Get More Selfish, Boundaries Pt. 2

So to put things back in place we have to take care of first things first. Guess what? Your first! In order for these boundaries to ever take root, selfishness is required.

Believe it or not some of you are really bad at being selfish. Well maybe my word selfish is throwing you off a bit. You probably know where I am headed with this. Some of you are not great at taking care of yourselves first.

Picture this, taxi the runway at an airport. First thing that happens when they get moving is the airline speech about what happens in case of an emergency. It goes something like:

Ladies and gentleman, if for some reason we are 30,000 feet in the air and you see the nose take a fast dive where things are seeming out of control they are. We are in a world of trouble! But…while it may appear that you are going to not survive this experience you still need to take safety precautions. You need to know where your flotation devise is and you need to know where your air mask will drop from. That way, if you are having a panic attack, because of this sudden drop in altitude and the loud screams coming from the cockpit at least you feel like you are doing something while you are waititng to reach the earth.

Awful! You can see that I am a bit of a pessimist about these safety precautions doing me much good six miles in the air in a vehicle that weighs 154,000 pounds. It actually does weigh that much, I asked SIRI.

But…as a dad here is the advice I get. Before you put the air mask on your child you have to put yours on first. If you are without air then getting air to your child is going to be, let’s say, not possible!

And this is why taking care of yourself is so important. If you are not taking care of youreself your effort in taking care of others will not go great. On more occassions than I want to count I have offered to other people without first taking care of myself. Some things I noticed:

I get bitter
I get resentful
I start to sound like a martyr
I get prideful
I feel entitled (I deserve_____________)
I am actually thinking about myself more than the other person

That last one sounds crazy huh? Did you know that at some level when you are taking care of other people first it can actually be self serving. I know, I know that sounds crazy! I may not want someone else angry at me so I take care of them first. But what if setting a boundary with that person is the healthiest thing for them EVEN if they end up angry with you? Well this is turning out not to be a fun blog.

But taking care of myself, what does that look like? Well it does not look like my favorite food in the whole world called cheesecake. I wish I could do a whole blog on cheesecake. Cheesecake makes me so happy! But the problem with too much cheesecake is I get full, I feel yucky and my pants stop fitting. Taking care of myself actually means me addressing my physical, emotional, spiritual, vocational, social and mental in healthy ways. We will dig into that in part 3 of our look at Boundaries.

A couple questions to ask until then is:

1. What do I do to take care of me?
2. What prohibits me from taking care of myself?

First Things First, Boundaries Pt. 1

This series is dedicated to some lovely ladies I got to spend some time with last weekend who are taking a close look at their life and choosing to make first things first.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to meet with a group of ladies and talk about this idea called Boundaries. These ladies, like many of us in different ways, are working on relationships. As always, even with a fancy degree I am reminded how perplex and confusing relationships can be. We enter the world through a relationship and if all goes well exit this world in relationship. If relationships are going well in our life then statistically we are some of the healthiest people alive. Meaning, people with good relationships are usually more mentally, physically and spiritually happier. But as I am reminded daily in my profession, my classroom and with these ladies, relationships are hard. I know, based on my own story, one of the reasons relationships are hard is because we lack good understanding of a core need. Boundaries.

I thought Dr. John Townsend and Dr. Henry Cloud, in their book Boundaries, put it well. They say that boundaries are simply where I end and where you begin. Our first thought is the physical. That is definitely one way that we know an end and a begin. For me to hit you, outside a sanctioned sport that welcomes big punches and kicks to my head, is a violation of boundaries. That one is pretty black and white. You hit me I feel pain and I tell you to stop and hopefully you do. But what about words? What about my needs and wants? How do I know what I can ask and what I need to leave alone? So messy! Mostly confusing. For the next five weeks I am going to take a closer look at Boundaries and what we need to know about them. Let’s take a closer look together and see if we can’t come up with some ideas about what boundaries may look like in our life.

You are responsible to manage different levels of intimacy, responsibility, influence and trust with people in your life. Danny Silk, Keep Your Love On!Danny will create a starting place for us to take a look at relational boundaries. The first thing he mentions is how important it is that we manage the level of intimacy with have with EACH person in our life. This statement alone helps us recognize that not all people are going to get the same level of intimacy with you. Each person is different. If I want to have a relationship with God and pursue my wife and children in an honorable way, they must be first! Period (or maybe explanation point) I think most of us would say, duh?! Those things are first.

Then let’s test it. Are these people getting my first fruits. First fruits represent your best. Do they get the best part of your mood? Do they get your joy and your smiles and your focused attention? If you asked them if they feel number one in your life, how would they respond? Of course in our mind most of us would validate this is what I “want” to be most important in my life. Our mind and our actions must come together so what we think is what is actually happening.

Some of you, especially my male readers, know that if this question was asked to your wife and kids maybe they would say your job comes first. Maybe they see my ministry as being my first. Maybe your hobbies appear to be your first.

Your actions reflect what the mind actually believes. The old saying, “don’t pay attention to what I say, pay attention to what I do.”

One of my first for years was the likes and demands of others. I had a tendency for more years than I want to admit to make the demands of others my first. There was a variety of reasons this happened:

I knew my family would always love me
I did not want to disappoint other people
God told me I need to serve people so this must be what it looked like to suffer for him
I simply did not know how to say NO
I am better at these other things that being a husband/dad
This makes me feel good
Running from a problem

No shame here. I think all of us can say that we have had other first in our life than what we want to. So consider this as an invitation to grow back into the first that we must live by. If any of these reasons above reflect your action, you may have lost your firsts. Boundaries are a good place to start to get it back. A starting place today is simply recognize and be HONEST with yourself about things/people/thoughts that are getting in the way of my firsts. Next week we will take a look at a transition to putting first things first back in place.