"Healthy Relationships: Good Boundaries" by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Kurt Young)

I tend to be a fairly kind person, gentle, easy going. You might even say I am a push over. But something happens every few years when Kurt and I decide to trade in one of our cars. I get kind of mean. Generally I am not a tough negotiator. I cannot haggle for a price at a flea market, but when it comes to a car dealer, something just comes over me.  I get to be not nice. One time in particular, I remember there was this car. I had decided which car I wanted. I had a good trade in with a good value. I had decided what I wanted to pay for the new car. There were several dealers in town where I could buy the car. I went in to talk to a sales guy. And you know what he did. He took my car and had their trade in guy take mine for a test drive and told me what they would give me for a trade. And then he told me he was giving me the best possible price for the car I wanted to buy. He kept going back and forth to his manager. You know the drill. I finally said, “Please give me my keys back. I’m not buying the car today.” I took my keys and I walked out.

And I felt so powerful. Because here is the thing. I had the money for the down payment. I had the loan through my credit union. I wanted the car, but I did not have to buy it. I could walk away. Because I was not going to let him manipulate me into paying more than I wanted, just because HE told me it was a good deal.

I have never felt so powerful, because I did not let that salesman tell me what to pay, or when, to buy my car. It was MY choice. I did not let him have control over MY life. Because you see I was the one with the money. I had something HE wanted. He wanted to make the sale.

I owed him nothing. And so I walked away. I did not have to explain, justify or defend my choice to that guy. I ended up buying the car a few days later at another dealer and getting the deal I wanted, by the way. Now that is a story about an interaction with someone, a car salesman. I had next to nothing invested in that relationship. I’ll grant you that. So it was fairly easy to walk away.

Today we’re going to talk about relationships that are important to us: our partners, our parents and children, our close friends, our co-workers, and friends here at The Village. We’re talking about healthy relationships and today we want to just scratch the surface with the concept of good boundaries in healthy relationships.

Now I am not a psycho-therapist, nor a licensed counselor, so if you think you might need one of those, I’ll help you find one, I will be happy to help you with that. I believe in therapy. I have learned a great deal in therapy.  But I am a pastor, who has had some conversations with folks who are struggling with relationships with people they care about, and so I have learned a few things.   I have conversations with people every week about bad relationships, trust me.
I have learned that many people get tied up in knots trying to make choices that will please all the people in our lives. We end up looking, AND FEELING, like pretzels. I think it starts when we are young adults, trying to figure out how to grow up and relate to our parents as adults instead of children.  Some of us never get past that one. And then all our relationships for the rest of our lives are affected by that one.

You see, one of the biggest challenges to relationships is that we don’t have good boundaries. We don’t know how to pay attention to our own internal feelings, and to value ourselves. We get pulled to and fro by this person and that person and what they say is best for us, and what they want from us. Just like that car dealer who tried to convince me that he had the best car deal for me, our mothers will tell us that they know what is best for us, even when we are 40 years old and we can make our own decisions. Our friends will tell us what we should do, even when we do not ask for their advice. If we ask for advice that is one thing, but some people want to control us, who we see, where we go, because they are insecure, and they need to be with us all the time. There are all kinds of reasons why relationships get unhealthy.

So a friend taught me a phrase to use, (with myself) when I feel like I am being controlled by someone else, or I am having trouble keeping boundaries in a relationship. Here it is: I don’t have to explain, justify or defend my choices.
So let’s try it out. One example I can think of, about a time when folks get caught in the pull of the family dynamics is this: where will we go for Christmas dinner? This is a hard one, especially if you have a partner, and children, and you both still have parents that are living. Or it’s hard if either one of your parents don’t like your partner, for any reason. Some of us have partners that aren’t welcome in our parents’ home, and that’s not acceptable. And so every year, the conversations begin.

If you are in this situation, I would encourage you to try this. First of all, find a quiet place, apart from all the voices of people who are fighting over you, you know the ones that are pulling you (like the wishbone on the Christmas turkey). Dig deep down in your soul, and find your truth. Where would YOU like to be on Christmas day? And with whom? Picture it.   NO, you don’t get Tahiti with the cute guy or girl as choice.

Now, you can only control yourself. But you can decide not to go some places. And here is the thing, here is the mantra, you do not have to explain, defend or justify your choice. You can just say: I’m going to do this for Christmas this year; it’s what I want to do. And just stop.  Be silent.

“But you always do this.” “Well that’s not going to work for me this year. I’m going to do this.” You see one of the things we know about family systems, and healthy behavior, is that when one person gets healthy and starts setting healthy boundaries, the rest of the system eventually has to react. And often the rest of the people start getting healthy too. And in any case, you get to do what you want to do for once.

The point is, you have to sit down, in the quiet, and find your truth. What do YOU want, and then you have to speak that truth. And don’t explain, justify or defend your choice.  You are living in your peace, your center, your truth, your choice.

And here is why. In a letter to the church at Corinth, Paul tells us how to behave in relationships. He talks about love. But it’s not about romantic love. It’s about what it means to love ourselves, and to know that we are loved by God. You see if I know that God loves me and God loves you, then we can have a mature healthy relationship. We can respect one another. That means we won’t act like children. I won’t let you bully me. I will pay attention to my feelings and stand up for myself.

This is what Paul says: in a loving relationship, people are kind and patient. When people are in a healthy loving friendship, they are not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way and it is not irritable or resentful.

Paul says love does not insist on its own way. Now you might go back to the discussion of where to spend Christmas and say, well if I decide where I want to go for Christmas, and that makes someone in my family mad then I am insisting on my own way. But I think insisting on our own way, as Paul is talking about it, probably refers to controlling other people. You know how this goes, in a group, when one person tries to control the whole group, and always has to have their way.

Paul is saying, in a group of friends, or in a family, there is compromise. People work together, and understand that not everyone is going to get their way all the time if we are going to be together.

Now back to Christmas, you may imagine a Christmas dinner where certain family members that you like are there, and certain family members that are annoying are not there, and of course, you don’t have control over that unless you host the dinner at your house. And then THEY get to decide whether or not they will come, because they also do not have to explain, justify or defend their decisions to you. Do you get the idea?

This takes some time. But the concept is a good one. Paul tells us that in healthy relationships people are patient and kind toward one another. We are not envious, boastful, arrogant or rude. And yet some of you tell me every week, that you are being treated in ways that are the exact opposite of this.

When that happens, after you get over your initial feelings of hurt or anger, I hope you will take out this scripture and read it. And then ask yourself the hard question: am I being loving in this relationship? Either way, pray for that other person. And then respect yourself enough not to allow yourself to be treated badly. If the relationship is one that you are really invested in, then see if you can find a way to have a calm, mature conversation with the person and tell them how you feel.  My spiritual director tells me to stand in my truth: “I feel this way when you do these things.” They can’t argue with the way I feel.

But you have to be willing to walk away, at least for awhile, if the person’s treatment of you is not acceptable.  Like I walked away from the car salesman, but that was easy. Having good boundaries means that we will say to a person, will not accept being treated badly. I love you, but I also love myself and I will not hang around while you treat me with disrespect. That is the hard, mature part of being in a healthy relationship.  And that’s what we want, to be treated well and treat each other well. And we don’t have to explain, justify, or defend our choice.   God calls us to be in living mature relationships.

I’ve given you a lot of information today. This was not an easy message. These skills are not ones that we learn quickly. We are going to be talking about healthy relationships for several weeks. You can read this message and the others again and again on our Village web site and blog.

We all want healthy relationships, and we all deserve to have them. I believe Paul would say that would should not settle for anything less. That’s why he described what love is, and invited us to live in this way. So let’s strive to love in this way (I Corinthians 13:1-7 from the New Revised Standard Version for those following along via the web):

4Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

So let’s go and be people who love.  Amen.