First Baptist Church of Herndon

Boundaries of love

Linda Soller | Feb 02, 2015

Sally loved her extended blended family, but truth be known she loved some members much more than others. Her big problem was not letting it show. Does that sound familiar? Don’t we all set boundaries when it comes to love and who we love? Once those boundaries have been established it can become hard to keep them to ourselves and avoid hurting someone’s feelings. I think it’s especially true in families. Since the only people I am sure read this blog regularly are my family members, let me just say now I think boundaries exist in every family, even ours. Please finish reading this before you cast me out.

Boundaries of love are not all bad. We can feel love for a family member, and feel an even stronger connection to another family member. Perhaps another example would make the point better. I had a great mother-in-law. I know, you are supposed to bump heads with the in-laws, but she was great. Did we ever disagree? Absolutely. Did she ever do something to irritate me? You bet she did. What’s more, she could have said the same about me. Even so I loved and respected my mother-in-law. I was thankful for the love she gave her children, her grandchildren, and me. I was so proud of her life and her generosity of spirit. Did I love her the same way I love my mom? No. Oh, you see now what I mean by boundaries. Boundaries are not automatically bad. They can help us prioritize and organize our lives and our actions.

On the other hand boundaries can cross the line and cause trouble. There is a perfect example of the conflicting boundaries of love in the Bible. Joseph was the youngest son in his big family of some interesting personalities. His father, Jacob, was unable to hide his strong affection for his youngest son. The siblings could see Joseph was the favorite son. Meanwhile, Joseph was what we refer to as a tattle tale, a habit he no doubt perfected to keep his status with his dad. Eventually the brotherly love, and I feel certain there was some degree of brotherly love, was overshadowed by competition for Jacob’s love. What followed next reads like a movie filled with intrigue, crime, deception, sorrow, famine, opportunity, forgiveness, and the list goes on. Ultimately the brotherly/family love prevailed, but only after years of grief and turmoil for everyone.

Hopefully the boundaries in your family have not reached the heights of Jacob’s family. So what is my point? Well, I think we need to accept that intentional or not we put boundaries on our love for others inside and outside of our family. These boundaries usually develop over time. They may be based on a feeling of connection, a history of someone’s actions, a concept of loyalty, or even the desire to feel special. Once in place we work around them, and through them, and even despite them. Our boundaries change over time. Once you accept that everyone has these boundaries, yes, that includes you, we can move on to appreciate all love we are given. We can welcome all opportunities to love. As humans it’s nearly impossible to give unconditional love as much as we may want to. Fortunately we know we can get that from God. Meanwhile, we strive to use God as our mentor. We work to move our boundaries to include more people. We adjust our boundaries to forgive hurtful actions. We remove the boundaries which focus on differences and replace them with those seeing similarities.

Sally couldn’t imagine her world without every member of her family.  Hiding her feelings was taking too much of her time so she decided to work at loving each member even more. Sally would push the boundaries of her love. When is the last time you pushed yours?

Have a great week!  :o)  Linda