In response to the accusations, finger-pointing, nose-snubbing, guilt-charging, and overall negativity peppering my facebook page regarding Katie Perry and her Superbowl halftime show (not that I'm in any way endorsing the halftime show, it was turned off at our house):

3 If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,
    Lord, who could stand?
⁴ But with you there is forgiveness,
    so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

⁵ I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
    and in his word I put my hope.

Psalm 130:3 - 5

“There’s always something to look at if you open your eyes.” – Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison

"When you are not feeling particularly friendly…put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are."
~A Year with C. S. Lewis

"The Introverted are the people who live in the constant tension between the desire to communicate… and the desire to hide." 

Ann Voskamp, A Holy Experience

Words to live by right now

“That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing is changed, but that our power to do is increased” -Heber J. Grant

If you have never said "Excuse me" to a parking meter or bashed your shins on a fireplug, you are probably wasting too much valuable reading time. ~Sherri Chasin Calvo

Thought for the Day

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences. –C.S. Lewis

A Valentine

Take my life, and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee;
Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Let them flow in ceaseless praise.

Take my hands, and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love;
Take my feet, and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee.
Swift and beautiful for Thee.

Take my voice, and let me sing
Always, only, for my King;
Take my lips, and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee.
Filled with messages from Thee.

Take my silver and my gold:
Not a mite would I withhold;
Take my intellect, and use
Ev'ry pow'r as Thou shalt choose.
Ev'ry pow'r as Thou shalt choose.

Take my will, and make it Thine,
It shall be no longer mine;
Take my heart, it is Thine own,
It shall be Thy royal throne.
It shall be Thy royal throne.

Take my love, my Lord, I pour
At Thy feet its treasure store;
Take myself, and I will be,
Ever, only, all for Thee.
Ever, only, all for Thee.

Words: Frances R. Havergal 1874.

To my husband...

"Sometimes the obvious is so obscured by brilliant analysis that it gets lost...The obvious need not be shallow. Sometimes it is profound and painful, and can be written off only by being called obvious." - Madeline L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet

An Irish Prayer

I ran across this today, and it made me laugh.

May those who love us, love us;
and those who don't love us,
may God turn their hearts;
and if He doesn't turn their hearts,
may he turn their ankles
so we'll know them by their limping.

Vanity--It is All Vanity

Madeline L'Engle reminded me, today, why it might be that God allows many of us to have jobs that can be frustrating to do, puts us in contact with people who are sometimes difficult to work with, or means that you do hours of work for no recognition (or other people get the praise for that work!).

Speaking to those who give a job their focused, highest quality attention, and speaking to those who are apparently much more spiritually developed in this particular area than I sometimes am, L'Engle says the following:

Ah, surely it is vain to think about words of praise. It is permissible for us to be pleased that a job has been well done, but we can't take any personal credit for it. We can only be grateful that the work itself knocks self-consciousness out of the way, for it is only thus that the work can be done.

Getting to that stage where my self-consciousness has been knocked out of the way, there's the rub.

Boundaries Part 7

The last section of Boundaries is on actually how to develop good boundaries. There were a couple of points that really stood out to me in this area (well, truthfully, the whole book is really good!).


1. The first quote I've going to give you below is one that just made me laugh. Ever since I'm been on this whole life-changing, gluten free thing, I've had a lot of people talking to me about how I'm able to just give up so much. And I've had something reinforced for me that seems very basic but a lot of people don't really seem to recognize the truth behind it. To change, you have to really want it. Otherwise, you won't change. It's not worth it to you.

"The driving force behind boundaries has to be desire. We usually know what is the right thing to do in life, but we are rarely motivated to do it unless there's a good reason. That we should be obedient to God, who tells us to set and maintain boundaries, is certainly the best reason. But sometimes we need a more compelling reason than obedience. We need to see that what is right is also good for us. and we usually only see these good reasons when we're in pain. Our pain motivates us to act."

I'd never though of this food struggle for me as simply as just calling it a boundary I'm establishing in my life, but the reality is that a boundary is the only name for it. I'm protecting myself from things that hurt me, and opening myself up to those things that are good for me. For years I've thought that Chris and I should really make some changes in our lives--eat better food, etc. But I never had the motivation to do. Now I do. And my whole world is being turned upside down, shaken apart, and then being put back together piece by piece.


2. The second quote (it's kind of long) I'm going to give is an answer to a question(s) I've had for quite a few years now. It is a question that has haunted me for the last couple in particular. I've even written about it here. What is forgiveness? And more particularly--how do you forgive someone who doesn't seem to want to be forgiven or even get the fact that they've hurt you? And even more specifically from that--how do you forgive someone who doesn't "get" how they've been at fault and thus you are placing yourself back under them in a way that you're almost guaranteed to get hurt again?

"Many people have a problem determining the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. They fail to deal with external resistance because they feel that they have to give in to the other person again or they are not being forgiving. In fact, many people are afraid to forgive because they equate that with letting down their boundaries one more time and giving the other person the power to hurt them again.

"The Bible is clear about two principles: (1) We always need to forgive, but (2) we don't always achieve reconciliation. Forgiveness is something that we do in our hearts; we release someone from a debt that they owe us. We write off the other person's debt, and she no longer owes us. We no longer condemn her. She is clean. Only one party is needed for forgiveness: me. The person who owes me a debt does not have to ask for my forgiveness. It is a work of grace in my heart.

"This brings us to the second principle: we do not always achieve reconciliation. God forgave the world, but the whole world is not reconciled to Him. Although He may have forgiven all people, all people have not owned their sin and appropriated His forgiveness. That would be reconciliation. Forgiveness takes one; reconciliation takes two.

"We do not open ourselves up to the other party until we have seen that she has truly owned her part of the problem...True repentance is much more than saying 'I'm sorry'; it is changing directions."

I think I have some answers now.

3. The final quote goes right along with the above thought. This particular section was dealing more with how to handle unresolved grief and loss:

"The basic rule in biblical recovery is that the life before God is not worth holding on to; we must lose it, grieve it, and let go so that He can give us good things. We tend to hold on to the hope that 'someday they will love me' and continue to try to get someone who is unable to love us to change. This wish must be mourned and let go of so that our hearts can be opened to the new things that God wants for us...Giving up boundaries to get love postpones the inevitable: the realization of the truth about the person, the embracing of the sadness of that truth, and the letting go and moving on with life."

And thus endeth my posts on Boundaries. If you've been bored to tears, you're probably not reading this. If you've been reading these posts, I hope they've maybe given you some interest in reading, what I found to be, an amazing book.

I will be reading this book again...relatively soon, most likely. But I know that regardless of when I return to it, there are areas of my life--spiritual, physical, and emotion--that have been and are going to continue to be greatly impacted by this.

Boundaries Part 5

For this next part, I'm just going to throw a couple of quotes out there that really stood out to me from chapter 5 (The Ten Laws of Boundaries) and chapter 6 (Common Boundary Myths).

1. Biblical views of Responsibility: "[We are commanded to] 'love each other as I have loved you' (John 15:12). Anytime you are not loving others, you are not taking full responsibility for yourself; you have disowned your heart...[However], we are to love one another, not be one another....The biblical mandate for our own personal growth is 'Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose' (Phil. 2:12-13). You are responsible for yourself. I am responsible for myself...[I am] responsible to give to [your] needs and to put limits on [your] sin. Boundaries help you do just that."

2. Biblical view of Respect: "We fear that others will not respect our boundaries. We focus on others and lose clarity about ourselves...We judge the boundary decisions of others, thinking that we know best how they 'ought' to give, and usually, that means 'they ought to give to me the way I want them to!' But the Bible says whenever we judge, we will be judged....If we condemn others' boundaries, we expect them to condemn ours. This sets up a fear cycle inside that makes us afraid to set the boundaries that we need to set...'So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you' (Matt. 7:12). We need to respect the boundaries of others. We need to love the boundaries of others in order to command respect for our own. We need to treat their boundaries the way we want them to treat ours."

3. On evaluating the effects of boundaries on others: "You need to evaluate the effect of setting boundaries and be responsible to the other person, but that does not mean you should avoid setting boundaries become someone respond with hurt or anger. To have boundaries...is to love a purposeful life...We need to evaluate the pain caused by our making choices and empathize with it." (But that doesn't mean we change our boundaries because of it--it just means not walking blindly through life disregarding how other's might feel because of our boundaries that we've set.

4. On being proactive in life (ontologizing!) and the power that comes with that: "Proactive people show you what they love, what they want, what they purpose, and what they stand for. These people are very different from those who are known by what they hate, what they don't like, what they stand against, and what they will not do...Power is not something you demand or deserve, it is something you express. The ultimate expression of power is love; it is the ability not to express power, but to restrain it."

5. On being active (or purposeful - again ontology!): "Human beings are responders and initiators. Many times we have boundary problems because we lack initiative - the God-given ability to propel ourselves into life...Passivity never pays off. God will match our efforts, but he will never do our work for us. That would be an invasion of our boundaries. He wants us to be assertive and active, seeking and knocking on the door to life...The sin God rebukes is not trying and failing but failing to try. Trying, failing, and trying again is called learning. Failing to try will have no good results; evil with triumph."

6. On being honest about our boundaries: "...boundaries need to be made visible to others and communicated to them in relationship. We have many boundary problems because of relational fears...Because of [our] fears, we try to have secret boundaries. We withdraw passively and quietly instead of communicating an honest no to someone we love...The Bible continually speaks or our being in the light and of the light as the only place where we have access to God and others. But, because of our fears, we hide aspects of ourselves in the darkness, where the devil has an opportunity. When our boundaries are in the light, that is, are communicated openly, our personalities begin to integrate for the first time. They become 'visible'...and then they become light."

7. On Stewardship vs. selfishness: "We are our own responsibility...We are to develop our lives, abilities, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Our spiritual and emotional growth is God's 'interest' on his investment in us. When we say no to people and activities that are hurtful to us, we are protecting God's investment."

8. On obeidence and not being bound by fear: "The Bible tells us how to be obedient: 'Each of you must give us you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver' (2 Cor. 9:7). ...God has no interest in our obeying out of fear [fear of a real person of a guilty conscience] ...God wants a response of love. Are boundaries a sign of Disobedience? They can be. We can say no to good things for wrong reasons. But having a 'no' helps us to clarify, to be honest, to tell the truth about our motives; then we can allow God to work in us. This process cannot be accomplished in a fearful heart."

9. On identifying good relationships: "Boundaries are a 'litmus test' for the quality of our relationships. Those people in our lives who can respect our boundaries love our will, our opinions, our seperatesness. Those who can't respect our boundaries are telling us that they don't love our no. They only love our yes, our compliance."

10. On the role of boundaries: "Boundaries are a defensive tool. Appropriate boundaries don't control, attack, or hurt anyone. They simply prevent your treasures from being taken at the wrong time. Saying no to adults, who are responsible for getting their own needs met, may cause some discomfort. They may have to look elsewhere. But it doesn't cause injury."

11. On boundaries and the legitimate needs of others: "Even when someone has a valid problem, there are times when we can't sacrifice for some reason or another. Jesus left the multitudes, for example, to be alone with his father (Matt. 14:22-23). In these instances, we have to allow others to take responsibility for their 'knapsacks' (Gal 6:5) and to look elsewhere to get their needs met."

12. Boundaries and "owing" others: "One of the major obstancles to setting boundaries with others in our lives is our feeling of obligation...The idea is that became we have received something, we owe something. The problem is the nonexistent debt. The love we receive, or money, or time--or anthing which causes us to feel obligated--should be accepted as a gift. 'Gift' implies no strings attached. All that's really needed is gratitude. The giver has no second thought that the present will provide a return. It was simply provided become someone loved someone and wanted to do something for him or her. Period....What do we owe those who are kind to us, who have genuinly cared for us? We owe them thanks. And from our greatful hearts, we should go out and help others...We need to distinguish between those who 'give to get' and those who truly give selflessly."

Not confronting our fear[s] denies the grace of God and insults both his giving of the gift and his grace to sustain us as we are learning. - Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend

Happy Valentine's Day!

That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger. ~George Eliot

"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell."

- C. S. Lewis

"The deeper and richer a personality is, the more full it is of paradox and contradiction. It is only a shallow character who offers us no problems of contrast." - Madeline L'Engle

Isn't it funny that at Christmas something in you gets so lonely for - I don't know what exactly, but it is something that you don't mind so much not having at other times.

Kate L. Bosher