We begin the week with a confession:
we have confused kindness with compliance.
Somewhere along the way, the voice of love got tangled up in the voice of obligation, and we started calling our exhaustion “generosity.” We wore ourselves out and called it holiness. We said yes while every part of our spirit whispered no, and then wondered why resentment grew where joy used to live.
And so the question creeps in during Advent—quiet, accusatory, relentless:
“Am I selfish if I need boundaries?”
But maybe the better, more liberating question is:
“Who taught me that self-protection was selfish?”
Brené Brown reminds us that “daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.”
Yet most of us inherited a version of Jesus who never said no, never withdrew, never hid, never got tired, never set limits.
And then we secretly hated ourselves for needing what he supposedly didn’t.
But the real Jesus?
He napped.
He walked away.
He disappeared to quiet places without giving anyone a heads-up.
He did not heal every person in every town.
He did not let everyone have access to him.
There’s a difference between protecting your heart and hardening it.
Between saying “not now” and saying “not ever.”
Between recognizing your capacity and resenting everyone else’s need.
Between setting a boundary and building a wall.
The spiritual life is learning to tell the difference—
to grow the discernment that separates healthy limits from self-erasing behavior…
to recognize when God is inviting us to carry something
and when God is inviting us to put something down.
Maybe this Advent, the most Christ-like thing we can do is finally tell the truth about what we can carry…
and what we can’t.
Reflection
What boundary have you been calling “selfish” that might actually be sacred?
Grace and Peace,
Andrea