Veronica Speaks

One of my favorite movies is Burlesque with Christina Aguilara – I love a good chick flick with beautiful singing. Christina’s song Bound to You had me mesmerized by the lyrics and her God-gifted harmony. The piano melody and orchestrated strings leading her voice wrapped me in a fantasy. I thought I had found a man that I could trust and fall in love with..a man to share one beating heart with…

At the time, I didn’t know I was blinded by lust, I didn’t know what true love was, I didn’t know I had attachment issues and loose boundaries. I was attached to men, to friends, to acquaintances, and I didn’t know boundaries.

In this post, we discuss:

• What are boundaries
• The importance of boundaries
• How boundaries lead to freedom
• How to be comfortable with setting boundaries

In simplest terms, being bound means to be restrained. Replace the word ‘Bound’ with ‘Restrained’ in the song Bound to You and hear how the tone of the title changes. Imagine being restrained to someone where you’re handcuffed to them and you go everywhere they go, you do everything they do. You have no freedom separate from them. This thought process is how I understand having loose boundaries and being attached to people, ideas, or worldly things.

Boundaries are methods you build into your life to protect your freedom and communicate how others can and can not treat you. Oddly enough, boundaries help protect you from being bound to another person. Being a leech is not a pleasant experience, don’t be so attached to a person that you’re sucking the life out of them.

Boundaries create the difference between attachment and connection. Unhealthy attachments are need-based and form from insecurities. They are focused selfishly on what you can get from a relationship or situation, it doesn’t involve genuinely getting to know a person.

If you “love” someone because of what you think you’ll get from them, then you may have an unhealthy attachment. Do you really love that person? Do you know them outside of the desires you want to achieve with them?

These are questions I had to ask myself about my previous relationships. I didn’t know what love was. I didn’t know that I was using those men to try and fill a gap I was feeling inside. I had unhealthy attachments because I was insecure. It always felt like I was missing something. Perhaps, I was just Lost without God.

I wanted to feel worth it. I wanted to be wanted. I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be embraced.

I thought I needed a man or a best friend or my parents to do that for me. It’s not that I didn’t love myself; I thought being loved by someone else was validating. I was literally searching for love in the wrong places. This search led me to having poor boundaries.

I wanted to be loved so bad, I did anything to try and win over a person’s love, especially if it was the man I thought I wanted to be with.

If I would have remained on the Christian path I was brought up in, I would have known who I was in Christ and would not have tolerated anything less than I deserved but…I didn’t always identify as a Christian Woman of God. You can read more about how God changed my life here.

I wouldv’e realized all I need is God.

Being a Christian comes with boundaries. They are required considering you are a temple with the Holy Spirit inside of you

I Corinthians 6:19

It is important to know what having the Holy Spirit means. The Holy Spirit is to be taken care of, respected, and honored; therefore, if it is inside you, then you deserve to be taken care of, respected, and honored too.

Understanding this fact, alone, encourages you to be comfortable with setting boundaries.

You deverse to take care of yourself.

You deserve to respect yourself and be respected by others.

You deserve to honor yourself and be honored by others, of course not above God.

It is your responsibility to protect your energy and let me know how you deserve to be treated. You teach people how to treat you by showing them how you treat yourself. Be the example and watch them follow. Be comfortable with communicating that you love yourself enough to not tolerate behaviors and people that will hurt you.

God blessed you with the authority and power to create boundaries. When you have boundaries and stick beside them, you are working with God and trusting that you are His good creation worthy of respect, love, and care.

Go to God in prayer and ask Him to reveal the areas where you need to create boundaries for yourself and others.

Checkout the Soulship Connection Podcast and Soulship Connection YouTube Channel where personal testimonies are shared: