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How to Turn A Negative Vulnerability into a Positive Strength

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We all have them.

Vulnerabilities. Weaknesses. We hide them. We ignore them. We pretend they aren’t there. We’re embarrassed by them. They remind us of our small, frail, mortality. The last thing we want to do is deal with them. But that’s exactly what we need to do. And if we do it wisely, we can actually turn those vulnerabilities into strengths.

I’m talking about the secret sins. Pornography. Small cheats on expense reports at work. White lies. They don’t hurt anybody, do they? Yes, they do. They hurt you, and the people in your life. Every. Single. Time.

The worst thing we can do is ignore them. I can handle it. No, you can’t. Because here’s the thing. Sin is not static. It never remains at the same level. It is either increasing in our life or decreasing. If we think we’re “handling it,” keeping it at bay, we’re not, it’s secretly increasing.

And that’s a dangerous place to be. Because by the time we’re finally aware of it, it’s often too late. It’s exploded into our lives and it’s no longer a secret. 

The tsunami we’ve unleashed in our lives is upon us. The pornography has turned into an affair. Small “inaccuracies” on expense reports have turned into full-blown embezzlement. White lies have turned into perjury.

You’re most vulnerable when you don’t think you’re vulnerable.

And the tsunami doesn’t just hit us. No tsunami in history has ever drowned just one person. The wave hits our entire family and everyone close to us. There’s no such thing as a victimless crime.

So often we think we’ve safely hidden it away in a private corner of our lives. But seeing the devastating aftermath on our loved ones, we wish we could roll back time. If we’d known what it would cost them, we’d have dealt with it long before it got to that point. 

Look at King David and Bathsheba. His “secret” adultery (2 Samuel 11:1-5) unleashed this tsunami in his life:

  • He has to murder one of his most loyal soldiers, Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, to keep it secret. (2 Samuel 11:6-27)
  • The son born from the affair dies. (2 Samuel 12:1-23)
  • David’s son Amnon rapes his daughter Tamar. (2 Samuel 13:1-19)
  • Another of David’s sons, Absalom, kills Amnon and flees to another country. (2 Samuel 13:20-38)
  • When Absalom returns, he stages a coup and David has to run for his life. (2 Samuel 15:1-14)
  • Absalom sleeps with David’s concubines in broad daylight, so all Israel knows he’s the new king now. (2 Samuel 16:20-22)
  • When Absalom is finally defeated, he’s killed by Joab, the general of David’s army. (2 Samuel 18:9-15)
  • For the sake of his army, David has to pretend he’s happy about his son’s death. If he lets his true emotions out, his army would perceive David mourning the victory they risked their lives to give him, and they would desert him. (2 Samuel 18:33-19:8)
  • Even years later, the devastation in David’s family continued. His son Solomon (of Bathsheba) had to kill another of David’s sons, Adonijah, to secure Solomon’s throne. (1 Kings 1:1-2:25)

That is one, crazy, jacked up story! But that’s what sin does in our lives when we think we can handle it. If David had known all that would happen — his daughter would be raped, 4 of his sons would die, and he’d flee for his life from his own son, whose death he’d have to pretend to celebrate — do you think he’d have chosen differently on that warm, fateful, seemingly innocent afternoon in Jerusalem? 

Yes, David was forgiven. Psalm 51 is a beautiful picture of David’s repentance. But he still had to live with the consequences of his sin the rest of his life, even though God stayed faithful and was with him all the way through it.

David thought he could handle it. The graves of his children say otherwise. You can’t handle it either. Neither can I.

So how do we keep from falling prey to our own vulnerabilities?

There are two big steps we can take to keep from being swept away by what we thought we could handle but couldn’t.

1) Set Boundaries

Billy Graham’s ministry never had a scandal. And it’s not because he was so righteous. It’s because he realized he wasn’t. He instituted a rule that no one in his ministry, including himself, ever traveled anywhere by car with someone of the opposite sex alone (except their spouse, of course). This wasn’t legalism gone mad. This was a godly man realizing he was vulnerable and putting boundaries in place to protect his heart. And, because he knew he couldn’t handle it, sexual integrity became a strength of his ministry.

When you admit you’re vulnerable, you’re not vulnerable. You set boundaries to protect yourself from your vulnerability. 

Billy Graham knew affairs didn’t just happen overnight. So he set boundaries, for him and his staff, so nobody, himself included, would even come close to starting down that deceptive road. If the situation required two unmarried people of the opposite sex to make a trip, I think he’d have canceled the event rather than put his people, or himself, at risk.

This is what Jesus so graphically talked about in the Sermon on the Mount.

“If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” — Jesus, Matthew 5:29-30

No, Jesus doesn’t want a bunch of one-eyed Christians called Lefty. He’s saying not to put yourself into a situation where you may be vulnerable.

For example, has pornography been a weakness? Avoid movies with nudity and even TV shows with sexual promiscuity. Avoid music that glorifies sex outside of marriage, reducing women to objects of entertainment rather than human beings and daughters of the King.

2) Get Support. Tell Someone. Get Help.

This is not “accountability.” No fair making the other person responsible for your behavior. This is you, sincerely not wanting to be devoured by sin, asking for help from someone you trust.

Tell someone. Not someone who has a problem in that area also; there’s no point just commiserating together. But preferably someone who’s been through it and overcome it. Someone who’s either won the battle, or, if they lost it, come out the other side and received healing. 

We have authority over what we’ve been set free from. Find someone who either:

  1. Has never fallen in that area, not because they’re self-righteous, but because they realized they are vulnerable and set boundaries, or,
  2. Has fallen but recovered. It was years ago, and they’ve been clean at least a decade. They’ve received healing and are walking in it.

The good news is, Jesus is more into this than we are. He wants to help us walk in his ways so we avoid the self-made tsunamis in our lives. In this fallen world, they often happen without our help. We don’t need to make more.

But in all of it, whether we brought about the tsunami ourselves or not, if David’s story teaches one thing — it’s that God is faithful. Through it all. Always.

How About You?

How have you realized your own vulnerability and set boundaries? Or have you gotten hurt by not realizing your vulnerability until it was too late? Tell us your story in the comments — it will help someone else. And please share this post if it would bless someone else.

What 4 Things to Do when Someone Leaves Your Life

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This post is a follow-on to our previous post, The 2 Littlest Words Causing the 4 Biggest Problems, about setting boundaries. When you decide to set healthy boundaries in your life, it’s usually not all rainbows and unicorns. It can get really messy, because along with moving your life forward in a healthy way, setting boundaries often upsets the unhealthy apple carts of the people around us.

The purpose of living in community, like we were designed by God to do, is twofold: (1) To receive help from our community with our boulders—those burdens and life events too large to carry alone, and (2) to serve the community by carrying our own backpack—the personal responsibility each of us can and should carry on our own.

Our previous post identified & discussed the 4 boundary problems (from the excellent book Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend) that happen when we get our boulders and our backpacks confused.

  • Compliant – Won’t Say “No.” Seeing only boulders, these folks exhaust themselves trying to carry everyone else’s backpack. I was one of these. They get their value from doing good things for others. It’s hard to see because it looks so good. Often they’re trying to earn love.
  • Controller – Won’t hear “No.” Controllers violate other’s boundaries to force or manipulate others into carrying their backpack. Often they are abusers. Or they can be that person who argues with you when they ask you to do something and you say no. “Ok, but can you just…”
  • Non-Responsive – Won’t Say “Yes.” Seeing only backpacks, non-responsive people ignore their responsibility to love others by never helping anyone else with a boulder. They are often not emotionally available and see others as needy.
  • Avoidant – Won’t Hear “Yes.” This is someone who won’t let anyone else help carry their boulder. They will help others, but no one is allowed to help them. The vulnerability is too scary.

Think about a controller in a relationship with a compliant. This could be a marriage, a work relationship, or a family dynamic between siblings. It’s a sweet deal for the controller. The compliant covers for them. The compliant does their work for them. It all falls on the compliant. And the compliant gets to feel good because of all they’re doing, earning the love they desperately crave. Sweet deal.

Or think about a non-responsive in a relationship with an avoidant. The avoidant is never vulnerable, never asking for the help the non-responsive won’t give. Sweet deal for the non-responsive, not having to deal with a “needy” person. Sweet deal for the avoidant, avoiding all that scary vulnerability. Until the avoidant’s internal bitterness grows to the breaking point, and they both wonder where that messy explosion came from.

Such dysfunctional relationships are unhealthy for both parties and, although it might work in the short-term, it will fall apart and not work long-term. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.

Each of these (and many other) dysfunctional relationships have benefits for both sides. The controller gets to control. The compliant gets to earn love. The non-responsive never has to help. The avoidant never has to be vulnerable.

The problem is false advertising. None of these lead to the happiness they promised. They’re dysfunctional, and out of God’s great love for us, he doesn’t let them work for long.

So What Happens When…

… the compliant gets healthy and consistently tells the controller “no”?

… the controller gets healthy and neither needs nor wants the compliant to do everything for them anymore?

… the non-responsive gets healthy and asks the avoidant if they need help with that boulder they’ve been hiding?

… the avoidant gets healthy and consistently asks the non-responsive for help with legitimate boulders?

Yikes!

Here’s the deal.

Sick attracts sick. If our spouse is sick, so are we. If our boss has boundary issues, so do we. Both people are getting a benefit. A sick, dysfunctional, hurtful benefit that ultimately is not good for anybody, but it’s still a benefit. The thing is, when one sick person gets healthy, it upsets the whole apple cart.

The other sick person thinks, “Hey, wait a minute! What happened to our arrangement where we each took advantage of each other’s sickness? I thought we had a deal here!”

When one sick person gets healthy, the other sick person has a choice. Well, maybe not immediately. They can try to bully, manipulate, or punish you out of getting healthy and back into the comfortable, sick, arrangement. But if you stay healthy, they have a choice to make.

They can either get healthy also, or they can leave. Those are the only two possibilities. One of those two will happen. Sick will not live with healthy for long.

We hope and pray they stay and choose to get healthy. But they might leave. What can you do if they leave? You can do these 4, very important, things.

1) Let Them Leave.

You can’t stop them. You can’t control them. You can only control you. This can really hurt. I know. But the alternative is return to the sickness you just got free from. And if you do that, you’ve taught them sickness works. Their only chance for them to get healthy is if you stick to your guns. Call their bluff.

Getting healthy is a high stacks game of chicken. People who benefited from your sickness will not like you healthy. They will try to get you back into that old, sick, false, identity. Stick to your guns. Stay healthy. Set those boundaries you’re learning.

They will either relate to your new, healthy identity, or they will drop out of your life, which can be really painful. But if they choose to go, let them go.

2) Grieve the Loss.

When someone leaves your life, it’s the death of a relationship. It’s especially painful when it’s a spouse, a parent, a child, or some other family member. Allow yourself to grieve the loss. Allow yourself to go through the 5 stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance). They can change every day, come in any order, and repeat often.

Feel the feelings. Run into the pain. Find a healthy outlet for your grief. Maybe long walks, building something, working in your workshop, talking it through with a safe friend—whatever healthy outlet works for you.

You’ll go through all the phases. The trick is to not get stuck in one phase too long. For example, it’s common for people losing a relationship to get stuck in bargaining. If I can just explain it to them one more time; if I can just explain it better this time… Listen to your godly friends and family.

3) Realize the Story’s Not Over.

Even though we know it’s not God’s highest and best, honor their right to leave, without trying to manipulate them out of it. What?!? I know. But look, it may just be the catalyst they need to address the sickness in their own life.

Realize also that God moved in your life to bring you to a place where you’re ready to get healthy. They may not be there yet. You’ve upset their apple cart. Yes, it was a dysfunctional cart with poison apples that were hurting you both, and it needed to be upset. But just realize that you getting healthy has put them in a scary place where they are not in control. In fact, it may have been a long time since they felt this much out of control.  Give them some grace and some time to sort it out.

Now please, don’t delay getting healthy because of someone else’s reaction (real or feared). If it’s on your heart, this is God’s timing for you. Do it! Just be prepared for the storms, and to give other people the time, space, and grace to sort out the new you, the changes in your relationship, and what it means for them.

4) Pray, Pray, Pray.

As Christians, prayer is our largest, and probably most underused, weapon. It’s huge. When you commit to pray for someone over the long haul, you don’t even have to tell them you’re praying for them, and you can see positive effects (eventually) in their lives. Not always, but often. And often not quickly, but often eventually.

So take the plunge.

Get healthy. Set those boundaries. Dare to say and hear the words “yes” and “no” in the appropriate measures. Trust God to guard your heart instead of trying to do it yourself. It’s the scariest, but the most worthwhile, adventure you’ll ever take.

How about you?

Does this resonate? Tell us your story in the comments and please share if this would bless someone else.

The 2 Littlest Words Causing the 4 Biggest Problems

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Most relationship problems, and you could even say most sins in the world, come down to problems with this one thing. Boundaries. And most boundaries problems come down to the refusal to either hear or say one of two little words. “Yes” and “no.”

[The concepts in this post come from the excellent book Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend. These two strong Christians have practiced psychology for decades and have amazing insight we desperately need. I wish I’d read this book 30 years ago.]

Backpacks and Boulders

Before we dive into boundaries, we need to talk briefly about backpacks and boulders. The definitive passage for boundaries is Galatians 6:2-5.

Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load. (Galatians 6:2-5)

I’ve bolded the two important phrases we’re going to call-out here.

“Carry each other’s burdens.” The word translated “burden” means “boulder.” It’s something too huge for a single person to move alone. Stuff like that happens in this life. We’re supposed to help each other when we see someone else under the crushing weight of a boulder. There’s no way they can bear that weight themselves.

“Each one should carry his own load.” The word translated “load” means “backpack.” It’s basically a military term for a soldier’s daily pack. It’s the weight each person is both capable of carrying and expected to carry on their own.

We get in trouble with boundary issues when we mix up our boulders and our backpacks. We don’t let anyone help with our boulders, while we try to get others to carry our backpacks.

The 4 Main Boundary Problems

Here are the 4 main boundary problems. People with healthy boundaries say, and hear, the words “no” and “yes” appropriately, in the correct situations. These issues result when we don’t.

  1. Compliant — Won’t say “No”
  2. Controller — Won’t hear “No”
  3. Non-Responsive — Won’t say “Yes”
  4. Avoidant — Won’t hear “Yes”

Let’s go through these 4 boundary problems one by one. See if you recognize yourself. I do.

1) The Compliant – Won’t Say No

A compliant person is happy to help, answering the call to carry everybody else’s backpack. They get burned out and overloaded, and believe they just need to try harder. It’s looks great on the outside. Everyone else praises them because they’re so helpful, but it’s a horrible way to live.

Their life is often controlled by others. In inner healing, we call this Performance Orientation. It’s hard sometimes to see this as a problem because they’re doing so many good things.

But if they’re doing the wrong good things, all these good things are actually stealing the calling on their life. All the time spent doing all the good things leaves no time or energy for the one Great Thing, that unique contribution to the world only they can bring. It’s tragic. The compliant life is tragedy with a bow.

The problem isn’t the things they’re doing. The problem is they’re getting their value from the things they’re doing, not from their relationship with Jesus. It’s a perversion of the Biblical principal of dying to yourself. (See Luke 9:23, one of my favorite verses. Yes, I was a compliant. I can still lean that way if I’m not careful.)

2) The Controller – Won’t Hear No

Controllers don’t accept other people’s boundaries. They don’t carry their own backpack. Controllers spend all their time and energy trying to get someone else to carry their backpack, because in their deception, they perceive it as a boulder. So every backpack God brings into their life to make them strong and help them grow is thrown away.

They take advantage of other people to get their needs met, or at least what they perceive as their needs. Do you know people who don’t accept a “no”? They argue with you. They try to work a deal. They say, “Ok, but just…” They are abusers in the making, if not already there. (There are many forms of abuse: physical, verbal, emotional, and even spiritual.)

Controllers have a scarcity mindset. Intrinsically believing there’s not enough love to go around, they have to control the situation to make sure they get their share.

3) The Non-Responsive – Won’t Say Yes

Non-responsive people set boundaries, but they’re the wrong boundaries. They set boundaries against loving other people. When someone comes to them with a legitimate need, they have no grid for it. “Why don’t they just deal with it?”

To non-responsives, everything’s a backpack. They don’t see boulders. So, for example, when their spouse reaches out to them with a legitimate need (maybe for time spent together, being treated decently, or maybe just being loved), they don’t help or even try to. “I’m carrying my backpack, why can’t you just carry yours? What’s wrong with you?” They brush off their responsibility to love, claiming the other person is just overly needy.

4) The Avoidant – Won’t Hear Yes

Avoidants also set the wrong boundaries. They set a boundary against being loved. That’s called a wall, by the way, and is not a healthy boundary.

They won’t let someone else help with their boulders. “I can do it myself.” Like the non-responsive, they don’t see boulders. Well, actually, they see other people’s boulders, but not their own. They’re happy and willing to help someone else, but they won’t let anyone help them. “My problems pale in comparison to others.”

The 2 Common Combinations

Often we have multiple boundary problems. There are 2 particularly common combinations. (If you put the list of 4 boundary problems above in a table, these would be the diagonals.)

The compliant-avoidant won’t say “no” to helping with other people’s problems, but they won’t say “yes” to allowing anyone to help them with theirs. Desperately trying to earn the love we all crave, they get their value from helping others, literally to a fault, while never being vulnerable enough to allow anyone to help them. This is the post-card picture of Performance Orientation. They help everyone carry their backpack while letting no one help them with their boulder.

The non-responsive-controller, on the other hand, won’t hear “no” and won’t say “yes.” They steamroll over other people, demanding their needs get met while totally ignoring the needs of others. This is the post-card picture of Narcissism. They demand everyone else carry their backpack while never helping anyone with their boulder.

The really sad thing is – these two diagonals often marry each other! For a non-responsive-controller, who better to manipulate into carrying their backpack, while doing nothing in return, than a compliant-avoidant? And who better to make a compliant-avoidant feel needed than a non-responsive-controller?

So What Really Makes These Tick?

The inner motivation for all of these is… wait for it….  Fear. Pure and simple fear. We use these mechanisms to guard our own heart instead of trusting God. We’re afraid, and we don’t trust him to protect us or value us, at least to some extent, so we have to do it ourselves.

It comes down to this. We don’t believe we’re loved for ourselves. By whatever means we got that message, how we were raised, trauma in our life, etc., it stuck. And so now we have to either earn love or control the situation to get it. The problem is, it never works for long. God loves us too much to let us be satisfied living like that.

The Way Out

Fortunately, Jesus is stronger than our boundary problems. But he’s also a gentleman. He won’t force our boundary issues from us. But he’ll bring infinite opportunities throughout our life to give them to him, to start trusting him with our hearts instead of our own devices.

Sometimes recognizing we have a problem is 90% of the solution. Naming that problem is also powerful, because we have power over what we can name. That’s why AA meetings famously start by saying, “I’m John, and I’m an alcoholic.” That’s why anger management counselors teach people words to label their emotions. “I’m not angry, I’m frustrated (or scared or lonely or tired or sad or shocked, etc)”.

The choice is ours.

Compliants – Start saying “no” to good things that deplete you. Your own self-care is just as worthy of your time.

Controllers – Begin to listen for “no.” Honor the other person’s right to say “no,” whether you think it’s silly in this circumstance or not. No means no. Trust God to bring you what you need. Face the fear.

Non-Responsives – Other people have boulders. Intentionally look for them. What’s one thing you can help your spouse/friend/co-worker with? Help them with something that seems like a boulder to them, even if it looks like a backpack to you.

Avoidants – Start saying “yes.” Let people in. Let people help you. We were designed to live in community, and avoidants totally get that as far as helping other people. But community works both ways. You’re not really living in community if you don’t let people help you. (Not control you, just help you.)

Now, an important note here. We justify our extremes by the other extreme. Compliants look at non-responsives and say, “I don’t want to be insensitive like them!”. And vice-versa. Non-responsives look at compliants and say, “I don’t want to be a doormat like them!” Same for controllers and avoidants.

Relax. No one’s trying to turn you into the other extreme. But we have to move in that direction if we’re going to move out of the unhealthy extreme we’re stuck in. Non-responsives need to be more sensitive to the needs around them. Compliants need to be less sensitive to, and controlled by, the needs around them. Etc.

If any of this is you, pray for grace to acknowledge it and repent. Pray for the grace to learn and be teachable, recognizing the opportunities God brings into your life to grow, to say and hear “yes” or “no” where you haven’t before.

So how about you?

Did you recognize yourself in these descriptions? Have you lived with these? How are your boundaries? Tell us your story in the comments, and please share if this would bless someone else.