Staying Inside the Boundary
On Monday, I shared about my mother’s imminent transition to Heaven. Beyond anything I can explain, she is still here with us in the earthly shell of her body. Her caregivers keep crediting her strong heart — which is true — but her family knows her stubborn spirit is working just as hard. Thank you for the kind words and prayers as we wait for her last breath here, when she simultaneously takes her first one in Heaven.
These final days with Mom have afforded me a gracious amount of time to reflect on the fifty-four years I’ve had her. My siblings and I have been swapping stories while we wait and watch her fade. We tell most of them right there in her room, out loud, because hearing is usually the last sense to go. Some of these stories are too funny to leave her out of.
It might strike some people as distasteful, all that laughing when tears would be the expected response — and there have been plenty of those, too. But our family has always run on humor and a quick wit to get through the worst stretches. Mom included. She’s even let us know, with the smallest shift in her face, that she’s laughing right along with us.
Laughter was one of the main tools in our family toolbox, the one we reached for whenever heavier emotions came looking for a way in. But there was something else Mom taught us by example, starting when we were very young—the importance of boundaries.
I can’t claim she maintained her own as consistently as she could have, and she’d be the first one to admit that. What I can say, especially looking back, is that the times she did draw a line, it was almost always around her children.
When we were toddlers, gates went up to keep us out of the parts of the house where we could get hurt. Bedtimes were set so our bodies could rest and our brains could work. Sometimes a boundary sounded like “no” when we asked to spend time with a friend she knew wasn’t safe for us. More often than not, it looked like keeping her own pain and stress to herself, because she understood our underdeveloped brains couldn’t handle it.
Whatever lines she drew, they were for our protection. Several of them we didn’t find out about until decades later. What made no sense at the time is unmistakably clear now.
In Scripture, boundaries show up everywhere — property lines between tribes, the space required around the ark of the covenant. One of the most merciful examples is the cities of refuge. Under Mosaic law, God set apart these Levitical cities as places a person could run to if they killed a fellow Israelite accidentally.
At the city gate, the one who caused the death would present his case to the elders, who weighed the facts. If they determined the killing was truly an accident, he could live inside the city, protected from anyone coming to avenge the death.
There was one condition: he had to stay inside the boundary. Step outside, and the protection ended. He was on his own.
I’ve leaned on that same wisdom, along with my mother’s lessons, and drawn lines in my own life.
Of all the times I’ve set a boundary, knowingly or not, the ones that mattered most came after a tragedy. Surviving the tragedy itself had already taken nearly everything I had.
In the early weeks after I lost each of my husbands, friends set up a meal schedule so people could sign up to feed our family. Along with the calendar, the organizers put a cooler on our front porch and asked that meals be left inside it, which spared me from hosting visitors when I had nothing left to host with. Brilliant.
After Joel died, I especially had to use consistent boundaries with my four neurodivergent children. The limits went up for different reasons: to protect them from outsiders, to protect outsiders from them, and to protect them from each other. Not because anyone means harm. Two of them, in particular, can’t read what the culture considers acceptable. One carries a diagnosis that shows up as manipulation, triangulation, and lying.
Most people never have to calculate whether a one-hour trip to the grocery store will leave the whole house unraveling before they get back. The kids are finally old enough to stay home alone, but I rarely leave them for more than an hour. Sometimes I leave them with my oldest son, and even he struggles to control the environment, because they don’t respect him the way they’ve been trained to respect me. In their eyes, he’s one of them.
So, what does a boundary look like here?
• Skipping most evening activities, since that’s when the medications have worn off.
• Staying home for certain holidays rather than making them stressful for the rest of the family.
• Taking very few vacations or weekend trips, because the planning alone wears this mama out — and because these kids thrive on routine. Shift it even slightly, and their brain chemistry pays for it.
• Having almost no time with other adults, since I’m on duty as judge, jury, and warden. Though if I’m honest, I’m the one who feels locked up.
Those are simply the facts. I’m not sharing them to garner sympathy — nearly the opposite. I want the neurotypical world to understand what this life actually looks like from the inside. I know I’m not the only one, because I talk about it often with other parents raising neurodivergent kids. Online, naturally. Getting together in person is an unfortunate impossibility.
We get misread as antisocial. As people who isolate. Or, worst of all, as people who just don’t care enough about anyone else to show up. That one stings the longest. The judgment aimed at families like ours is maddening.
One favor I need to ask: unless you’ve walked a similar road, hold the judgment. You don’t know what you don’t know. Which is exactly why the lines exist.
My kids notice everything. They know when they’re being “secretly” discussed. They can feel that they’re different from other kids their age. They register my stress on the days a boundary gets moved. And they’re every bit as protective of me as I am of them.
There are plenty of lives I know nothing about, and plenty of hardships God has spared me from having to understand firsthand. I only pray my own suffering has taught me not to judge someone else’s by the shape of mine. Grace. We could all stand to offer more of it.