wrong, even when you didn't.
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I think this is worth sitting in for a second, because I don't want to rush past it.
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A boundary is not the opposite of love.
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It's not a smaller version of love either, like you're loving someone 80% instead of 100.
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A boundary is what lets love be honest instead of resentful.
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Because here's what happens when there's no boundary at all.
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You give and give, past the point where you actually have anything left to give, and eventually something in you starts to curdle.
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Maybe it's exhaustion, maybe it's a quiet bitterness you didn't even mean to grow.
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Maybe you just go numb and you keep showing up, but you're not really there anymore.
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None of that is love either.
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So the boundary isn't standing in the way of love, it's often the thing protecting it from turning into something else.
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Now, if that's true, if a boundary really is a form of care instead of a form of selfishness, then something doesn't add up.
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Because a lot of us still feel like garbage the moment we set one.
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And I think some of that garbage feeling has a history.
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It didn't just show up out of nowhere.
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A lot of us learned it somewhere, and honestly, some of us learned it at church.
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I want to be careful here because I'm not interested in beating up on the church.
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I love the church, I believe in it, but I also think we do people a disservice if we pretend it's never gotten this wrong, because it has, and a lot of us are carrying the results of that.
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Here's what I mean.
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Somewhere along the way, a lot of us picked up the idea that being a good Christian means being endlessly available.
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If someone needs you, you show up, no matter the cost to you.
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If a ministry needs a volunteer, you say yes, even if you're running on empty.
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If a friend calls at 11 at night for the fifth time this month, you pick up, because that's what love does.
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And look, sometimes that really is what love does.
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There are seasons where showing up costs us something, and we do it anyway because that's what it means to care for someone.
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I'm not saying sacrifice is bad.
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I'm saying we took something true and turned it into a rule with no edges, no limits, no end.
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Because somewhere in that teaching, a message slipped in that never actually got said out loud, but got absorbed anyway.
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The message was something like this: your needs are basically optional, but everyone else's needs are urgent.
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If you slow down, if you say no, if you protect your own time or your own heart, that's a sign of weak faith.
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Good Christians don't get tired, good Christians don't run dry, good Christians just keep giving, and if you can't keep giving, maybe the problem is you.
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I've talked to people who grew up hearing sermons where self-sacrifice was basically the whole definition of holiness.
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Give until it hurts.
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Deny yourself, take up your cross.
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And those aren't wrong things to say, not at all.
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But when they're the only thing being said, when there's no companion teaching about rest, about limits, about the fact that even Jesus walked away from crowds to be alone, you end up with a lopsided picture.
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You end up with people who think exhaustion is proof of devotion.
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You end up with people who feel guilty for resting because rest starts to feel like quitting.
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And I want to name something else too because I think it's just as common.
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Sometimes the message wasn't preached from a pulpit at all.
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It came from a specific person.
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A pastor who made you feel like turning down a request meant you didn't really love the church.
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A leader who guilted volunteers by pointing out how much was writing on their yes.
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A well-meaning mentor who told you that real love never keeps score, never says no, never protects itself.
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None of that came with bad intentions most of the time.
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It came from people who were probably taught the same thing themselves.
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But the effect on the people receiving it was the same either way.
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It taught us that our limits were something to be ashamed of instead of something to be honest about.
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Here's the honest part I want to sit with.
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The church didn't invent guilt.
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Guilt was already part of being human long before any of us walked through a church door.
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But I do think in some seasons, in some places, church culture gave guilt a microphone.
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It took something that was already loud inside us and made it louder, by attaching spiritual language to it.
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Suddenly it wasn't just, I feel bad for disappointing someone.
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It became, I feel bad for disappointing God, because somewhere the two got fused together in our minds.
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Saying no to a person quietly turned into saying no to faith itself.
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I don't think that fusion was ever true, but I understand exactly why it happened, and I don't think it's fair to be bitter about it either.
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Most of the people who taught us this way were doing their best with what they'd been handed to.
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They weren't trying to wound anyone, they were trying to build devoted, generous people, and in some ways they did.
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A lot of us are generous to a fault because of what we learned.
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The problem isn't the generosity, the problem is that nobody ever taught us where the edges were supposed to be.
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So if some of that guilt you feel when you say no isn't actually coming from God at all, then where is it coming from?
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Because I think for a lot of us, it's an old voice playing in a new moment.
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Maybe it's a parent's disappointed face, maybe it's a pastor's expectant tone.
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Maybe it's a version of yourself from years ago who learned that love means never having limits.
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And if that's true, it changes the question we should be asking every time guilt shows up.
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The question is simple: is this guilt actually from God, or is it just an old voice wearing God's clothes?
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And I don't think we're meant to guess forever on that one.
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I think scripture actually gives us something solid to stand on here, something that draws an honest line instead of leaving us to sort it out on feeling alone.
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There's a verse in Galatians that I think gets skipped over a lot, probably because it's short and it doesn't sound dramatic.
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But I want to read it plainly because the wording matters.
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Galatians 6.5 says, For each one should carry their own.
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That's it.
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No long explanation, no exceptions listed out, no footnote telling you when it doesn't apply.
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Each one should carry their own load.
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Now, right before that, in Galatians 6.2, Paul says something that sounds almost opposite at first.
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Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of.
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So you've got two verses sitting three lines apart, one telling you to carry someone else's weight, and the next telling you to carry your own.
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And I think that's not a contradiction.
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I think that's the whole map.
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There's a difference between a burden and a load, even if English tends to flatten those words into meaning almost the same thing.
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A burden is something too heavy for one person to carry alone.
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That's where we step in for each other.
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That's grief, that's a crisis, that's a season where somebody genuinely cannot do this by themselves and needs someone to come alongside them.
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That's real, and scripture tells us to show up for that.
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But a load is different.
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A load is the normal weight of your own life, your own choices, your own responsibilities, your own feelings, your own healing, your own decisions about how you spend your time and your energy.
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That's not something someone else is supposed to be carrying for you, and it's not something you're supposed to be carrying for someone else either, no matter how much you love them.
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Here's where I think this gets real for a lot of us.
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A friend's constant crisis.
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Not the one bad week, but the pattern that's been going on for years, where every conversation is another emergency, and somehow you're the one holding the emotional weight of it every single time.
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Or a family member's choices, the ones they keep making, the ones you've warned them about, the ones that aren't yours to fix no matter how many sleepless nights you spend trying.
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Or a coworker's mood, where you walk into the office and immediately start managing how they're feeling before you've even taken your coat off.
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None of that is a burden in the way Scripture means it.
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That's someone else's load.
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And I know how uncomfortable that sounds when you say it out loud, because it can feel like you're saying, that's not my problem, and it can feel cold.
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But naming what's yours to carry and what isn't, that's not coldness, that's actually just accuracy.
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And I'd go further and say, it's obedience, because the verse doesn't say, carry your own load, unless someone else's load looks heavier or more urgent or more deserving of your help.
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It just says, carry your own.
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I think a lot of the guilt we carry around boundaries comes from quietly believing that if we don't pick up someone else's load, nobody will, and then everything falls apart, and it's our fault.
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But that belief puts you in a position that was never meant to be yours.
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You start playing a role that Scripture actually assigns to each person individually.
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Their load was always theirs to carry.
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You picking it up doesn't relieve them of it, not really.
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It just delays them from ever having to hold it themselves.
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And I want to be careful here too, because this verse isn't handing you permission to stop caring about people.
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It's not telling you to walk past someone drowning and say, Well, that's their load.
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That's not what this is.
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This is about the daily weight of a life, the ongoing responsibility for choices and feelings and decisions that belong to someone else, even someone you love deeply.
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You can care about someone and still refuse to carry what was only ever theirs to carry.
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Because once you can name your own load clearly, once you can say, This part is mine and that part isn't, something starts to shift.
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You stop needing a long explanation every time you say no.
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You stop needing three backup reasons to make your limit sound acceptable.
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You stop needing three backup reasons to make your limit sound acceptable.
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That's actually a good marker of health, both the kind a therapist would recognize and the kind that shows up in scripture.
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When you know what's yours to carry, you don't have to convince anyone else that your limit is valid, you just state it.
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So let's talk about what that actually looks like, because healthy boundary can start to sound like a phrase you see printed on a mug, and I don't want it to stay that vague.
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On the therapeutic side, health usually looks like this.
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You can say no to someone you love without your body going into a full alarm response.
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Your heart isn't pounding, you're not rehearsing the conversation for three days beforehand, and you're not replaying it for three days after.
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You feel the discomfort of disappointing someone because that discomfort is normal, but it doesn't take over the whole day.
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That's a big difference from what a lot of us grew up thinking boundaries would feel like.
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We thought health meant feeling nothing.
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It doesn't.
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It means feeling something without being ruled by it.
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Health also looks like being able to stay close to someone even after you've told them no.
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A lot of people avoid boundaries altogether because somewhere along the way they learn that saying no ends the relationship.
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Sometimes that's true, and that's painful, and it tells you something about the relationship itself.
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But more often, a clear no is survivable.
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The friendship holds, the family keeps going.
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What breaks isn't the connection, it's the illusion that the connection depended on you never having limits in the first place.
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On the spiritual side, I think health looks a lot like what Jesus was pointing at when he talked about the way we speak to each other.
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He basically said your yes should be yes, and your no should be no, and anything past that starts drifting into something less honest.
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I read that and I think about how many of us pad our no with extra words because we don't trust it to stand on its own.
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We add the sorry, the maybe next time, the long story about why, the reassurance that we still love them just in case they doubt it.
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And sometimes that softness is kind, but sometimes it's fear dressed up as kindness because we don't actually believe a plain no is enough.
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Jesus seems to be saying it is enough.
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A clear answer is not cold.
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A clear answer is honest, and honesty is a form of love that doesn't get talked about as much as the softer kinds.
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There's a verse in Proverbs that I think belongs right next to this one, even though it's not usually paired with boundary conversations.
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It says something like, guard your heart above everything else, because everything you do flows from it.
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I love that verse because it doesn't say guard your schedule or guard your reputation or guard your image with people.
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It says guard your heart, because your heart is the source.
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Whatever comes out of you, your patience, your generosity, your capacity to actually show up for people in a real burden, all of that is flowing from somewhere.
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And if that source is drained, resentful, exhausted, everything downstream from it is going to reflect that, whether you want it to or not.
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So when I think about health, spiritual health specifically, I don't think about a person who never says no.
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I think about a person whose heart isn't running on empty, because they've protected the thing that everything else comes from.
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A boundary, in that light, isn't a wall you build to keep people out.
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It's more like a fence around a garden.
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You're not keeping people from ever coming near it.
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You're just making sure it doesn't get trampled by every set of feet that walks by, so there's actually something worth offering when someone genuinely needs it.
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Put both of those together, the therapeutic picture and the spiritual one, and you get something that looks less like defense and more like stewardship.
00:17:43.830 --> 00:17:47.830
A healthy boundary comes from a settled place, not a reactive one.
00:17:47.990 --> 00:17:51.750
It's not the loud no that comes out after months of silent resentment.
00:17:51.910 --> 00:18:06.550
It's the calm no that comes because you already know what's yours to carry and what's not, and you already know your heart is worth protecting, not because you're precious in some fragile way, but because everything else in your life is depending on what's flowing out of it.
00:18:06.790 --> 00:18:09.590
I think that's the version of health worth aiming for.
00:18:09.750 --> 00:18:14.950
Not the version where you never feel guilty, because guilt shows up even when you've done the right thing.
00:18:15.110 --> 00:18:17.190
That's just how guilt works sometimes.
00:18:17.430 --> 00:18:19.830
The version where the guilt doesn't get the final vote.
00:18:19.990 --> 00:18:21.990
So here's the question I keep coming back to.
00:18:22.150 --> 00:18:27.030
If guilt doesn't get the final vote, what actually gets to speak into these decisions this week?
00:18:27.269 --> 00:18:30.790
Because you can't just sit around waiting to feel calm before you set a limit.
00:18:31.030 --> 00:18:34.790
Calm usually comes after you've practiced the thing a few times, not before.
00:18:34.950 --> 00:18:36.630
So let's get practical for a minute.
00:18:36.870 --> 00:18:39.590
The first thing I try this week is small on purpose.
00:18:39.750 --> 00:18:42.230
Don't pick your hardest relationship to practice on.
00:18:42.390 --> 00:18:48.310
Don't start with the parent whose disappointment can ruin your whole month, or the friend who's been in crisis for two years straight.
00:18:48.550 --> 00:18:50.230
Start with something low stakes.
00:18:50.390 --> 00:18:53.030
Someone asks you to cover a shift you don't want to cover.
00:18:53.269 --> 00:18:56.150
Someone wants to move a meeting to a time that wrecks your morning.
00:18:56.390 --> 00:19:03.350
Practice saying no in a small moment, so the skill is already in your body before you need it somewhere that actually costs you something.
00:19:03.590 --> 00:19:51.900
Nehemiah did this in a way, when he was rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem.
00:19:52.059 --> 00:19:55.019
People were mocking the project, saying it would never hold.
00:19:55.180 --> 00:19:58.220
And instead of arguing with every voice, he just kept building.
00:19:58.460 --> 00:20:03.180
The wall went up because the work kept moving, not because every objection got answered.
00:20:03.339 --> 00:20:05.339
Sometimes your boundary is the same.
00:20:05.500 --> 00:20:10.299
You don't have to win the debate, you just have to keep building the thing you already know is right.
00:20:10.539 --> 00:20:16.940
Second thing, and this one is going to sound almost too simple, practice the sentence out loud before you need it.
00:20:17.099 --> 00:20:20.620
Not in your head, where it turns into a paragraph with footnotes.
00:20:20.860 --> 00:20:25.819
Out loud, in the car, in the shower, wherever you talk to yourself without anyone hearing.
00:20:26.059 --> 00:20:27.740
I can't take that on right.
00:20:27.900 --> 00:20:29.180
That doesn't work for.
00:20:29.420 --> 00:20:30.860
I'm not able to help with that.
00:20:30.940 --> 00:20:34.860
This say it enough times that it stops feeling like a foreign language.
00:20:35.099 --> 00:20:41.579
A lot of us freeze in the actual moment because we've never once heard our own voice say the word no in a calm tone.
00:20:41.819 --> 00:20:46.700
We've only heard it shaky or apologetic or buried under six other sentences.
00:20:46.940 --> 00:20:50.299
Give your voice a chance to hear itself say it plainly first.
00:20:50.620 --> 00:20:57.180
Third, notice the moment right before you say yes out of guilt, because that moment usually has a physical signal.
00:20:57.420 --> 00:21:00.220
Your stomach drops a little, your shoulders come up.
00:21:00.380 --> 00:21:06.620
You feel that quick internal rush to fix the discomfort of the request by agreeing to it as fast as possible.
00:21:06.860 --> 00:21:10.140
That's the moment to slow down, even by five seconds.
00:21:10.299 --> 00:21:12.460
You don't owe anyone an instant answer.
00:21:12.700 --> 00:21:15.819
Let me check and get back to you is a full sentence.
00:21:15.980 --> 00:21:18.140
It's not a dodge, it's a pause.
00:21:18.380 --> 00:21:22.059
And pauses are where you actually get to think instead of just react.
00:21:22.299 --> 00:21:26.299
Fourth, and this is the one people skip, expect the reaction.
00:21:26.539 --> 00:21:33.099
If you've been the person who always says yes, your no is going to land differently than you expect, at least at first.
00:21:33.339 --> 00:21:35.740
Some people will adjust without much fuss.
00:21:35.980 --> 00:21:42.299
Others will push back because your yes had been convenient for them, and convenience doesn't like to lose ground quietly.
00:21:42.539 --> 00:21:50.620
That pushback isn't proof you did something wrong, it's often just proof that something is changing, and change rarely feels smooth on the way in.
00:21:50.779 --> 00:21:54.460
Don't mistake someone's disappointment for evidence against your boundary.
00:21:54.700 --> 00:22:00.140
Disappointment and wrongdoing are not the same thing, even though they can feel identical in the moment.
00:22:00.380 --> 00:22:04.860
Fifth, and maybe most important, don't wait to feel brave before you do this.
00:22:05.180 --> 00:22:08.940
Nehemiah's crew built while people were still mocking them from the sidelines.
00:22:09.259 --> 00:22:11.660
They didn't wait for the criticism to stop first.
00:22:11.980 --> 00:22:17.900
You're allowed to set a limit while your hands are still a little shaky, while part of you is still bracing for the reaction.
00:22:18.140 --> 00:22:21.819
Courage in scripture almost never shows up as the absence of fear.
00:22:22.059 --> 00:22:24.299
It shows up as movement in the middle of it.
00:22:24.539 --> 00:22:30.700
So this week, pick one place, just one, where you've been saying yes out of guilt instead of clarity.
00:22:30.940 --> 00:22:32.299
Practice the sentence.
00:22:32.460 --> 00:22:34.220
Notice the signal in your body.
00:22:34.460 --> 00:22:35.500
Say it anyway.
00:22:35.740 --> 00:22:37.819
You don't need the whole system figured out.
00:22:37.980 --> 00:22:46.779
You just need one wall going up, one section at a time, even while the voices around you, and maybe the one inside you too, are saying it won't hold.
00:22:47.019 --> 00:22:57.660
If you're listening to this and you're not thinking about boundaries in the abstract, you're thinking about a specific person, a specific conversation you're dreading, a specific message sitting unanswered on your phone right now.
00:22:57.819 --> 00:23:00.539
I want to slow down for a second and just be with you in that.
00:23:00.700 --> 00:23:02.779
Instead of handing you one more thing to do.
00:23:02.940 --> 00:23:09.180
Maybe you already know what you need to say, maybe you've even practiced it, like I just described, and you still haven't sent it.
00:23:09.339 --> 00:23:12.620
Not because you're weak, and not because you don't believe any of this.
00:23:12.860 --> 00:23:15.980
Just because your body knows something your mind has already worked out.
00:23:16.140 --> 00:23:17.819
This is going to cost you something.
00:23:17.980 --> 00:23:21.740
It might cost you a relationship acting the way it used to, it might cost you something.
00:23:22.140 --> 00:23:23.740
Someone's warmth toward you for a while.
00:23:23.900 --> 00:23:28.059
It might cost you the image you've had of yourself as the one who never lets anyone down.
00:23:28.299 --> 00:23:29.019
That's real.
00:23:29.259 --> 00:23:31.660
I'm not going to talk you out of feeling the weight of it.
00:23:31.819 --> 00:23:38.140
So right now, in this moment, before you do anything else, I just want to say, you're not wrong for feeling torn.
00:23:38.460 --> 00:23:40.539
Being torn doesn't mean you're doing it wrong.
00:23:40.779 --> 00:23:44.620
It usually means you actually understand what's at stake, on both sides.
00:23:44.860 --> 00:23:50.779
If this were easy, if there were no cost to it at all, it probably wouldn't need a whole episode of a podcast.
00:23:50.940 --> 00:23:59.019
It needs one because it's genuinely hard to look at someone you love, or someone you're supposed to respect and say, not this time, and mean it.
00:23:59.339 --> 00:24:05.579
Proverbs talks about guarding your heart above everything else you guard, because everything else in your life flows out from it.
00:24:05.740 --> 00:24:08.059
That's not a throwaway line about feelings.
00:24:08.220 --> 00:24:11.420
It's a description of what's actually happening inside you right now.
00:24:11.660 --> 00:24:13.180
Your heart is the source.
00:24:13.420 --> 00:24:25.099
If it stays open to everyone without any limit, if it gets treated like a room where anyone can walk in and rearrange the furniture whenever they want, eventually there's nothing left in there that's steady enough to give anyone.
00:24:25.259 --> 00:24:26.940
Guarding it isn't selfish.
00:24:27.099 --> 00:24:32.700
It's how you make sure you still have something real to offer, later, to the people who actually need you.
00:24:32.940 --> 00:24:35.980
So if you're in it right now, here's what I'm not going to do.
00:24:36.140 --> 00:24:41.579
I'm not going to tell you exactly what to text back or what tone to use or how many words to say.
00:24:41.819 --> 00:24:45.099
You already have more sense in you than you're giving yourself credit for.
00:24:45.259 --> 00:24:52.700
What I want to do instead is just sit here with you for a minute in the discomfort of it, because that discomfort is not a sign that something's broken.
00:24:52.860 --> 00:24:58.539
It's a sign that something is changing, and change always feels like this before it feels like anything else.
00:24:58.779 --> 00:25:03.740
You might be the son or daughter who's about to tell a parent no for maybe the first time in your life.
00:25:03.980 --> 00:25:10.059
You might be the friend who's finally going to say, I can't be your only support system, to someone you love.
00:25:10.299 --> 00:25:17.660
You might be the employee who's going to say, I'm not available for that, to someone who's used to hearing yes from you every single time.
00:25:17.900 --> 00:25:26.380
Whoever you are right now, whatever the specific version of this is for you, I want you to know that the tightness in your chest doesn't mean you should stop.
00:25:26.539 --> 00:25:31.740
It just means you're a person doing a hard and honest thing and your body noticed.
00:25:31.980 --> 00:25:44.059
You don't have to feel ready, you don't have to feel brave, you just have to be willing to say the true thing, even while your hands are a little unsteady, even while part of you is bracing for how the other person is going to take it.
00:25:44.299 --> 00:25:46.380
That bracing is not a flaw in you.
00:25:46.539 --> 00:25:51.500
It's just what it feels like to care about someone and still tell them the truth at the same time.
00:25:51.740 --> 00:25:55.980
Those two things can live in the same sentence, they can live in the same breath.
00:25:56.140 --> 00:26:09.819
So if you're deep in it this week, if this whole episode has landed on one exact situation you didn't expect to think about while doing laundry or driving somewhere, I want you to know you're not alone in that room, even though it feels like you are.
00:26:10.059 --> 00:26:19.660
Whatever you decide to say, however it comes out, whether it's smooth or clumsy or half finished and you have to try again the next day, that still counts.
00:26:19.900 --> 00:26:25.339
It's still the wall going up, one stone, even if your hands are shaking while you set it.
00:26:25.579 --> 00:26:29.500
And I don't think God is standing off to the side, grating how graceful it looked.
00:26:29.740 --> 00:26:33.740
What I think God actually notices is whether you kept showing up to the wall at all.
00:26:33.980 --> 00:26:36.940
That's the picture that keeps coming back to me while I think about this.
00:26:37.180 --> 00:26:50.539
Nehemiah and the people rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem, everything in ruins, everyone tired, half of them working with a trowel in one hand and ready to defend themselves with the other, because they were people actively trying to stop them from finishing.
00:26:50.779 --> 00:26:53.180
And there's this one line that's always stuck with me.
00:26:53.339 --> 00:26:55.259
The people worked with all their heart.
00:26:55.500 --> 00:26:58.700
Not because it was easy, not because nobody was against them.
00:26:58.860 --> 00:27:03.500
They worked with everything they had because the wall mattered more than the exhaustion did.
00:27:03.740 --> 00:27:06.860
I think that's closer to what this feels like than we usually admit.
00:27:07.099 --> 00:27:16.220
You're not just saying no to one text or one phone call, you're rebuilding something that got torn down a long time ago, maybe before you even had words for what a boundary was.
00:27:16.380 --> 00:27:22.860
And there are going to be people, sometimes people who love you, who feel like your wall going up is somehow an attack on them.
00:27:23.019 --> 00:27:24.460
That's not always malice.
00:27:24.620 --> 00:27:28.380
Sometimes it's just what it feels like to lose access you've had for years.
00:27:28.620 --> 00:27:31.180
But you're not tearing anything down by building this.
00:27:31.339 --> 00:27:34.460
You're finishing something that should have been standing a long time ago.
00:27:34.700 --> 00:27:39.579
Here's where I want to plant the hope, because I mean it, this is hope and not just comfort.
00:27:39.740 --> 00:27:45.740
The wall in Nehemiah didn't go up because everyone felt brave and unified and certain the whole way through.
00:27:45.980 --> 00:27:48.779
It went up because they kept working while they were afraid.
00:27:48.940 --> 00:27:55.740
Half the story is people building with a weapon strapped to their side, glancing over their shoulder, still stacking the next stone.
00:27:55.980 --> 00:28:01.099
That's not the picture of confidence we usually imagine when we think about people of faith doing the right thing.
00:28:01.259 --> 00:28:05.420
It's messier than that, it's more human than that, and it's still counted.
00:28:05.660 --> 00:28:07.099
The wall still stood.
00:28:07.339 --> 00:28:21.819
So if what you're doing this week feels shaky, if your voice cracks when you say it, if you have to write the text three times before you send it, if you say the boundary and then immediately want to take it back and soften it into nothing, that doesn't disqualify you from this.
00:28:22.059 --> 00:28:25.579
You're still one of the people on the wall, you're still doing the work.
00:28:25.819 --> 00:28:30.940
And here's the part I really want you to hear, because I don't think it gets said enough in church spaces.
00:28:31.259 --> 00:28:41.339
God is not waiting somewhere off to the side with a clipboard, checking whether your boundary sounded loving enough, or whether you delivered it with the right tone, or whether the other person took it well.
00:28:41.500 --> 00:28:48.059
He's not grading your performance, he's watching you become someone who tells the truth, even when it costs you something.
00:28:48.299 --> 00:28:54.460
That's the actual miracle happening here, not the smoothness of the sentence, the honesty inside it.
00:28:54.700 --> 00:29:02.299
There's a kind of person that gets formed slowly, over years, by a hundred small moments, just like the one you're standing in right now.
00:29:02.539 --> 00:29:08.059
Someone whose yes means yes and whose no means no, the way Jesus talked about it.
00:29:08.299 --> 00:29:12.059
Someone people can actually trust because their words match their life.
00:29:12.380 --> 00:29:24.779
That person isn't born fully formed, they get built the same way that wall got built, one stone at a time, some of the stones crooked, some of them set by hands that were shaking, and the wall still held.
00:29:25.019 --> 00:29:27.500
You are allowed to become that person slowly.
00:29:27.740 --> 00:29:32.860
You don't have to arrive there by tonight, you don't have to get the whole boundary right on the first try.
00:29:33.099 --> 00:29:40.539
Maybe this week you only manage the first stone, one honest sentence, one small no, and that's enough for today.
00:29:40.779 --> 00:29:54.620
The rest of the wall gets built the same way, a little at a time, by someone who keeps showing up even when it's hard, even when people push back, even when part of you wants to just let the old pattern keep running because at least it's familiar.
00:29:54.860 --> 00:29:58.380
That's not weakness, that's how anything real gets built.
00:29:58.620 --> 00:30:04.380
Nobody rebuilds a life or a heart or a wall around something precious in one afternoon.
00:30:04.620 --> 00:30:11.339
They rebuild it by deciding over and over that the thing they're protecting is worth the discomfort of protecting it.
00:30:11.500 --> 00:30:13.339
And you get to decide that too.
00:30:13.579 --> 00:30:15.099
Today, if you're ready.
00:30:15.339 --> 00:30:17.660
Tomorrow, if you're not quite there yet.
00:30:17.900 --> 00:30:20.220
Either way, the invitation doesn't close.
00:30:20.380 --> 00:30:22.779
It's still open the next time you pick up a stone.
00:30:22.940 --> 00:30:33.980
So wherever you are with this, whether you're just now realizing you don't even know what your own load feels like, or whether you've already got a boundary you've been too scared to say out loud, I want you to know something before we close.
00:30:34.220 --> 00:30:35.420
You are not behind.
00:30:35.660 --> 00:30:38.700
You are not the only one whose voice shakes when they try this.
00:30:38.860 --> 00:30:42.380
You are not failing at faith because a no feels harder than it should.
00:30:42.620 --> 00:30:47.740
Guilt lied to a lot of us for a long time, telling us that love means having no edges at all.
00:30:47.980 --> 00:30:53.259
But love with no edges isn't love, it's erosion, and you are allowed to stop eroding.
00:30:53.420 --> 00:30:56.779
If all you take from today is one sentence, let it be this.
00:30:57.019 --> 00:31:04.059
Your heart is worth guarding, your yes is allowed to mean yes, and your no doesn't need a defense attorney standing next to it.
00:31:04.380 --> 00:31:08.779
God isn't disappointed in you for having limits, he built you with them on purpose.
00:31:09.019 --> 00:31:11.740
Keep showing up to the wall, that's the whole thing.
00:31:11.900 --> 00:31:13.500
That's the whole invitation.
00:31:13.819 --> 00:31:15.099
Thank you for being here.
00:31:15.259 --> 00:31:16.700
This is a safe space.
00:31:16.860 --> 00:31:18.460
If this helped, share it.
00:31:18.620 --> 00:31:22.860
Visit Ironforge Syndicate.compass collective.nyc.
00:31:23.019 --> 00:31:24.460
See you on the next episode.
00:31:24.700 --> 00:31:25.660
God bless.