It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. I was in the construction business, designing and building swimming pools. I loved the tangible, concrete nature of the business. What you did every day was so visible: so many designs complete, so many blueprints printed, so many yards of concrete poured, so many tons of rock laid, so many gallons of sparkling, clear water rippling in the warm breeze.
But plaster and stone are easier to work with than are human beings. It was as much a work of art to persuade people to trust the idea that I could create another award-winning pool at their home as it was to design the project itself. One of the greatest challenges was to complete projects in time for the first really warm days, when couples had too frequently taken up the best months for construction trying to decide if they even wanted a pool. Consequently, people in the pool business don’t get to go home very much in May.
This particular May, the weathermen in Fort Worth were telling a joke. “What do you call the day after two days of rain?” they quipped. The answer that was supposed to be funny was, “Monday.” Funny, unless you really wanted to work or play on Saturday.
What I really wanted to do this particular Saturday was dig a swimming pool – first of all because it would make my customer happy, and second, because I was paid for my part in the project when the pool was dug. Instead, the construction manager called to inform the customer and me that the rain was so hard that the dig could not happen today, and indeed, it might not dry out enough for the dig to happen for several days. I took off my work boots, and sat down at the drafting table to finish a set of plans for the next slated project.
After about an hour, I received a phone call from my customer. She was disappointed that we hadn’t dug her pool yet. Actually, she was furious. Technically, you could say that she was livid. I was empathetic. She refused to believe that anyone talking as calmly as I was talking could feel what she was feeling. I was persuasive. She was not going to be deterred. I looked out the window, saw that the sky was green, and explained that we were both better off in our nice, dry home and office than standing next to a 15 ton lightning rod, also known as a backhoe. She then proceeded to abuse me with language that made me wonder if she had ever had a career as a drill instructor.
I swallowed my real urge to sear the ears from her head with a blast of sarcasm, and instead said, as calmly as I knew how: “I am a professional who will do his best to do the best of work for you; I am a friend who will do his best to listen to you, but I am not going to let you talk to me this way anymore.” I then hung up the phone without waiting for a response.
I stopped working on my vellums and walked around the office. I was contemplating ways that I could explain this to my boss, and imagining what it might be like to look for another job.
Sure enough, five minutes later the phone rang again. It was my customer. “Ron,” she started, “did my evil twin sister just call you?” Thinking fast, I replied, “You know, I wondered who that was. Her voice sounded just like yours, but I knew from what she said that it couldn’t have been you.” She laughed and said, “She can be such a snot sometimes.” We went on to work on our real issues. We built a beautiful pool for her, and her family enjoyed it for many summers.
The word for today is boundary. A wise person once said, “All healthy relationships have good boundaries.” This is a fundamental truth.
In this relationship, I let my friend know, in a brief moment of clarity, that she had crossed one of my boundaries. Being a fundamentally wise person, she caught herself, apologized in her own inimitable way, and we were able to restore our relationship so as to finish the job that both of us wanted finished.
What boundaries do we need to watch today? Do we need to be sensitive to the sudden change in a friend’s demeanor as a signal that we have unintentionally crossed the line? Or, do we need to not be so subtle, and come straight out and tell someone when they have crossed the line that hurts our feelings or limits our effectiveness? It is important to pay close attention, and to communicate clearly, lest we be misunderstood.
When Jesus defines boundaries he does so in a fundamental way. He uses words that we have quoted so often that we lose sight of what they really mean. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Luke 6:31). In some ways, these words of Jesus are intuitively obvious. On the other hand, I don’t think that they are. Just because it doesn’t make me mad when a proofreader scratches out my words on a piece of paper and writes in their own, I ought not believe that I can do this to anyone else without taking into account how they feel about this apparent verbal sabotage. It might make them furious.
This is just one example. We all know something that aggravates someone we love that doesn’t bother us at all. For some children, raising your voice to them is the same as a physical assault. For some adults, raising your voice to them is the only way to really get their attention. If we really love as Jesus wants us to love, we have to watch out for those boundaries, and not make excuses for our intrusions across them. We should avoid the boundaries and ask for forgiveness when we unintentionally cross them.
May God help us to watch our boundaries in a loving way today.
Blessings,
Ron
