Write your guide to setting healthy boundaries in relationships.
I am not sure I am qualified to write a guide to healthy boundaries, except as someone who learned them too slowly.
For 20 years I was a parish minister. That meant working in a caring profession. People had real needs. Crises happened. There were weddings, funerals, hospital visits, pastoral conversations, Sunday services, meetings, and emergencies. For a long time, I thought being available was part of being faithful.
The problem was that my availability to everyone else often became absence at home. My family got what was left. I worked too hard and had too little downtime. Even when I was physically home, I was often too tired to be properly present.
I could have done weddings every Saturday if I had wanted to. Combined with three or four services every Sunday, the whole weekend could disappear. So I made a rule: one wedding per month. That was it. Sometimes people were disappointed. But I had to learn that disappointing someone was not the same as failing them. It was the only way to look after home.
The most helpful advice I received was to think of the week in work units. A morning, an afternoon, and an evening were each one unit. The aim was twelve units per week, no more than thirteen. It forced me to see that time is not elastic. Energy is not endless.
I also learned to protect my family’s privacy. I rarely talked about family members or family life from the pulpit. Some stories were warm or funny, but they were not mine alone to tell.
So my guide to healthy boundaries is simple: count your work, protect your home, do not spend other people’s privacy, and learn to disappoint people without feeling you have betrayed them. A healthy boundary is not a lack of love. Sometimes it is the only way love survives.
The Afterword 
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