Voice from within the Boundary
*note: due to the perturbation of a now unnamed person, all personal identifiers have been removed from this post. (1/17/09)
I had two interesting conversations last night that intersected in my thoughts this morning as I drove into work. While I am quick on my feet thought wise, mulling things over this morning seemed to connect the two separate conversations. My first conversation revolved around boundaries and how each of us discovered our voice and why we react as we do to having our boundaries pushed. My other conversation revolved around rumors in high school and suppositions from incomplete information. I think what first connected these two separate ideas was that they both involved high school. I personally would much rather not do high school again; there were parts of the experience that I did enjoy and had fun in, but overall the experience was not enjoyable and the memories I have of it are hard (hard as in tough with rough edges, not hard as in hard to think back on). During the first conversation my friend asked me if I had found my voice in high school, looking back I think I found part of my voice in high school, but most of it I had learned long before.
I have good boundaries; I rarely let anyone push me around, I know how to tell people “no” and I can change my mind when I know I’ve been wrong. What I’ve found out about myself isn’t my boundaries that are the problem, it’s how I react when someone violates them. If my boundaries are like well marked property lines, if someone crosses them or attempts to cross them I don’t come out on my porch and ask nicely “hey, you’re on my lawn, could you please leave” or “next time use the driveway, don’t hop the fence.” Instead I have a tendency to grab a double barreled shotgun and give someone 30 seconds warning to get the hell of my land before I gun them down for trespassing. I think that this is because in my family, if you don’t have strong borders you get run over – a lot.
Going into High School I had these borders set up and was ready to run people down (and I did that to a few people who really deserved it and a few that didn’t). But as I was talking to my other friend and how she tried to ask me about rumors she had heard and believed (without actually asking me about them) it made me realize something. In high school I did learn a new voice; I learned not to care about the lies and the suppositions. I learned to care about the truth, about justice, about equality that comes from who you are, not what you look like or don’t look like. I never understood why people talked about me. I wasn’t the smartest or the prettiest, I wasn’t even the most talented at anything. I never understood, and still don’t understand, what it was about me that people wanted to destroy. I had few friends in high school, but they are the rare sort of people who are friends with everyone simply because they like them – not because they want something from people’s friendship.
The first time I was called a whore I was 12 and had to look it up in the dictionary. I had to ask my sister what “stuffing” was 3 weeks later. When I was 14 I had to punch a boy in the nose because he had heard that I did blow jobs for $20 and propositioned me. When I was 16 it was going around that I was easy and free, but by that time I had stopped caring what people said – most of the time I never heard what people were saying anyways. If I cared about the un-truths, the exaggerations (a kiss in the hallway turned into a half naked make out session in the bathroom), and the outright lies and smears then I was letting them win. So I learned to care about the truth, about justice for middle schooler with scoliosis that was teased and smacked around every day; justice for the outcast who got her hair pulled out and nails raked down her face by a girl who did it to get a boy to laugh. I learned to care about equality; to show people that “better than” is determined by the person you are rather than how popular you are, how pretty you are, or how rich your parents are.
The more I thought about these things, the more I have come to realize that these too are boundaries. That I expect people, especially close friends and family, to understand these things and become impatient when they don’t. But these aren’t just boundaries that I have set for myself; they are boundaries that I have set for other people – especially other Christians. I expect Christians to be better people, to understand what to me is Christ’s main message: love and respect all even those who are different, especially those who are outcasts; every life is sacred; every person is a child of God.
Joss Whedon in a script for one of his shows wrote about Champions out to save the world – helping the helpless, but I think he was writing about Christians (who also ought to be helping the helpless) when he wrote “Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It's harsh and it's cruel, but that's why there's us. It doesn't matter where we come from, what we done or suffered or even if we make a difference. We live as if the world was what it should be, to show it what it can be.” We live as if the world was what it should be, what God intended the world to be, what Christ intended us to be as His followers; to show it what it can be – we give hope because without Christ there is no hope, without His love and sacrifice then we would have nothing, we would be nothing. We are to be a light, a city on a hill that refuses to darken the lamps, refuses to stifle hope and always striving to be His hands and feet to prostitutes, IRS agents, Wall Street executives, homeless drug addicts, legal and illegal immigrants, family and the people next door. There is no one who escapes the notice and the grace of God; it’s up to us to extend it the best that we are able.
I had two interesting conversations last night that intersected in my thoughts this morning as I drove into work. While I am quick on my feet thought wise, mulling things over this morning seemed to connect the two separate conversations. My first conversation revolved around boundaries and how each of us discovered our voice and why we react as we do to having our boundaries pushed. My other conversation revolved around rumors in high school and suppositions from incomplete information. I think what first connected these two separate ideas was that they both involved high school. I personally would much rather not do high school again; there were parts of the experience that I did enjoy and had fun in, but overall the experience was not enjoyable and the memories I have of it are hard (hard as in tough with rough edges, not hard as in hard to think back on). During the first conversation my friend asked me if I had found my voice in high school, looking back I think I found part of my voice in high school, but most of it I had learned long before.
I have good boundaries; I rarely let anyone push me around, I know how to tell people “no” and I can change my mind when I know I’ve been wrong. What I’ve found out about myself isn’t my boundaries that are the problem, it’s how I react when someone violates them. If my boundaries are like well marked property lines, if someone crosses them or attempts to cross them I don’t come out on my porch and ask nicely “hey, you’re on my lawn, could you please leave” or “next time use the driveway, don’t hop the fence.” Instead I have a tendency to grab a double barreled shotgun and give someone 30 seconds warning to get the hell of my land before I gun them down for trespassing. I think that this is because in my family, if you don’t have strong borders you get run over – a lot.
Going into High School I had these borders set up and was ready to run people down (and I did that to a few people who really deserved it and a few that didn’t). But as I was talking to my other friend and how she tried to ask me about rumors she had heard and believed (without actually asking me about them) it made me realize something. In high school I did learn a new voice; I learned not to care about the lies and the suppositions. I learned to care about the truth, about justice, about equality that comes from who you are, not what you look like or don’t look like. I never understood why people talked about me. I wasn’t the smartest or the prettiest, I wasn’t even the most talented at anything. I never understood, and still don’t understand, what it was about me that people wanted to destroy. I had few friends in high school, but they are the rare sort of people who are friends with everyone simply because they like them – not because they want something from people’s friendship.
The first time I was called a whore I was 12 and had to look it up in the dictionary. I had to ask my sister what “stuffing” was 3 weeks later. When I was 14 I had to punch a boy in the nose because he had heard that I did blow jobs for $20 and propositioned me. When I was 16 it was going around that I was easy and free, but by that time I had stopped caring what people said – most of the time I never heard what people were saying anyways. If I cared about the un-truths, the exaggerations (a kiss in the hallway turned into a half naked make out session in the bathroom), and the outright lies and smears then I was letting them win. So I learned to care about the truth, about justice for middle schooler with scoliosis that was teased and smacked around every day; justice for the outcast who got her hair pulled out and nails raked down her face by a girl who did it to get a boy to laugh. I learned to care about equality; to show people that “better than” is determined by the person you are rather than how popular you are, how pretty you are, or how rich your parents are.
The more I thought about these things, the more I have come to realize that these too are boundaries. That I expect people, especially close friends and family, to understand these things and become impatient when they don’t. But these aren’t just boundaries that I have set for myself; they are boundaries that I have set for other people – especially other Christians. I expect Christians to be better people, to understand what to me is Christ’s main message: love and respect all even those who are different, especially those who are outcasts; every life is sacred; every person is a child of God.
Joss Whedon in a script for one of his shows wrote about Champions out to save the world – helping the helpless, but I think he was writing about Christians (who also ought to be helping the helpless) when he wrote “Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It's harsh and it's cruel, but that's why there's us. It doesn't matter where we come from, what we done or suffered or even if we make a difference. We live as if the world was what it should be, to show it what it can be.” We live as if the world was what it should be, what God intended the world to be, what Christ intended us to be as His followers; to show it what it can be – we give hope because without Christ there is no hope, without His love and sacrifice then we would have nothing, we would be nothing. We are to be a light, a city on a hill that refuses to darken the lamps, refuses to stifle hope and always striving to be His hands and feet to prostitutes, IRS agents, Wall Street executives, homeless drug addicts, legal and illegal immigrants, family and the people next door. There is no one who escapes the notice and the grace of God; it’s up to us to extend it the best that we are able.
posted by Rebecca at 9:06 PM
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