The Hand That Rocks The Boundary

I used to think adversity would announce itself.

Something dramatic. Something obvious. Something I could see coming from a reasonable distance and prepare for accordingly. Surely the enemy would arrive wearing all black, accompanied by ominous music and perhaps a small sign reading, “Hello. I am here to ruin your life.”

Unfortunately, Satan has apparently never respected my preference for transparency.

Some of my greatest adversity has been at my address. Some of my hardest hardship has been in my home. Some of my most ferocious fights have been with my own family.

That sentence is difficult for me to write because family is supposed to mean safety.

Home is supposed to be where I exhale.

Proximity is supposed to mean intimacy, belonging and protection.

Except proximity also creates access.

And access creates influence.

That is what has been sitting heavily with me as I have studied Jezebel.

Not simply Jezebel the woman. Not the caricature Christianity has sometimes reduced her to. Not makeup, sexuality, loud women, strong personalities or whatever other nonsense we have occasionally thrown into the theological crockpot.

I am talking about the persistent pattern represented in Jezebel’s story: manipulation, domination, intimidation, control and the exploitation of relationship to accomplish an agenda.

Because Jezebel wasn’t standing outside Ahab’s palace throwing rocks through the window.

She was his wife.

She was already in the house.

And suddenly, I am thinking about every place in my own life where proximity became permission.

I lost my dad when I was two.

I lost my mom when I was eleven.

Then I went straight into another address in Hunters Ridge, carrying grief I didn’t have language for and needing adults to protect a little girl whose entire world had already collapsed.

Instead, I walked into manipulation.

Control.

Money.

My mother’s life insurance.

Adults wanting something from a child who had already lost almost everything.

When the money didn’t come the way they wanted, the abuse intensified.

There are things you survive as a child that you don’t fully understand until adulthood. When you’re eleven, you don’t call it manipulation. You don’t analyze power dynamics. You don’t identify coercion.

You adapt.

You survive.

You learn the temperature of rooms.

You learn which version of yourself keeps everybody calm.

You learn when to speak, when to disappear, when to comply and when to brace yourself.

Then one day you’re grown, studying Scripture before sunrise with coffee nearby, and God starts putting names on things you previously only knew by their scars.

That’s the power of proximity.

Ephesians 6:12 says, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood…”

The Greek word translated “struggle” or “wrestle” is palē.

And whew.

This isn’t warfare from across the street.

Palē describes wrestling, a close-quarters contest. Two opponents locked together.

Chest to chest.

Hands on each other.

Close enough to feel resistance.

Close enough to exploit weakness.

Close enough that distance is no longer protecting you.

That changed something for me because I have spent years imagining spiritual warfare like some giant cinematic battle. Meanwhile, Paul gives me the image of a wrestling match.

The enemy doesn’t always attack from far away.

Sometimes warfare involves proximity.

Even Judas demonstrates that uncomfortable reality.

John 13:2 tells us the devil had already prompted Judas to betray Jesus. Judas wasn’t some stranger lurking outside the Last Supper trying to figure out how to get in.

Judas was at the table.

Close enough to eat with Jesus.

Close enough to hear Him teach.

Close enough to be trusted with responsibility.

Close enough to kiss Him.

That is what makes betrayal betrayal.

Distance can hurt me.

Proximity can wound me precisely.

And suddenly, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle feels less like a thriller and more like a sermon illustration nobody asked for.

Sidebar: I mean the original The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Not this new-age remix. Hollywood, please put the remakes down and slowly back away. Some things were anointed correctly the first time.

The danger wasn’t terrifying because it was outside the house.

The danger was terrifying because it had been invited inside.

It learned the routines.

It understood the vulnerabilities.

It gained trust.

It knew where everybody slept.

That is why discernment matters.

1 John 4:1 tells me not to believe every spirit, but to test the spirits.

Notice that Scripture doesn’t tell me to become suspicious of everybody.

It tells me to become discerning.

There is a difference.

Trauma taught me hypervigilance.

God is teaching me discernment.

Hypervigilance says everybody might hurt me.

Discernment says I don’t have to fear everybody, but I do need to pay attention to fruit, patterns and access.

Because one incident may be weakness.

A persistent pattern deserves examination.

That distinction matters especially after what I’ve survived. I don’t want to become the woman who calls everything Jezebel simply because someone disagrees with me, challenges me or hurts my feelings.

Good Lord, if disagreement equals demonic activity, half my relationships need an exorcist.

Sometimes people are just people.

Sometimes people are immature.

Sometimes they’re selfish.

Sometimes I’m selfish.

Sometimes they’re wrong.

Sometimes, inconveniently, I am.

Discernment requires enough spiritual maturity to tell the difference between human imperfection and a persistent pattern of manipulation, domination and control.

Which brings me painfully back to myself.

Because studying Jezebel cannot only teach me how to identify Jezebel around me.

It has to teach me where I have tolerated those patterns.

Where I have participated in them.

Where I have confused love with access.

Where I have confused forgiveness with unlimited proximity.

Where I have explained behavior God was telling me to confront.

Where “keeping the peace” really meant sacrificing myself to maintain somebody else’s comfort.

I cannot control what someone allows to influence them.

I can control what I allow to influence my home.

That sentence feels different now.

Especially because boundaries have historically made me feel mean.

I want everybody to understand.

I want everybody to know why.

I want to present Exhibit A through approximately Exhibit Q explaining why I have made a decision.

God has been teaching me something deeply irritating:

Every adjustment does not require an announcement.

Sometimes I can simply move.

Sometimes I can quietly reduce access.

Sometimes I can say no.

Sometimes “speaking the truth in love” looks less like delivering a TED Talk and more like refusing to participate in dysfunction.

Because if proximity creates access and access creates influence, then boundaries aren’t punishment.

They’re stewardship.

Job’s wife gives me another picture I hadn’t considered before.

After Job loses his children, possessions and health, the person lying closest to him asks in Job 2:9, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”

Job pushes back.

He doesn’t divorce her.

He doesn’t demonize her.

He doesn’t surrender his integrity to preserve marital harmony either.

He says, essentially, no.

That matters to me.

Because sometimes the boundary isn’t going to change the other person.

Sometimes the boundary changes me.

Samson should have pushed back against Delilah.

Ahab should have pushed back against Jezebel.

Job pushed back against his wife.

The goal isn’t controlling somebody else’s response to my boundary.

The goal is refusing to abandon myself, my integrity or God because somebody close to me dislikes it.

& yes, that can get lonely.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 reminds me that two are better than one because when one falls, another can help them up.

Yet, I’ve learned that support isn’t just having people who agree with me.

I need people who can see me.

People who will tell me when I’m being manipulated.

People who will also tell me when I am the one manipulating.

People who don’t need my dysfunction to continue because it benefits them.

People who can love me without requiring me to remain unhealthy.

That kind of community is uncomfortable because sometimes righteous decisions will have people questioning me once my dysfunction no longer serves them.

I am learning to survive that discomfort.

Setting boundaries may create seasons of loneliness.

So I have had to ask myself:

Would I rather be broken or bored?

Because loneliness can feel brutal, especially for someone whose earliest experiences taught her that losing people could happen suddenly and permanently.

That little girl still exists inside me somewhere.

She remembers two.

She remembers eleven.

She remembers Hunters Ridge.

She remembers what happened when adults who were supposed to protect her wanted something from her instead.

Of course she struggles with boundaries.

Some part of her still believes losing access to people means losing love.

Adult me has to teach her something different.

Love does not require unlimited access.

Forgiveness does not require proximity.

Compassion does not require compliance.

Peace does not require pretending.

& most importantly closer isn’t always safer.

This is where my Grey’s Anatomy recovery continues.

Because after the last few days of studying Jezebel, I feel like God has performed one of those impossible Grey Sloan surgeries where seventeen surgeons are standing around an operating table, everybody has a specialty, somebody is yelling for ten units of blood, Bailey is irritated, Richard is giving a speech, and Meredith somehow decides they’re going to transplant half the human body at once.

The kind of surgery nobody has successfully done before.

Except somehow Meredith Grey does.

That’s what this season feels like.

God didn’t remove one unhealthy thing.

He has been operating on systems.

My understanding of love.

My understanding of family.

My relationship with boundaries.

My need to explain myself.

My fear of abandonment.

My tolerance for manipulation.

My own temptation to control outcomes when I feel unsafe.

This wasn’t outpatient.

Baby, apparently I needed the full Grey Sloan package.

Multiple transplants.

Long recovery.

Physical therapy.

Probably somebody dramatically staring through the gallery window with Snow Patrol.

Meanwhile here I am in recovery realizing something almost embarrassingly simple:

I don’t have to wait until Revelation to fight the dragon if God showed me the snake in Genesis.

Genesis 3 introduces the serpent.

Revelation 12 calls Satan “that ancient serpent” and identifies him with the dragon.

Same enemy.

Different manifestation.

So, maybe wisdom is dealing with things while they’re still small.

Addressing patterns before they become strongholds.

Closing gaps before they become entrances.

Speaking truth before resentment grows teeth.

Setting boundaries before manipulation becomes normal.

Proverbs 25:28 says a person without self-control is like a city whose walls are broken through.

Walls matter because entrances matter.

So now I am asking different questions.

Where did this get access?

What weakness did it exploit?

What did grief make me tolerate?

What did fear make me normalize?

What did loneliness make me excuse?

What did my desperate desire to be loved make me call love?

Those questions aren’t accusations against eleven-year-old me.

She survived with the tools she had.

They’re questions for the woman I am now.

Because the only thing I can do with my past now is learn from it.

I cannot go back to Hunters Ridge and rescue that little girl.

I cannot make adults choose differently.

I cannot recover childhood years.

I cannot rewrite two.

I cannot rewrite eleven.

I cannot change what happened at that address.

I can decide what gets access to this one.

That’s my responsibility now.

Discern the spirit.

Disrupt the influence.

Develop strong support.

Determine to be disciplined.

Galatians 6:9 tells me not to grow weary in doing good.

Apparently boundaries require endurance too.

Because unhealthy patterns don’t always disappear because I recognized them once.

I have to remain disciplined.

I have to keep choosing differently.

I have to keep saying no when guilt says yes.

I have to keep resisting the urge to explain.

I have to keep loving people without handing them unrestricted access to me.

I have to keep remembering that what the enemy wants is for me to fight my family, while what the Father wants is for me to fight for my family.

Those are not the same thing.

Fighting my family means retaliation.

Fighting for my family means refusing to let manipulation, domination, resentment, fear and dysfunction continue through me.

Maybe that is the most uncomfortable revelation of this entire study.

I spent years thinking warfare meant identifying the enemy around me.

God keeps showing me that sometimes warfare looks like refusing to reproduce what wounded me.

The cycle can reach my address and stop.

The manipulation can reach my address and stop.

The fear can reach my address and stop.

The dysfunction can reach my address and stop.

Not because I became powerful enough to control everybody around me.

Because I finally became disciplined enough to control what I give access to.

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle may have gotten into the house before.

It may have even helped raise me.

But it does not get to run my house now.

Perhaps maybe that is what recovery looks like after spiritual surgery.

Not pretending I was never wounded.

Not pretending the scars aren’t there.

Not calling everybody who hurts me Jezebel.

Not living terrified that the enemy is hiding behind every relationship.

Just becoming increasingly intentional about proximity.

Because Ephesians told me this fight is close.

My childhood already taught me that.

Now God is teaching me how to wrestle without becoming what I’m wrestling against.

And that may be the real victory.

I ain’t the one, the two or the three.

But more importantly?

I’m finally learning I don’t have to be.