Mapping the Heart: Navigating Codependency and Establishing Boundaries

The accounts of Jesus’ time on earth provide a practical and spiritual template for those who follow Him. His approach to navigating challenges serves to encourage and infuse confidence in all we confront. He exhibited the principle of establishing healthy relationships, communication, and boundaries.

Prioritizing the Father’s will, Jesus’ desire to please His Father was the impetus that governed His ministry. He relentlessly pursued what would ultimately give God glory in every circumstance, regardless of the demands that others attempted to impose on Him.

The mirror of Scripture can help us to observe this as we watch Jesus engage with a pair of sisters hosting Jesus at their home. Martha was busy preparing for dinner, yet not enjoying the Lord’s presence.

While her sister Mary listened to Jesus teach, Martha lamented to the Savior. Instead of communicating directly with Mary, Martha circumvented her, by talking to Jesus about what Mary wasn’t doing and what she presumed should be happening instead. Jesus’ response exhibited a reflection of what healthy boundaries can look like in our own lives.

While Jesus didn’t negate the necessity of dinner, His emphasis in this account helps us to recognize, repent, and reset where our priorities misalign. He addressed Martha but refused to allow imposed guilt to usurp His priority.

As Messiah, He realized that Martha wanted to be validated and supported; Martha’s need for replenishment was apparent. It was what Mary had already chosen: to ease her codependent and anxious mind in rest and replenishment at Jesus’ feet.

No amount of work, regardless of how noble, fills us like spending time with Jesus. Christ presented the perfect example, illustrating that loving people and establishing boundaries are not mutually exclusive. We need both; and in fact, one informs the other.

We set boundaries because we want to protect the time in the presence of God and with loved ones and preserve these relationships. It is because of love that we establish boundaries as parameters to redirect our resources to nourish what we value.

When we are busying ourselves with what everyone else is or isn’t doing, we miss important face-to-face time with the Lord. There may be words and wisdom that He wants to share, but as long as we are codependently preoccupied with other people’s behaviors, we deflect attention from Christ.

Boundaries around our peace or priorities weaken the hold that worry and anxiety leverage. Yet, when we avoid marking boundaries on our time, we overextend ourselves and overcommit limited resources of energy and attention. Like Martha, this can be taxing for us as well as those in relationship with us.

Instead of engaging in life-giving exchanges, we keep score, ticking off our contributions and others’ perceived failures. We diminish them, even as we see in this story (Luke 10:38-42). There are two hostesses, yet they are both displaying a different kind of welcome for the Visitor in their home.

When we operate from a codependent mindset, we project what we want onto others, stepping over the boundaries around what they value. Instead, we misuse our relational influence to control them with guilt or emotion, presuming that they should respond to what we want and disregard their own unique needs and desires.

Codependency looks away from the areas to be reconfigured in our hearts. Furthermore, it minimizes the impact that our controlling words and actions have on those we love.

The speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye looms larger than the log bursting through our own when we allow codependency to govern and inform our mindset (Matthew 7:3-5). The result is that we won’t establish healthy boundaries that refocus us on what we need to manage with the Lord in our own lives. We place ourselves in the position of God by trying to rescue, redeem, or reprove other people for what they need to manage with the Savior.

It doesn’t have to be like this. We can make immediate pivots, recognizing where our codependent disregard for boundaries has spilled over into interactions with our loved ones. The Lord is our Counselor and Helper. Through His Holy Spirit, He will direct us to counseling resources to support us with making lasting change. Just like change came to Mary and Martha’s home, it can come to ours as well.

Next steps to establishing boundaries

Wherever you are, take courage and hope that change is possible. God has provided valid solutions and practical support for you to initiate it in your own life. Contact one of the counselors here at Huntington Beach Christian Counseling in California. Make your appointment to experience the beginning of life changes. You can begin to redraw the lines of your heart map, establishing boundaries that protect what matters most.