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EP 35: When Loving Others Means Losing Yourself · Healthy Boundaries for Moms| Christian Life Coach

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For years I thought loving people meant carrying them.
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You know I wanted to be a good Christian and I wanted to be a great wife, a great mom too.
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Just making sure everyone else was okay.
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But somewhere along the way I stopped asking how I was doing and I stopped paying attention
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to my own relationship with God, my own health and my needs and slowly I just lost myself.
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I didn't realize it at the time but I had confused loving people with carrying responsibilities
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that God had never asked me to carry.
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So if you've ever felt exhausted like this or like you're responsible for everyone else's
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happiness around you or like you've lost yourself while trying to love everyone else, today
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my friend is the episode for you.
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If you're tired of people pleasing, caring too much and wondering why peace still feels
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so hard to hold on to, you're in the right place.
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Hi, I'm Lori, mom, former people pleaser and Your Boundaries coach.
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Here we talk about how to protect your peace, set healthier boundaries and get clear on
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what actually matters so that you can build a life that feels lighter, calmer and more
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satisfying.
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So let's stop the chaos for a minute moms, catch our breath and get into this next episode.
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Welcome back to Healthy Boundaries for Moms.
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I am your host Lori Grimes and recently I just finished a book called I Choose Me written
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by Jenny Garth and it was a book I was reading while I was in Waco with my kids and while
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I was reading it I found myself smiling because so many of the themes that she talked about
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in this book reminded me of the very conversations that we've been having here on this podcast.
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She used some different terminology than I typically use here, but the principles were
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so familiar.
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She talked about co-dependence and interdependence, emotional health.
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And today I want to share a few brief excerpts from the book that really resonated with me
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and then compare them with what scripture is teaching and how these ideas have played
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out even in my own life.
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So when I first started learning about boundaries, this was years ago, I told you on a previous
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podcast that I started this journey back in 2008 and it honestly felt like someone had
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finally handed me a vocabulary word for something I've been experiencing most of my life.
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And just looking back, I can see those patterns started when I was young because for me, I
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began my relationship with my mom in a co-dependent way.
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I learned to pay very close attention to someone else's emotions.
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I learned to watch, I learned to anticipate, to keep the peace, and just try to make everything
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around me and everyone okay.
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And I didn't know it then, but those patterns, they followed me everywhere.
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They followed me into my dating life.
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And I remember my first serious boyfriend, I wasn't just dating him, y'all, I was trying
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to fix him.
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I thought if I loved him enough and encouraged him enough, sacrificed enough, surely he changed.
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I mean, there was a time I paid off all of his, uh, the fees that he had gotten from
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traffic tickets.
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And I was just trying to clean everything up for him as this dutiful girlfriend and
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he never changed.
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And those same patterns, they followed me into my marriage.
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And I love, love my husband deeply, but I had believed it was somehow my responsibility
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to make him the man that I thought he should become.
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And I watched his moods.
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I would analyze every conversation.
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I worried about his decisions.
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I spent an incredible amount of emotional energy just trying to manage the things that
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God had never actually asked me to manage.
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So looking back, I honestly don't think I knew where he ended and where I began.
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So as I was continuing to read this book, it talked about the difference between codependence
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and interdependence.
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She explains that they can actually look very similar from the outside because both involve
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closeness and both involve care.
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Both involve connection, but where it's different is the foundation is totally different.
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She describes codependence as unhealthy, over-reliant on another person.
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This is where your sense of worth or stability depends heavily on them.
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And so interdependence looks different.
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It's when two healthy people who support one another communicate openly, share responsibilities
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and remain vulnerable with each other while still maintaining their individuality.
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Then she gives an illustration that immediately stayed with me.
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She compares codependency to two vines tangled around each other.
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Eventually they're so intertwined that it's difficult to tell where one ends and the other
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begins.
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So this is just like I was experiencing in my own relationships.
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If one vine were to die, the other one's going to struggle too.
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But then she describes interdependence as two strong trees growing side by side.
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So each has its own roots, its own trunk, and its own branches.
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So the images, they're close enough to provide shade, right?
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And strength.
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They also provide protection, but neither tree is responsible for holding the other
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one upright.
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So when I read that, I immediately thought about Galatians chapter 6.
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So Galatians 6, 2 through 5 says, carry each other's burdens and in this way you fulfill
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the law of Christ.
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If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves.
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Each one should test their own actions.
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Then they can take pride in themselves alone without comparing themselves to someone else.
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For each one should carry their own load.
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So when you first hear these verses, you almost think something's contradictory.
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Because Paul's telling us to bear one another's burdens, but then in a few verses later he's
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saying every person should bear his own burden.
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So which one is it?
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It is both.
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Sometimes life brings burdens that are simply just too heavy for one person to carry.
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This could be a death of a loved one, a serious illness like cancer, a crisis, it could be
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financial or natural disaster, a season of just overwhelming grief, like things that
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are just coming in one after the other.
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These are burdens.
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And that's when as Christians we step in and we help.
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That's what the body of Christ is called to do.
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But Paul also reminds us that each person has their own load, their own daily load.
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Like your spiritual growth, your emotional maturity, your choices or your obedience
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to God, and your relationship with God.
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So healthy relationships don't remove responsibility.
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What they do is they encourage growth.
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And I think that's exactly what these two healthy trees are supposed to be representing.
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Each tree is growing because its roots are healthy and not because the other tree is
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propping it up.
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And honestly, that illustration just caused me to stop and ask myself a difficult question.
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Had I spent years trying to become someone else's roots?
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Because instead of making sure my own roots were growing deeper and deeper in Christ,
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that question just led me to a phrase that completely changed the way I understood my
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own journey.
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And it's a phrase I had never heard before.
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That phrase is self-abandonment.
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The moment I read those words, I actually just stopped reading for a minute because
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I thought, that's it.
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That's exactly what happened to me.
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And it wasn't because one day I woke up and just decided to stop caring for myself.
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And it wasn't because I was trying to disappear.
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It just happened one relationship at a time.
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Going back to my first relationship with my mom.
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And it was just one yes at a time.
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One me coming in and rescuing at a time.
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Or one attempt to keep just someone else happy.
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And until eventually, I just wasn't paying much attention to my own thoughts.
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What I felt, what my dreams were, what my relationship with God looked like.
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I was just paying attention to everyone else's.
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And it was almost like I had stopped inhabiting my own life and my own body.
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Like I wasn't even in my body.
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Instead of living from the person God created me to be, I was just constantly reacting to
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whatever someone else needed from me.
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And I wasn't asking, Lord, what are you asking of me today?
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I was asking questions like, well, what does everyone else need from me today?
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That's a completely, completely different way of living.
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And here's what surprised me.
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Recovery wasn't learning to love my husband less.
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I wasn't trying to become more selfish and saying, oh, it's all my needs first.
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Recovery was just learning to take responsibility for the life God had entrusted to me.
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This was my relationship, my health, my emotional growth, again, my calling, my choices.
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These were all mine to carry.
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And I realized my problem wasn't that I was just loving people too much.
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My problem was that I was trying to carry responsibilities, again, that God had not
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assigned to me.
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And that changed everything.
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Because instead of spending all my emotional energy just trying to change someone else,
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I started asking God to change me.
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Instead of trying to manage someone else's spiritual growth, I started paying attention
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to my own spiritual growth.
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And instead of trying to fix everyone else's life, I began stewarding a life that God had
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already placed in front of me.
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So this thing occurs when we have children, right?
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Like it's a trap.
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And if I'm honest, I found myself tempted to repeat the same exact pattern when I had
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kids.
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And this time it wasn't my husband.
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And as moms, especially if you've spent years at home being like a stay-at-home mom, it's
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so easy to slip into a loss of identity and just make your whole life about being wrapped
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up with your kids.
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And trying to anticipate their every need, right?
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And just trying to make sure that they're always happy, always successful.
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They're not bored.
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That they're okay.
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And you want to protect them from disappointment.
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And you want to solve every problem.
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Like before they even have a chance to face it, right?
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And without realizing it, those old codependent tendencies can attach themselves now to motherhood.
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And before long, we're abandoning ourselves all over again.
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Health is starting to get pushed aside, right?
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Your own interests and things that you're interested in just fade away into the background.
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And now your relationship with God is just something you'll get to do later, right?
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And you just slowly, slowly become the shell of yourself again.
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And it's constantly just reacting, constantly scanning everyone else's emotional world.
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And now you're just adding your kids to that mix.
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Just waiting for someone else's needs to tell you how to spend your day.
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But God never asked us to disappear inside the lives of the people we love.
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And our children, they don't need mothers who cease to exist as an individual.
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They need mothers who are deeply, deeply rooted in their relationship with Christ.
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And they get strength from that.
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And one of the greatest gifts we can give our children isn't making them the center
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of our lives.
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It's showing them what it looks like to keep Christ at the center of our life.
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And that brings me to one of my favorite invitations in all of Scripture.
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So listen to these words of Jesus in Matthew 11, 28 through 30.
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Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
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Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.
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For I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
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For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
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Guys, I just love that Jesus doesn't say, come to me and I'll help you carry everyone
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else's responsibilities, right?
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Instead, He wants to relieve us from carrying these burdens we weren't asked to carry.
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He's inviting us to come with Him.
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So this leaves me with three questions I want to leave you to ask yourself this week.
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The first one is, is this mine to carry?
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Now I know I've shared this one before on the podcast, but it's one we need to continue
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to ask.
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It is so helpful.
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The second one is, am I helping or am I rescuing?
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And the third, am I abandoning the life God has entrusted to me in order to manage someone
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else's?
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I think if we honestly were to ask those three questions every day, it would change our relationships,
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our parenting, and our marriages.
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And honestly, it might even change our health.
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So there's one more piece of this conversation that I didn't want to rush through.
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So I want to bring us back to it on the midweek reset on Wednesday.
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Because the author Jenny Gar, she talks about how living this way can actually affect our
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bodies.
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When we spend years carrying emotional burdens that don't belong to us, our stress response
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can stay activated.
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And many of us know exactly what that feels like.
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It's like tension in our shoulders and in our bodies.
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It's exhaustion.
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It's those racing thoughts and that feeling that we can just never completely relax.
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And I think that's an important enough conversation that I just want to give it its own space.
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So tune in for Wednesday's midweek reset because we're going to unpack this.
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We're going to talk about what happens when our bodies have been living in the survival
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mode for too long.
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And how do we begin to move forward with the rest that Jesus is offering us?
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Because we talk about practical ways to help your body begin to feel safe again.
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How to release those burdens that just don't belong to you.
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And how living with healthy boundaries can bring peace, not just to our relationships,
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but to your mind, body, and spirit.
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So I hope you'll join me for that conversation.
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I will also link this book in the show notes in case you want to check it out.
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Hey friend, I hope you enjoyed today's episode.
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If so, would you take 30 seconds and go join our free Facebook page at Healthy Boundaries
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for Moms?
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That's where we go deeper, share what's actually working, and support each other in real life.
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I will also share some great tools and tips to help you along this journey.
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I have also included a link to sign up for our brand new weekly newsletter in the Facebook
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Don't forget to hit follow and leave a quick review on Apple.
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It really lets me know that this podcast is helping you.
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More importantly, it helps more women find this podcast.
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Now go say no to something that's stealing your peace and say yes to something you actually
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need.
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And I'll meet you back here in the next episode.