Self-care: care for yourself so you can care for others.
Yes.
Yes.
But…
Boundaries can be an excuse to not move towards the “difficult people” in our lives. We bound away people that have nothing to “offer” us in return, because maybe “I’m tired today”.
Boundaries in the name of my personal comfort is missing the point.
We run into the weeds when we allow our self-care and comfort to be the determining factor in how we set our boundaries with others.
Instead, how can I first attune myself to what God would have me do? Can I learn to care more about how He would have me set boundaries instead of giving my comfort top precedence? Can I learn to be less reactive to others and more reactive to God?
Can I unhitch myself from my clingy neediness of others? I am convinced I have done – and still do – this often. Maybe I’m the only one…
We ALL find ourselves expecting things of other people they were never meant to fulfill.
We can easily strap our hopes, dreams, fulfillment on the backs of our friends and family who were meant to be gifts in and of themselves – not pack mules for our personal gratification.
No one else has the capacity to feel our precise pain, totally fill our needy space, or fully understand us (wow such an Enneagram 4 comment). God is truly the only one who can wholly “get us” and BE WITH US.
Stop expecting others to be what they were never meant to be. We all care for things the wrong way. I prioritize myself at the wrong times, I care too much about people’s opinions and miss actual opportunities of caring for them. I am continuing to learn to reorder the structure of my internal and external life. I need to reorganize how I think about self-care and care for others.
To not need people, frees us to actually love and enjoy them.
Time to reorganize.
Cheers
Word Goodies 