During Recovery Lock Your Doors!

A recent news story showed how many people at shopping malls leave their car doors unlocked while they shop. In addition, many of them have valuables, previous purchases and other expensive electronics clearly visible to anyone passing by.

Obviously many individuals and families get needlessly robbed of things that are important and in some cases difficult or at least expensive to replace.  IF they were only a little more careful they would rarely get taken advantage of.

Sometimes in life, we too can leave our emotional and personal doors unlocked only to have necessary energy, strength and other resources taken from us.

One way we are vulnerable is when we don't set appropriate boundaries. Boundaries are safeguards we set up with others that we control to keep them out of our world at unnecessary or inappropriate times. For example, a person is grieving the loss of a loved one and yet they let all their friends tell them how to handle their grief or where they should emotionally be at some point.

Or someone with cancer struggling with not having their usual energy still gives in to a friend or relative's demands that they meet their needs or acclimate to their schedule in some way. As a result our ability to function well is stolen from us because we've left ourselves open to others entering our car when we should have locked it.

Another way we let people rob us is when we offer them our personhood and let what they say, do or not do make us feel less valued. We allow them to take away from our value, our being made in God's image, through their comments about what we're doing or not doing right. We succumb to their negative evaluation by believing that what they say really determines who we are and it does not.

There are five things that are always true of us in God's eyes that are worth repeating: We are loved, we are forgiven, we matter, we have purpose and we are children of God.  Any person who has chosen to join God's family can count on those no matter what anyone else says.

So, are you during your personal journey leaving yourself open to emotional robberies by others?  If so, set some boundaries and remember who you really are in God's eyes. It will change how you climb and in general how you live.  And that's worth a lot.