Do You Feel Used and Empty?

Let’s say you have a friend who is constantly running behind and regularly asks you to pick up one of her kids from practice or after school. Or maybe she doesn’t plan her Sunday school lessons ahead and frequently asks you to sub for her at the last minute. There always seems to be a crisis that she needs your help with.

And what do you say?

Yes.

You say yes because you’re a nice person and you feel like it’s the nice, Christian thing to do. You smile on the outside, but inside you’re getting annoyed and frustrated and bitter. Then you feel guilty for feeling that way because we’re supposed to help each other and you should be doing it happily and not getting all resentful.

So you keep saying yes until your own family suffers because all this helping is interfering with your responsibilities. You keep thinking that this friend will get her act together and be able to handle her own stuff. She gives you all sorts of reasons why this will be the last time.

And then it’s not.

What’s going on? Is this just what being a Christian is all about? Is helping your friend your “cross to bear”? 

No, it’s not. You both have unhealthy boundaries. She is pushing her load into your yard and you’re allowing her to. 

Burdens and Loads

Loads are the normal responsibilities of life and burdens are the crises - the unexpected, out of the ordinary things that come up that we just can’t handle on our own. If you didn’t read last week’s post, I talk about this more in detail there.

Let me clarify - burdens are REAL crises, not ones brought about by consistent poor choices. Your friend’s elderly father was rushed to the hospital after falling in his apartment and she needs you to pick up her kids from school. That counts as a crisis. Her cookies are going to burn in the oven because she started them too late because she was busy watching a fascinating episode of Oprah. Definitely not a crisis. 

Sometimes your friend is always running behind because she is simply trying to do too much - a very prevalent problem in today’s society. If any of us are so busy that we can’t keep up with our own responsibilities, then we’re doing too much. 

Boundary issues in pairs - user and enabler

Many times, people with boundary problems come in pairs, whether it’s in the workplace, the family or the church. You may find one person who tends to take other peoples’ “stuff” into their yard who is in a relationship of some sort with someone who tends to push their stuff into others’ yards. We could label them “user” and “enabler”. The user, instead of taking ownership of their actions, responsibilities and choices, pushes those things into the yard of an enabler. The enabler feels that they’re being kind and helpful by taking the user’s load (but over time becomes resentful). 

One key issue to look at here: If you tend to be the enabler - the one who takes on other peoples’ loads as your own - are your actions really helping the other person in the long run? Let’s say you have a coworker who doesn’t use their time wisely and frequently doesn’t finish projects on time. They consistently ask you to help them out at the last minute, to the expense of your own work, so that they can avoid the consequences of missing a deadline. By taking on their load as your own, you may be helping them at that moment to avoid negative consequences, but are you helping them in the long run to use their time more wisely and accomplish what they need to? 

If that coworker needs help because they had a death in the family or some sort of legitimate crisis, then your help is helping to carry their burden, which we should be doing. 

God’s gift of consequences

God has established the universe to run a certain way. He designed human beings to function best when we follow His design and live the way He made us to. When we don’t follow that design, there are consequences. Those consequences are meant to get us back on the path of living the way He designed us to - both for our good and God’s glory. If we remove those consequences in someone else’s life, then we’re enabling them to continue their destructive behavior. In the long run, that hurts them, not helps them.

Our bodies are designed to function best when we eat healthy and maintain a healthy weight, get regular exercise, don’t drink too much alcohol, don’t use drugs, etc. When we violate those “design parameters” then there are consequences. Less energy, depression and anxiety, diseases such as diabetes and heart problems and a shorter life expectancy. If we violate God’s command to wait on sex until marriage there are consequences of sexually transmitted diseases, emotional trauma, broken homes, children growing up without two married parents which leads to poverty and crime and the list goes on.

Just Say No

What’s the solution? How do we not become the enabler? We say no. We allow others to feel the consequences of their choices. (Of course there’s also a time to show mercy - it gets very muddy and confusing and we have to pray ask God for wisdom!)

If you have trouble saying no on the spot, it can be helpful to say, “Let me get back to you on that.” That gives you the chance to stop and think and pray about whether you really can do what’s being asked or not. It gets you out of being backed into a corner, forced to make a quick decision where you’re likely to default to your yes.

Next week we’ll talk more about saying no. And yes! 

Which do you have more trouble with - being the enabler or the user?