Boundaries in Relationships: Lysa TerKeurst

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In isolation, that's where the enemy can really, really do a number on us. So whether you're in a difficult friendship and you're worried the friendship may end, or if you're in a difficult parent relationship with your parents, or even if you're the parent and you've got children that you're having a difficult relationship or a marriage or whatever it is, don't stay in isolation. You know, it's not that you want to tell everybody, but you need to tell somebody and choose wisely who those somebodies are. Welcome to Family Life Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today. So I didn't know it growing up in this home, but watching my dad drink every night. Women took me on trips when I was five and six years old with his girlfriends while married to my mom. I never realized my mom couldn't set a boundary. She just let it happen. And she knew about all of it. He let her know about all of it.

Yeah. I mean, again, looking back, it's like, mom, come on. And she did not choose to divorce him until my older brother's 10 years older. So probably 18, 19 years old said to mom, you can't let this go on.

He is destroying our family. And again, I'm a little boy at the time thinking it's the worst thing ever happened in my life when my mom and dad got divorced. It was the best thing for me. I'm not saying divorce is good. I'm not.

I'm saying it's a really hard decision she made. But if I would have stayed being raised by that man, I'm not the man. I'm not sitting here right now.

I'm literally not sitting here right now. My mom saved my life by making a really hard boundary choice, saying I'm not going to let this chaos go on anymore. And it's interesting, too, because your dad started getting some help after that.

Yes. That decision changed his life for the good. We're pretty excited. We have Lisa Turkers with us in the studio today. Lisa, welcome back.

Thank you so much. I'm just proud of your mom for realizing that she wasn't powerless in the situation at first. It sounds a little bit like she's powerless, you know? And I understand that we are to deeply respect the institution of marriage.

And at the same time, we have to look and see that Jesus prioritized life, the sanctity of life, over even the institution of relationships in marriage. And, you know, your mom was in a terribly unsafe situation. I mean, he was physically abusive as well. Yeah. So but even sexually transmitted diseases, you know, getting in a car or her kids getting into a car with, you know, someone who is inebriated.

There's just so many things. And, you know, I think sometimes in relationships like that, we can start to feel powerless because the other person won't change. And I get that. It can feel very powerless.

But while you can't change another person, you can ask yourself, what can I do? And a good way to establish this is okay, if this, then this. And it's not meant to be a threat. And I would always suggest don't do it in the heat of the battle. You know, don't do it a moment of conflict. But think logically using the logical part of your brain. Okay, if this, like if you drink, then this, my kids will not get in that car with you.

If you have another affair, I will not continue to live with you. And of course, we want to take steps, not leaps. We want to be very careful about that.

So it's not like we want to swing from one extreme to the other. But you're not powerless in a situation where another person refuses to change, because you have the ability to keep yourself safe, sane, stable and self-controlled. But that may mean you have to limit that person's access to you until either they become more responsible with the access you've given them, or you make the choice to say goodbye. I just counseled a woman a few weeks ago who called and said, I think my husband's cheating. And it hadn't been the first time. And she asked me like, how do I approach it? And I said, first of all, you're praying, you're gathering friends, you're in the word. It's not an empty threat that you're going to make.

You need to really seek Jesus and what this looks like. But I did say, I would start by saying, I'm choosing us. I'm choosing us, our family, our kids. I'm choosing Jesus with us. But it looks like you are not choosing us based on the decisions and the things that you're doing.

And so I'm going to always choose us. But until you can do that, and it looks like you're doing that, in other words, you're not cheating on us, you're not drinking, you're not partying, you're not doing drugs, until that stops, to me that says, I'm not choosing our family. And so that can be a healthy boundary.

Absolutely. And of course, that's a serious situation. And when I went through a divorce, there was some criticism, people expecting me to stay no matter what. And I get that because I deeply respect marriage and I intended to keep my commitments.

And you know what? I did. And in the end, I didn't walk away. I had to make the gut wrenching decision to accept reality. And when you accept reality, then sometimes their choices or sometimes just the place that this broken down dysfunctional relationship is, it is no longer safe. It's no longer stable. It's no longer allowing you to remain self-controlled.

And I think that we need to just say, sometimes there are really hard choices that have to be made, but I refuse to stay in a marriage that does not honor God. And it sounds like that's where she's at. Yeah. Yeah.

It's interesting. As you think about your ministry life, President of Proverbs 31 Ministries, for how many years? 30 years. 30 years. You've written 25, 26 books.

Don't even know because you've written so many. And last time we had you on was, you know, Forgiving What You Can't Forget. And honestly, I've said this as a preacher from the stage, the best book I had ever read on forgiveness was Louis Smeeds, Forgive and Forget. And it literally helped me forgive my dad when I was in my 30s. Your book was so powerful.

Now I'm like, yeah, forget Smeeds. I mean, I don't mean that. But I hand yours out and you know, toward the end of that book, you started hinting at boundaries. This book, you know, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes. Obviously you started it there. Did you ever think, you know, 30 years ago, even 20 years ago, I'm going to write a book on boundaries. I mean, this is what I'm going to write on. No.

Yeah. No, because I didn't think that I would, first of all, I didn't think I would ever write a book because it's really hard to get published, but I could have never seen the twist and turns that my life would take. And I write based on my own experiences because when I write a book, I know I'm going to be knee deep in studying that for two years and I want God to teach me and I want God to hold me accountable to what I've learned and I want to grow and I invite my readers to come along with me. So, so many times the next topic is just the next part of my own journey.

I couldn't have predicted where all of this was going to go at all. But if you do look at the titles from Uninvited, that was the book on rejection. The very next book was It's Not Supposed to Be This Way. That's on major life disappointments and what do we do about it and how do we make peace with it? And then the next one, Forgiving What You Can't Forget, and then the next one, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes. And now I'm working on another one.

I don't know the title yet, but the subject matter is trust issues. And so it's just like each message is just followed along with my own spiritual and emotional journey. And, you know, just my opinion, it feels like that's where at least Christianity in America is. It feels like we need somebody like you to write on these topics.

I don't know. Is it just me? It just feels like we're in a culture where we think the most loving thing to do is lay down my life, take the abuse, take the verbal abuse, just let it happen.

Am I right? It just feels like somebody needs to speak out. Gary Thomas wrote When to Walk Away and we had him in here and it's like people were just bashing him.

Like, you never walk away. It's like, well, Jesus actually did. And there's times when the boundary is healthy and it's actually, you say a boundary is God's idea.

It is, yeah. We see it from the very beginning of the Bible when God established the foundation of the world. You know, we see boundaries there and it continues all the way through scripture. I mean, as it continues all the way through scripture, it became astounding to me. How have I missed this?

How have I missed it? You know, but I also have deep compassion for people because the motivation of saying stay, the motivation there is let's protect marriages. And I do think marriages need to be protected, but there's a big difference as my friend Leslie Vernick says, this helped me a lot. There's a very big difference between a difficult marriage and a destructive marriage.

What's the difference? A difficult marriage is the typical difficulties that you go through when you try to do relationships with other people. Which is every marriage, every relationship.

When things get challenging, go to a great counselor, right? A destructive marriage is where you are having to diminish the best of who you are to cover up the worst of who someone else is. That's a destructive marriage.

And there's different levels. There's different situations or different scenarios. And that's why I say if you're, if you feel like you're in a destructive marriage, don't go at it alone.

Get other people. And sometimes it's beautiful when you draw boundaries. Sometimes boundaries are because they're effective communication tool. It's making the other person aware. And making you aware.

And then if you have really smart people, go get a counselor that's specifically trained in that exact dysfunction that you're walking through. And sometimes the redemption of God, sometimes it is reconciliation and it is beautiful and boundaries provide such a healthy way to get there. Sometimes God's redemption is a rescue.

And sometimes that's true as well. That's why it was important for me as I wrote Good Boundaries and Good Byes to make sure that we did some heavy lifting with the biblical theology of a goodbye. One of the most fascinating things that I discovered in my research was the original term goodbye. It wasn't initially goodbye. It was God be with ye. And so people in saying goodbye would say, Oh, God be with ye.

Right? And then it was shortened to God. And then it was like B-W-Y. And then it eventually became goodbye. But if you go back to the original meaning of that, isn't it fascinating that so many of us maybe because of friendship breakups or maybe because of family of origin, you know, drama or just devastation or abuse or trauma or whatever it is, we will experience goodbyes in our life. I had never heard a sermon preached on a goodbye.

I had never even heard somebody teaching on it. And so it was important to me to say, we don't want our relationships to end. We don't want goodbyes. But sometimes that does happen and we have to acknowledge it.

But why let it get to a place where the goodbye is just so awful and treacherous and terrible? Why not take a step back and say, Okay, God teaches me to pray for my enemies. And when I pray for my enemies, I know I'm positioning them. I'm asking God to position them to be blessed.

And in order to be positioned to be blessed, then God is going to handle what needs to be handled over there. It's not my responsibility. I can't control it.

I can't manage it. Right? But isn't it so much more beautiful that instead of goodbye and good riddance, if we were to say, Goodbye, God be with you. Goodbye, God be with you.

Goodbye. And so I have a really profound moment in the very end of the book where I had to decide what I was going to do with my wedding ring. And it was just a deeply hard moment for me. And I remember I was in my closet and I was by myself. How many years had you been married?

Almost 30. And I took my wedding ring off and I just stared at it and I thought, I don't know what to do with this. But two weeks before, a college friend of mine found my childhood Bible in a box in her attic. And that childhood Bible I hadn't seen. I had no idea what ever happened to it, but she found it.

She figured out how to get in touch with me. She got the Bible to a friend of a friend who passed it on to another friend who then passed it to my daughter. And my daughter had just brought me the childhood Bible. And when I opened it up, there were some scriptures that I had highlighted from all those years ago and some notes that I had written that were such confirmation from the Lord that I was doing the right thing as hard as it was. And so I wound up taking my ring and tucking it in the pages of my childhood Bible and closing it and putting it high on the shelf with all the other special mementos that I've saved from over the years. And it was like bookends of my life. A little girl who was reading scripture, who dreamed of a life that would one day be hers. And then the ending of this portion of my life that I thought would be forever. And yet God is still creating redemption even in the midst of the twists and turns that I didn't see.

But it was just a really powerful moment to be able to tuck my ring in inside that Bible. And as I did, I prayed, God be with you. God be with you.

God be with you. Yeah, when I read that, I teared up. I mean, I can see you.

That's a hard moment, obviously. At the beginning of the book, you talk about how we all long for the Hallmark movie. We do. Don't we? But as I hear you share that, that's a God life. He's with you at the beginning and he's with you at that portion too. He's always with us and he always hears us. But it's sweet when we can trust him and as you're saying, and bless others that have heard us. That's right.

That's right. So that was another important part of this book, not only drawing healthy boundaries with the motivation to be to protect our relationships. It's effective communication and communication is an opportunity.

Healthy communication does help us protect our relationships. And then it was also important for me to tackle the subject of goodbyes because sometimes that is a reality as well. And again, when we say goodbye, we want to take steps, not leaps and boundaries allow us to take those appropriate healthy steps. But then if and when the goodbye happens, we want to honor God all the way through the end.

We will not do it perfectly. Goodbyes hurt. There will be a lot of strong emotion depending on the dynamics of the goodbye. And there will be times that you feel like you can't make it. There will be times where you just want to crawl in your bed and throw the covers over your head and tell the world to go away. There'll be times you say things you wouldn't normally say, you do things you wouldn't normally do. And yet, the secret really is to always come back to the Lord and ask the Lord, not where is my future going to go from here?

Or why did all of this happen? But what now God? Let me just honor you with what's right in front of me today. And then the next day, let me honor you with what's right in front of me the next day. And at the same time, recognizing that God does want us to preserve life, sanctity of life.

And so we've got to keep all of that in mind and get wise counsel around us. I mean, if you think about even that thought, sanctity of life, even with your own children, how do you think your decisions, you know, set boundaries and make some hard decisions have affected them? I know that I mentioned earlier when my mom and dad divorced, I was seven, ended up moving from New Jersey and my dad was an airline pilot. So we had a really nice house and a gated community and had a lot of money.

Then I remember growing up with not much money, single mom in the sixties when there weren't a lot of single moms. But short, short long story is I did a marriage conference near that city. And Ann wasn't with me. I was speaking with another couple and I borrowed a car and I drove. I thought, I want to see if I can find my old house. I, it was an adventure to get through this gated thing. But anyway, I got to the house, walk up to the door and the person says, Oh, you must be little Davey.

And I'm like, what? We bought the house from your dad. Anyway, they knew me, knew our family. I literally got to walk through this house that I hadn't been in since I was seven years old. But here's what I felt. I felt trauma. I remember each home, I remember the driveway. I mean, as I walked around, it wasn't a good feeling, which I thought I would have.

It was like, I remember fights and yelling and drunkenness and just abuse. And so I remember getting in a car feeling like, wow, I am so glad my mom made that decision. So that was my experience. You made a big decision. How has it impacted your kids?

You think? Well, I think any time there is an ending of a marriage, it affects the kids dramatically. You know, I mean, there's no escaping me. My parents got divorced and I was definitely affected by that. But I have also seen that my kids have learned themselves how to draw appropriate boundaries. And so while there was a lot of trauma, there was also this beautiful thing that happened that everybody was kind of forced to go to get good Christian therapy. And so we've all benefited from that.

And I won't paint rose colored glasses over it because my goodness, there's just a lot of hurt and a lot of pain. But my kids are really good at boundaries. So good, in fact, that we have healthy boundary conversations and as adult children, they've had to set some boundaries with me and I've had to set some boundaries with them. But because we've been on this journey together, boundaries don't feel so shocking. Boundaries feel appropriate. Boundaries, it's kind of understood, you know, that healthy relationships have healthy boundaries. And we've used them as communication tools. So do I ever get upset when they set a boundary with me?

Of course I do. I'm like, wait a minute, you know, but we can have healthy discussion. And the sign of a healthy person is that they respect healthy boundaries. I want to be a healthy person, therefore I have learned to respect healthy boundaries.

And I think my kids have done the same. And so sometimes I think people are shocked, like, wow, you guys just talk about stuff. And it's like, yeah, we do. Because communication is a very high priority in our family now. And setting boundaries is part of that. And boundaries don't have to be this awful thing. Boundaries actually help define where the freedom is so that we can operate freely within the boundary lines. And so sometimes it's hard, of course, but it has done a lot to improve my relationship with my kids and also make my kids healthier people.

And I'm glad for that part. What if you have kids or a spouse? If you've set this boundary of saying, I feel like we need to bring a third party in to get help. It feels like we aren't being able to communicate. We're not doing a good job at this, especially with our kids in tow and they're watching this. But the spouse says, I'm not doing that.

That's a really challenging situation. But remember, we can't put a boundary on another person. But we are responsible to put a boundary on ourselves. And if we need therapy, and the we is not cooperating, then it's a me now.

And so I'm going to go to therapy, but love for you to join me. And that's your choice to do it or not. But remember the ultimate really communication with the boundary. If this, then this, right? And so we always want to do it from a motivation of love and a motivation of seeking each other's highest good. But it's not seeking the other person's highest good to enable them to stay in what could be toxic behaviors, extreme dysfunction, addictions, whatever it is that different people and different relationships are dealing with. So we can't control them, but we can absolutely exercise self control.

And if we need counseling, and they're not willing, then it's a me thing. And now I'm going to go. Go back.

This is just a crazy question. But go back to young Lisa. Let's say you're in college even, and you didn't know any of this, but you love Jesus. What would you say to young Lisa? Well, young Lisa in college knew facts about God, but didn't have a thriving relationship with God. So to me, I had kind of a deal with God back then.

I would follow the rules because I am a good rule follower. I'll follow the rules and then I expect you to hold up your end of the deal to protect and to bless me and whatever else. So I had such a limited understanding. So first of all, I would say to young Lisa, don't pursue relationships outside of pursuing a relationship with God first.

And your relationship with God isn't where it needs to be. And so we've got to get that straight because that sets the foundation for really making sure that your ability to choose relationships is going to be much healthier if you have that foundation, right? I didn't have that foundation. So my parameters of looking for people to date or even friendships or whatever, I just didn't have the foundation of looking for the right people. My foundation was more, are they fun?

Are they cute? Are we in close proximity so that we can do stuff together or whatever? And I think that's a pretty common way that friendships are formed and that sometimes even marriages are formed. So I would say to young Lisa, let's get that straight first. The second thing I would say to young Lisa is don't compromise the best of who you are. You know, I said it earlier, but I'm going to say it again.

We shouldn't be diminishing the best of who we are to cover up the worst of who someone else is. And as I look back, my counselor Jim said, my picker was broken. You have to be careful how you say that, right? But my picker was broken because I was so, I don't know if it's that I was so desperate or I was so eager or I just so wanted the feeling of like being somebody's girlfriend or being someone's wife. You know, I had dreamt about it so long that I found myself excusing things that I should never have excused. I found myself overlooking things that I shouldn't overlook. And I wrote in one of my recent books, why is it that for me, a red flag has to be burning down to the ground before I tilt my head and go, huh?

That was actually kind of red, wasn't it? You know? And so I would tell younger Lisa, if you smell smoke, there is a fire. Don't ignore it. Don't cover it up.

Investigate what it is because you're talking about the rest of your life here. And when you know better, you do better. So it's easy for me to speak to younger Lisa.

Younger Lisa didn't have the tools. I didn't know what I didn't know. And so I have a lot of grace for myself looking back. And I don't beat myself up thinking, ah, if you would have done better. No, I didn't know better. So I didn't do better. But now I know better and I'm doing better. But you're also helping all the younger Lisa's to not make those things.

Yeah, I was thinking when you described younger Lisa, that's all of us. And I just wonder, you know, there's so many thinking I'm in a unhappy marriage. Should I get out when it's not, it isn't destructive. It's just a, it's a normal marriage. It's, that's unhappy, which is pretty common.

You're talking about, you know, when it's a destructive pattern, it's a lot different, even though you got into it with wrong. I mean, we all do. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you know, we, we shouldn't stay in isolation. I think that's the biggest thing. We hide. Right.

We do. And in isolation, that's where the enemy can really, really do a number on us. So whether you're in a difficult friendship and you're worried the friendship may end, or if you're in a difficult parent relationship with your parents, or even if you're the parent and you've got children that you're having a difficult relationship or a marriage or whatever it is, don't stay in isolation. You know, it's not that you want to tell everybody, but you need to tell somebody and choose wisely who those somebodies are. You know, I remember my counselor told me, get a personal board of directors.

And I did. So I have a personal board of directors now. It's not for my ministry.

It's for me. And I don't make a move without calling these people that I know, I trust, I have history with, they love the Lord. They're smart in the areas that I asked for counsel in. And yeah, my personal board of directors are really important. And it's not a massive group of people.

It's a small group of people, but they're safe people. And, and they help me see things that I don't always see. I've loved to your honesty in every book, you're super honest of where you are, where you've been, where you're going, like, I love your passion for Jesus, that it's all about him. And I like the practicality of this book, too. I love that at the end of each chapter, you have now let's live this. And you break it down into what we should remember, receive, reflect and pray about. I thought, oh, this is just a great book to go through. It's not a book just to read and be inspired, but it's a book to allow Jesus to really change.

And to me, it's not so much change, as much learning and giving more of ourselves to him every day and being able to receive from him. I'm just wondering, would you pray for us? Like, pray for those that are like, I need this.

I'm not sure what to do. You know what to pray. Lord, I pray right now for the person listening that they're in some kind of a difficult, possibly even destructive relationship.

And Lord, whether it's a friendship or parental relationship or one of their kids or marriage or whatever it is, Lord, they're listening to this and they've heard like where there's chaos, there's usually a lack of a boundary and they feel the chaos, but the boundary makes them scared because every boundary will cost us something. And so Lord, I pray that you would give them wisdom, that you would meet them in the pages of scripture and that you would just lavish your grace and your mercy on them because when you're hurting, everything feels so much harder. But Lord, I pray that you would just wrap your tender mercies around them and help them see that there's always a way with you. There's a way forward and sometimes there's a way out, Lord.

Sometimes your redemption is reconciliation and sometimes it's a rescue, but only you know, Lord. So help us to be obedient today. And Lord, I pray that you would just shed enough light on the very next step that that person is supposed to take, that we're lifting up today, Lord, be with them, be with them, be with them. In your name we pray.

Amen. You know, I feel like those conversations with Lisa were so critical for our day. I think I want to say her prayer and listen to that prayer every day, you know, because I know that I tend to be a pleaser. I want people to be happy.

I don't want them to be disappointed in me and I want them to like me. And so putting up boundaries can be really difficult. Yeah, and I think we live in a world where we think to really love someone means you never set a boundary. You just affirm and you agree and you let them in any part of your life. And it's such a helpful conversation to say, no, a real loving thing sometimes is a boundary that's healthy. And as she said, that's God's idea.

Yeah. I think that we'll tend to have a lot of great conversations coming out of this with friends, family maybe that you send this to. And we personally just want to thank you for listening to Family Life Today, but also many of you give financially.

Thank you. Like we need that to allow this show to be possible for many. Yeah, I would just add thank you, not only for listening and sharing this with others. And I know you're going to share this program, but this doesn't happen without you becoming a financial partner. You're part of our family when you do that. And if you've never done that, jump in, help us continue to create great programs and give you tools that you can share with others.

Yeah, that's well said. And the cool thing is right now is a great time to give because of the generosity of some donors. Every gift that you give is going to be matched dollar for dollar up to $2.5 million.

That's happening all this month. So you can go online to family life today.com and click on the donate now button at the top of the page, or give us a call with your donation at 800-358-6329. Again, that number is 800 F as in family L as in life, and then the word today. Hey, I'm Shelby Abbott and you've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Lisa Turkhurst on Family Life Today. Lisa earlier was talking with the Wilsons and she's written a book called Good Boundaries and Goodbyes, Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are.

It's a book that really guides Christians to set healthy boundaries and align relationships with biblical principles. So if you want a copy of Lisa's book, you could go to familylifetoday.com and click on today's resources. Now coming up tomorrow, I am going to be in the studio with the president of Family Life, David Robbins, his wife Meg, and Dave and Anne Wilson. We're going to talk about exploring healthy relationships, setting boundaries, and breaking generational cycles with more insights from Lisa Turkhurst, Ted Lowe, Mark Job, and Kelly Kapik. That's coming up tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of David and Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.