Pearson Pearson

“What hurts us will not be our full story.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“Somewhere in all the looking around at others for validation, we’ve stopped looking up. If we are living honest lives that honor God, we must not forget that people not liking our boundary does not mean we aren’t living right before God. When someone says something that hurts or offends us when we draw a boundary, it can be good to check ourselves. Is any part of this an attempt on our part to do harm, control, retaliate, check out, or give ourselves permission to be irresponsible? While checking ourselves is healthy, questioning our identity is not. Checking ourselves means looking at a current attitude or behavior to see if it is in line with God’s instructions and wisdom. Questioning our identity is doubting who we are because we have given too much power to other people by letting their opinions define us. I don’t know any other way to say this except to be absolutely direct: If our identity, the foundational belief we hold of who we are, is tied to an opinion someone has of us, we need to reassess. We must be honest with how much access to our heart we’ve given to this person. It’s not bad to give someone access to our heart but when we give an unhealthy person too much access, it can shake us to our core. When their opinion of us starts to affect how we see ourselves, we can lose sight of the best parts of who we are because we get entangled in the exhausting pursuit of trying to keep that relationship intact no matter the cost. And when this is the cycle we are caught in, sometimes we would rather manage people’s perceptions of us than care for ourselves and the relationship by putting appropriate boundaries in place. Remember, we talked about personal access and responsibility in previous chapters. When we give people personal access to us, those people must be responsible with it. And emotional access to our hearts is especially important.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“So, lesson learned: some goodbyes are not for a season, they are forever. but when two good people part ways and don't cause harm to each other, it may actually allow for more good to be done in their respective callings…..
…..Remember, some people appear to say the right things, but their actions betray their words.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are

“God calls us to obey Him. God does not call us to obey every wish and whim of other people. God calls us to love other people. God does not call us to demand that they love us back and meet every need we have.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are