Boundaries in Relationships- Lysa TerKeurst

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Boundaries in Relationships

Guest:Lysa TerKeurst

From the series:Good Boundaries and Goodbyes (Day 2 of 2)

Air date:May 16, 2025

Lysa:In isolation, that’s where the enemy can really, really do a number on us. So whether you’re in a difficult friendship and you’re worried the friendship may end, or if you’re in a difficult parent relationship with your parents, or even if you’re the parent and you’ve got children that you’re having a difficult relationship or a marriage or whatever it is, don’t stay in isolation. It’s not that you want to tell everybody, but you need to tell somebody and choose wisely who those “somebodies” are.

Dave:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann:And I’m Ann Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave:So I didn’t know it growing up in this home, but watching my dad drink every night—women, took me on trips when I was five and six years old with his girlfriends while married to my mom—I never realized my mom couldn’t set a boundary. She just let it happen.

Ann:And she knew about all of it. He let her know about all of it.

Dave:Yeah, I mean, again, looking back, it’s like, “Mom, come on!” She did not choose to divorce him until my older brother—ten years older, so probably 18, 19 years old—said to mom, “You can’t let this go on. He is destroying our family.” And again, I’m a little boy at the time thinking, “It’s the worst thing ever happened to my life when my mom and dad got divorced.” It was the best thing for me. I’m not saying divorce is good, I’m not. I’m saying, “It’s a really hard decision she made.”

But if I would’ve stayed being raised by that man, I’m not sitting here right now. I’m literally not sitting here right now. My mom saved my life by making a really hard boundary choice, saying, “I’m not going to let this chaos go on anymore.”

Ann:And it’s interesting, too, because your dad started getting some help after that.

Dave:Yeah, that decision changed his life for the good.

Ann:We’re pretty excited! We have Lysa TerKeurst with us in the studio today. Lysa, welcome back!

Lysa:Thank you so much! I’m just proud of your mom for realizing that she wasn’t powerless in the situation. At first, it sounds a little bit like she’s powerless. I understand that we are to deeply respect the institution of marriage, and at the same time we have to look and see that Jesus prioritized life, the sanctity of life over even the institution of relationships in marriage. And your mom was in a terribly unsafe situation. I mean—

Ann:He was physically abusive as well.

Lysa:But even sexually transmitted diseases, getting in a car or her kids getting into a car with someone who is inebriated, there’s just so many things. I think sometimes, in relationships like that, we can start to feel powerless because the other person won’t change; and I get that. It can feel very powerless.

But while you can’t change another person, you can ask yourself, “What can I do?” And a good way to establish this is, “Okay, if this, then this.” And it’s not meant to be a threat. I would always suggest “Don’t do it in the heat of the battle. Don’t do it in a moment of conflict but think logically, using the logical part of your brain.” Okay this: “If you drink, then this, my kids will not get in that car with you.” “If you have another affair, I will not continue to live with you.”

Of course, we want to take steps, not leaps. We want to be very careful about that. So it’s not like we want to swing from one extreme to the other, but you’re not powerless in a situation where another person refuses to change, because you have the ability to keep yourself safe, sane, stable, and self-controlled. But that may mean you have to limit that person’s access to you until either they become more responsible with the access you’ve given them, or you make the choice to say “Goodbye.”

Ann:I just counseled a woman a few weeks ago who called and said, “I think my husband’s cheating,” and it hadn’t been the first time. She asked me, “How do I approach it?” And I said, “First of all, you are praying. You’re gathering friends. You’re in the word. It’s not an empty threat that you’re going to make. You need to really seek Jesus on what this looks like.”

But I did say, “I would start by saying, ‘I’m choosing us. I’m choosing us, our family, our kids. I’m choosing Jesus with us. But it looks like you are not choosing us, based on the decisions and the things that you’re doing. I’m going to always choose us, but until you can do that, and it looks like you’re doing that—in other words, you’re not cheating on us, you’re not drinking, you’re not partying, you’re not doing drugs—until that stops, to me, that says, ‘I’m not choosing our family.’” And so that can be a healthy boundary?

Lysa:Absolutely. And of course that’s a serious situation. And when I went through a divorce, there was some criticism; people expecting me to stay no matter what. And I get that because I deeply respect marriage, and I intended to keep my commitments, and you know what? I did.

In the end, I didn’t walk away. I had to make the gut-wrenching decision to accept reality. And when you accept reality, then sometimes their choices, or sometimes just the place that this broken-down dysfunctional relationship is—it is no longer safe. It’s no longer stable. It’s no longer allowing you to remain self-controlled. I think that we need to just say “Sometimes, there are really hard choices that have to be made, but I refuse to stay in a marriage that does not honor God.” And it sounds like that’s where she’s at.

Dave:Yeah. It’s interesting. As you think about your ministry life, president of Proverbs 31 Ministries—

Ann:You’ve written 25, 26 books.

Dave:Don’t even know because you’ve written so many. Last time we had you on was Forgiving What you Can’t Forget. And honestly, I’ve said this as a preacher from the stage, the best book I had ever read on forgiveness was Lewis Smedes Forgive and Forget, and it literally helped me forgive my dad when I was in my thirties. Your book was so powerful. Now I’m like, “Yeah, forget Smedes.” I mean, I don’t mean that, but I hand yours out and toward the end of that book, you started hinting at boundaries. This book, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes. Obviously, you started it there. Did you ever think 30 years ago, even 20 years ago, “I’m going to write a book on boundaries?” I mean, “This is what I’m going to write on.”

Lysa:No.

Dave:Yeah.

Lysa:No, I didn’t think that I would. First of all, I didn’t think I would ever write a book because it’s really hard to get published, but I could have never seen the twists and turns that my life would take and I write based on my own experiences because when I write a book, I know I’m going to be knee deep in studying that for two years, and I want God to teach me, and I want God to hold me accountable to what I’ve learned and I want to grow and I invite my readers to come along with me.

So many times the next topic is just the next part of my own journey. I couldn’t have predicted where all of this was going to go at all. But if you do look at the titles from Uninvited; that was the book on rejection. The very next book was It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way. That’s on major life disappointments and what do we do about it and how do we make peace with it? Then the next one, Forgiving What You Can’t Forget. And then the next one, Good Boundaries and Goodbyes. It’s just like each message is just followed along with my own spiritual and emotional journey.

Dave:Just my opinion, it feels like that’s where at least Christianity in America is. It feels like we need somebody like you to write on these topics. I don’t know, is it just me? It just feels like we’re in a culture where we think the most loving thing to do is lay down my life, take the abuse, take the verbal abuse, just let it happen. Am I right? It just feels like somebody needs to speak out.

Gary Thomas wrote When to Walk Away, and we had him in here and it’s like people were just bashing him like, “You never walk away.” It’s like, well, Jesus actually did. And there’s times when the boundary is healthy and it’s actually, you say a boundary is God’s idea.

Lysa:It is. Yeah. We see it from the very beginning of the Bible when God established the foundation of the world. We see boundaries there, and it continues all the way through Scripture. I mean, as it continues all the way through Scripture, it became astounding to me, how have I missed this? How have I missed it?

I also have deep compassion for people because the motivation of saying, “Stay.” The motivation there is “Let’s protect marriages.” And I do think marriages need to be protected. But there’s a big difference, as my friend Leslie Vernick says—this helped me a lot—”There’s a very big difference between a difficult marriage and a destructive marriage.”

Ann:What’s the difference?

Lysa:A difficult marriage is the typical difficulties that you go through when you try to do relationships with other people—

Dave:Which is every marriage, every relationship,

Lysa:Things get challenging, go to a great counselor. A destructive marriage is where you are having to diminish the best of who you are to cover up the worst of who someone else is. That’s a destructive marriage. And there’s different levels, different situations, different scenarios, and that’s why I say, “If you feel like you’re in a destructive marriage, don’t go at it alone. Get other people.”

Sometimes, it’s beautiful when you draw boundaries. Sometimes boundaries are—because they’re effective communication tool, it’s making the other person aware and making you aware. And then, if you have really smart people, go get a counselor that’s specifically trained in that exact dysfunction that you’re walking through. And sometimes, the redemption of God—sometimes it is reconciliation, and it is beautiful, and boundaries provide such a healthy way to get there. Sometimes, God’s redemption is a rescue, and sometimes that’s true as well.

That’s why it was important for me, as I wrote Good Boundaries and Goodbyes, to make sure that we did some heavy lifting with the biblical theology of a “goodbye.” One of the most fascinating things that I discovered in my research was the original term “goodbye,” it wasn’t initially goodbye. It was “God be with ye.” And so people in saying goodbye would say, “Oh God, be with ye.” Then it was shortened to “God” and then it was like “B-W-Y,” Then it eventually became “Goodbye.”

But if you go back to the original meaning of that, isn’t it fascinating that so many of us—maybe because of friendship breakups, or maybe because of family of origin drama, or just devastation or abuse or trauma or whatever it is—we will experience “goodbyes” in our life. I had never heard a sermon preached on a goodbye. I had never even heard somebody teaching on it. And so it was important to me to say, “We don’t want our relationships to end. We don’t want goodbyes,” but sometimes that does happen, and we have to acknowledge it.

But why let it get to a place where the goodbye is just so awful and treacherous and terrible? Why not take a step back and say, “Okay, God teaches me to pray for my enemies, and when I pray for my enemies, I know I’m positioning them—I’m asking God to position them—to be blessed. And in order to be positioned to be blessed, then God is going to handle what needs to be handled over there. It’s not my responsibility. I can’t control it. I can’t manage it.” But isn’t it so much more beautiful that, instead of “Goodbye and good riddance,” if we were to say “Goodbye. God be with ye. Goodbye. God be with ye. Goodbye?”

And so I had a really profound moment at the very end of the book where I had to decide what I was going to do with my wedding ring. And it was just a deeply hard moment for me. I remember I was in my closet, and I was by myself.

Ann:How many years had you been married?

Lysa:Almost 30. I took my wedding ring off. I just stared at it, and I thought, “I don’t know what to do with this.” But two weeks before, a college friend of mine found my childhood Bible in a box in her attic, and that childhood Bible I hadn’t seen, I had no idea whatever happened to it, but she found it. She figured out how to get in touch with me. She got the Bible to a friend of a friend who passed it on to another friend, who then passed it to my daughter, and my daughter had just brought me the childhood Bible. And when I opened it up, there were some scriptures that I had highlighted from all those years ago and some notes that I had written that were such confirmation from the Lord that I was doing, that I was doing the right thing as hard as it was.

And so I wound up taking my ring and tucking it in the pages of my childhood Bible and closing it and putting it high on a shelf with all the other special mementos that I’ve saved from over the years, and it was like bookends of my life. A little girl who was reading Scripture, who dreamed of a life that would one day be hers, and then the ending of this portion of my life that I thought would be forever. And yet God is still creating redemption even in the midst of the twist and turns that I didn’t see. But it was just a really powerful moment to be able to tuck my ring inside that Bible. And as I did, I prayed, “God be with ye, God be with ye. God be with ye.”

Dave:Yeah, when I read that, I teared up.

Ann:Me too.

Dave:I mean I can—

Ann:I’m doing it now.

Dave:—see you. That’s a hard moment, obviously,

Ann:Even at the beginning of the book, you talk about how we all long for the Hallmark Movie life.

Lysa:We do.

Ann:Don’t we? But as I hear you share that; that’s a God life. He’s with you at the beginning and He’s with you at that portion, too. He’s always with us and He always hears us. But it’s sweet when we can trust Him and, as you’re saying, bless others that have hurt us.

Lysa:That’s right. That’s right. So that was another important part of this book, not only drawing healthy boundaries with the motivation to be—to protect our relationships. It’s effective communication, and communication is an opportunity. Healthy communication does help us protect our relationships.

And then, it was also important for me to tackle the subject of goodbyes because sometimes that is a reality as well. Again, when we say a goodbye, we want to take steps, not leaps; and boundaries allow us to take those appropriate, healthy steps.

But then, if and when the “goodbye” happens, we want to honor God all the way through the end. We will not do it perfectly. Goodbyes hurt. There will be a lot of strong emotion depending on the dynamics of the goodbye, and there will be times that you feel like you can’t make it. There will be times where you just want to crawl in your bed and throw the covers over your head and tell the world to go away. There’ll be times you say things you wouldn’t normally say, you do things you wouldn’t normally do, and yet the secret really is to always come back to the Lord and ask the Lord, not “Where is my future going to go from here?” or “Why did all of this happen?” but “What now, God? Let me just honor You with what’s right in front of me today and then the next day let me honor you with what’s right in front of me the next day.”

At the same time, recognizing that God does want us to preserve life, sanctity of life. We’ve got to keep all of that in mind and get wise counsel around us.

Dave:I mean, as you think about even that thought, sanctity of life, even with your own children, how do you think your decisions to set boundaries and make some hard decisions have affected them? I know that I mentioned earlier, when my mom and dad divorced, I was seven; ended up moving from New Jersey, and my dad was an airline pilot, so we had a really nice house in a gated community and had a lot of money. Then I remember growing up with not much money, single mom in the 60s when there weren’t a lot of single moms.

But short, long story is I did a marriage conference near that city and Ann wasn’t with me. I was speaking with another couple. I borrowed a car, and I drove. I thought, “I want to see if I can find my old house.” It was an adventure to get through this gated thing; but anyway, I got to the house, walk up to the door, and the person says, “Oh, you must be little Davey. And I’m like, “What?” “We bought the house from your dad.”

Anyway, they knew me, knew our family. I literally got to walk through this house that I hadn’t been in since I was seven years old; but here’s what I felt. I felt trauma. I remembered each room. I remembered the driveway. I mean, as I walked around, it wasn’t a good feeling, which I thought I would have. It was like I remembered fights and yelling and drunkenness and just abuse. I remember getting in the car feeling like, “Wow, I am so glad my mom made that decision.”

So that was my experience. You made a big decision. How has it impacted your kids, you think?

Lysa:Well, I think anytime there is an ending of a marriage, it affects the kids dramatically. I mean, there’s no escaping it. My parents got divorced, and I was definitely affected by that. But I have also seen that my kids have learned themselves how to draw appropriate boundaries. And so while there was a lot of trauma, there was also this beautiful thing that happened that everybody was kind of forced to go to get good, Christian therapy, and so we’ve all benefited from that.

I won’t paint rose-colored glasses over it because, my goodness, there’s just a lot of hurt and a lot of pain, but my kids are really good at boundaries! So good, in fact, that we have healthy boundary conversations. As adult children, they’ve had to set some boundaries with me, and I’ve had to set some boundaries with them, but because we’ve been on this journey together, boundaries don’t feel so shocking. Boundaries feel appropriate. Boundaries, it’s kind of understood that healthy relationships have healthy boundaries, and we’ve used them as communication tools.

So do I ever get upset when they set a boundary with me? Of course, I do! I’m like, “Wait a minute!” But we can have healthy discussions, and the sign of a healthy person is that they respect healthy boundaries. I want to be a healthy person. Therefore, I have learned to respect healthy boundaries, and I think my kids have done the same. And so sometimes people are shocked like, “Wow, you guys just talk about stuff.” And it’s like, “Yeah, we do,” because communication is a very high priority in our family now and setting boundaries is part of that.

Boundaries don’t have to be this awful thing. Boundaries actually help define where the freedom is so that we can operate freely within the boundary lines. Sometimes it’s hard, of course, but it has done a lot to improve my relationship with my kids and also make my kids healthier people; and I’m glad for that part.

Ann:What if you have kids or a spouse—if you’ve set this boundary of saying, “I feel like we need to bring a third party in to get help. It feels like we aren’t being able to communicate. We’re not doing a good job at this, especially with our kids in tow when they’re watching this.” But the spouse says, “No, I’m not doing that”?

Lysa:That’s a really challenging situation. But remember, we can’t put a boundary on another person, but we are responsible to put a boundary on ourselves. And if we need therapy, and the “we” is not cooperating, then it’s a “me” now. So “I’m going to go to therapy. I would love for you to join me. And that’s your choice to do it or not.”

But remember, the ultimate really communication with the boundary: “If this, then this.” We always want to do it from a motivation of love and a motivation of seeking each other’s highest good. But it’s not seeking the other person’s highest good to enable them to stay in what could be toxic behaviors, extreme dysfunction, addictions, whatever it is that different people in different relationships are dealing with. So we can’t control them, but we can absolutely exercise self-control. And if we need counseling and they’re not willing, then it’s a “me” thing, and now I’m going to go.

Ann:Go back—this is just a crazy question but go back to young Lysa. Let’s say you are in college even, and you didn’t know any of this, but you loved Jesus. What would you say to young Lysa?

Lysa:Well, young Lysa in college knew facts about God but didn’t have a thriving relationship with God. So to me, I had kind of a deal with God back then. I would follow the rules. I am a good rule follower. I’ll follow the rules, and then I expect you to hold up your end of the deal to protect and to bless me and whatever else. So I had such a limited understanding.

So first of all, I would say to young Lysa, “Don’t pursue relationships outside of pursuing a relationship with God first. And your relationship with God isn’t where it needs to be. And so we’ve got to get that straight because that sets the foundation for really making sure that your ability to choose relationships is going to be much healthier if you have that foundation.”

I didn’t have that foundation, so my parameters of looking for people to date or even friendships or whatever, I just didn’t have the foundation of looking for the right people. My foundation was more, are they fun? Are they cute? Are we in close proximity so that we can do stuff together or whatever? And I think that’s a pretty common way that friendships are formed and that sometimes even marriages are formed. So I would say to young Lysa, “Let’s get that straight first.”

The second thing I would say to young Lysa is don’t compromise the best of who you are. I said it earlier, but I’m going to say it again. We shouldn’t be diminishing the best of who we are to cover up the worst of who someone else is. And as I look back, my counselor, Jim said my picker was broken. You have to be careful how you say that, but my picker was broken because I was so, I don’t know if it’s that I was so desperate or I was so eager, or I just so wanted the feeling of being somebody’s girlfriend or being someone’s wife. I had dreamt about it so long that I found myself excusing things that I should never have excused. I found myself overlooking things that I shouldn’t overlook.

And I wrote in one of my recent books, why is it that for me, a red flag has to be burning down to the ground before I tilt my head and go, “Huh, that was actually kind of red, wasn’t it?” And so I would tell younger Lysa, “If you smell smoke, there is a fire. Don’t ignore it. Don’t cover it up. Investigate what it is because you’re talking about the rest of your life here. When you know better, you do better.”

So it’s easy for me to speak to younger Lysa. Younger Lysa didn’t have the tools. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And so I have a lot of grace for myself looking back. And I don’t beat myself up thinking, oh, if you would’ve done better, no, I didn’t know better, so I didn’t do better, but now I know better and I’m doing better.

Ann:But you’re also helping all the younger Lysas to not make those same—

Dave:Yeah, I was thinking when you described younger Lysa, that’s all of us.

Ann:Yes.

Dave:And I just wonder, there’s so many thinking, “I’m in an unhappy marriage. Should I get out ?” when it isn’t destructive. It’s just a—it’s a normal marriage that’s unhappy, which is pretty common. You’re talking about when it’s a destructive pattern, it’s a lot different, even though you got into it with wrong—I mean, we all do, right?

Lysa:Yeah. Well, and we shouldn’t stay in isolation. I think that’s the biggest thing.

Ann:We hide.

Lysa:Right, we do. And in isolation, that’s where the enemy can really, really do a number on us. So whether you’re in a difficult friendship and you’re worried the friendship may end, or if you’re in a difficult parent relationship with your parents, or even if you’re the parent and you’ve got children that you’re having a difficult relationship or a marriage or whatever it is, don’t stay in isolation. It’s not that you want to tell everybody, but you need to tell somebody and choose wisely who those “somebodies” are. I remember my counselor told me, “Get a personal board of directors.”

Ann:That’s good.

Lysa:And I did. So I have a personal board of directors now. It’s not for my ministry, it’s for me. And I don’t make a move without calling these people that I know, I trust, I have history with. They love the Lord. They’re smart in the areas that I ask for counsel in. And yeah, my personal board of directors are really important. And it’s not a massive group of people. It’s a small group of people, but they’re safe people and they help me see things that I don’t always see.

Ann:I’ve loved, too, your honesty, in every book. You’re super honest of where you are, where you’ve been, where you’re going. I love your passion for Jesus; that it’s all about Him. And I like the practicality of this book too. I love that at the end of each chapter, you have “Now let’s live this,” and you break it down into what we should remember, receive, reflect, and pray about. I thought, “Oh, this is just a great book to go through.” It’s not a book just to read and be an aspired, but it’s a book to allow Jesus to really change. And to me, it’s not so much change as much learning and giving more of ourselves to Him every day and being able to receive from Him.

I’m just wondering, would you pray for us? Pray for those that are like, “I need this. I’m not sure what to do.” You know what to pray.

Lysa:Absolutely.

Lord, I pray right now for the person listening that they’re in some kind of a difficult, possibly even destructive relationship. And Lord, whether it’s a friendship or parental relationship, or one of their kids, or marriage, or whatever it is, Lord, they’re listening to this, and they’ve heard “Where there’s chaos, there’s usually a lack of a boundary.” They feel the chaos, but the boundary makes them scared because every boundary will cost us something.

And so, Lord, I pray that You would give them wisdom, that You would meet them in the pages of Scripture, and that You would just lavish Your grace and Your mercy on them. Because when you’re hurting, everything feels so much harder. But Lord, I pray that You would just wrap Your tender mercies around them and help them see that there’s always a way with You. There’s a way forward, and sometimes there’s a way out, Lord. Sometimes, Your redemption is reconciliation, and sometimes it’s a rescue, but only You know, Lord. So help us to be obedient today.

Lord, I pray that You would just shed enough light on the very next step that that person is supposed to take, that we’re lifting up today. Lord, be with them. Be with them. Be with them. In Your name we pray. Amen.

Dave & Ann:Amen.

Ann:This is Ann and Dave Wilson with FamilyLife Today. And man, it’s always great to be with Lysa TerKeurst. Her wisdom, her insights, her call to walk with Jesus is always inspiring. Her book is called Good Boundaries and Goodbyes.

Dave:And it sounds like it’s the end of something, but actually, if you understand what she’s saying, it could be the beginning of something because you’re setting boundaries, which allows the relationship to flourish. Again. She’s the best. Her books, all of them, are phenomenal. So you could pick up Good Boundaries and Goodbyes at FamilyLifeToday.com. There’s a link in our show notes, and I would encourage you to get it. If you’re walking through something or you know somebody that’s walking through something, buy that book for them.

Ann:FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife®, a Cru® Ministry. Helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.

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