Is it okay for Christians to have boundaries? Did you know that it is Biblical that God loves boundaries. In this episode Gina has a conversation with Monika Kirkland. Monika is passionate for helping people connect in intimate relationship to God. Gina and Monika cover lots of ground in this episode touching on everything from rejection and healing, to healthy boundaries hearing God’s voice.
Monika is a wife, mom, blogger, speaker and author of Draw Near, a 4-week devotional to draw you closer to the heart of God.
Visit monikakirkland.com to get a free copy of Draw Near and learn more about Monika.
Click below to listen starting at 20:24 to follow along.
Rerouting Family Boundaries and Expectations
Gina:
Talking about redemption of legacy and stepping away from the brokenness of your original family, how do you re-enter and re-engage with that, your family of origin? How do you have boundaries? How do you stay in that place of health and building this new legacy with your family and your kids while not holding onto a fence and bitterness and hurt for what happened in the past?
Monika:
Similar to you, I lost my dad when I was 23 to alcoholism. He had liver failure. God was really faithful. My dad wasn’t a believer, he was an atheist most of my life, but in his last days, we were able to go and be with him. We flew to Florida to be with him and say our goodbyes. He allowed us to pray over him. My relationship with my father was strained. There were boundaries that I had to put in place to protect myself and my children.
But I made the choice to never write off anyone in my family. The most impactful thing that helped me in my relationship, with both my father as an alcoholic and my mother who has a lot of mental health issues and addiction issues, has been to ask God to show me them not as they are, but as who He made them to be. It renewed my perspective of them and helped me to see that they too are fighting a battle.
They too have an enemy of their soul who’s trying to keep them down. They might not experience the same breakthrough and freedom that I’ve had, but it gave me this renewed sense of grace over them. This ability to love them, it didn’t mean I didn’t have to have boundaries, I still do with my mom. I have a lot of boundaries to protect myself and my children. I made the choice to not write them off and to continue to faithfully pray for them and to pray for their breakthrough and their healing.
Gina:
I went through a similar process, and there’s that moment where you grieve the loss of the parents that you were never going to have. You accept the reality of that not being in your life and you release them from the expectation that they’re ever going to measure that, because those expectations actually do more damage to us than to them.
There is incredible freedom when you can get to that side of compassion and see them through the eyes of Jesus, as broken people who are loved by Him and who really have just never been able to recognize and receive the fact that they have worth and value. All of the brokenness, all of the things that have inflicted so much harm are really the manifestations of their hurt.
All those strongholds in their life and all of the protections that they’ve set up because of the pain that they’ve been through. And it really allows you to set boundaries, It’s more like, “This is what you can do. This is the appropriate place for this. And I do love you. Here’s where that lives.”
I think it’s hard to articulate. But it’s pretty profound, because it allows for freedom, for you to move forward and to establish your family, establish the legacy that you want to create and establish a home environment and an atmosphere that is different. You don’t need to be an expert to do that. You just need to be dependent and surrendered.
Monika:
That’s so good. I love what you said about expectations. A lot of breakthrough came for me when I adjusted my expectation of what my relationship with my parents would be like, and I stopped comparing. In my younger years and in high school especially, I would look at the parents my friends in school had, and I felt this longing for that. That’s totally normal. Of course we want that.
But when I really just adjusted my expectations that they weren’t going to be that role in my life, God brought healing through people who would mother me and father me spiritually. Then I could just love my parents apart from that, and release some of the expectations and love them for where they’re at. The same way I would love anyone else who’s in need of Jesus to have mercy. God really mothered me and fathered me spiritually.
Gina:
Letting go of those expectations and that bitterness and hurt that it isn’t coming from place that it should come from, allows you to receive it when God brings it from someplace else. Because He is faithful to do that. The spiritual moms and dads that God has brought in my life and still does. I’m 52 and I still have that need for that love, that guidance, grandparents for my kids.
My kids didn’t experience grandparents like other people and that brings up another point. There’s different levels of grieving and loss and acceptance of moving on. First, I didn’t have the mom and dad, we didn’t do this, we didn’t do that. They didn’t love me this way. You let go of that. You surrender that you can forgive them for that. You can release them from that.
Then you can receive the other ways God brings it into your life. Then when you get married and you have kids, then there’s another level of that. You want help. You want that support. You want your kids to have doting grandparents that love them and do all those things. Then there’s another layer sometimes again, we’re not ready for all of it because here’s another layer of the onion.
Can I surrender that and then receive it where it is going to come? Because God does bring it. We underestimate how much holding onto offense or bitterness or hurt, really robs us of the provision that is right in front of us. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s amazing how we get stuck right here. We’re longing for so many things.
It’s like Israel in the desert, you can long for the promised land and keep looking everywhere. And there’s a miracle in front of you. There’s mana coming from heaven and my dissatisfaction and my angst and my wishing, makes me miss the miraculous and the love of the Father that’s right here. It’s so sweet and powerful.
What a testimony to your kids too, as they grow, because right now they’re young, they don’t know any of this. But at some point they are going to know. At some point they’re going to start asking questions, at some point they’re going to be, “Wait didn’t you have a daddy who did this?” Those are altars of remembrance. They go, “What are those stones?” You’re going to say, “Let me tell you. This is how we got here.”
An Adoption Story
Monika:
That’s what the Lord has been reminding me in this season with four young kids. Our fourth is our son. We are in the process of adopting him.
Gina:
Tell me that story.
Monika:
It is such a good story. Before I had my third daughter Indy, we had our two girls, and one night I heard very clearly from the Lord, “You will have a son named Isaiah.” And we weren’t trying at that point, but a few months later, we began trying and I was so convinced that we’re going to have a son. We’re going to name him Isaiah.
Ryan, my husband, laughed at me, because he’s like, “No, I’m not naming my son that. If we have a boy, we already have our boy name picked out. His name’s going to be Rowan James. Not naming him that, so that must have not been from God. You cray cray.” Fast forward and we are pregnant, but it’s a girl. And so I was questioning, “Lord, I thought I was going to have a son. It felt like such a clear word from You. Maybe we’re either going to have a fourth child or maybe I just got it wrong and it is what it is.”
We love our Indie Rose. She’s only two and she’s the cutest thing. But then my sister who unfortunately hasn’t been able to break free quite the same way from our family. She’s struggled quite a bit with a lot of addiction issues, has been in and out of rehabs and mental health institutions, suffered a lot of pain and brokenness in her life. And she had this boy named Julian and it was her fourth child.
She had lost custody of her previous children. When she ended up back in rehab and back in the hospital, we had been prayerfully considering, “God, what would you have us do? Should we step in?” We had stepped in, in the past and it kind of been burned a little bit with my family. We didn’t want to overstep if that’s not where God was leading us.
In the back of my mind, I was wondering, “We’re supposed to have a son named Isaiah. Maybe we shouldn’t take him in, because we might still have another child and get pregnant again.” We were praying through it and then finally everything just came to a head. We’re feeling really called to step in here and get this boy.
The day that we made the decision, my mom sends me his birth certificate and his information because he’s going to fly on a plane to come to us. And I see that his middle name is Isaiah. I started bawling, because that’s not a very common middle name. It’s not something that my family, who’s not really Christian, or didn’t grow up in the church or anything, would come up with that name Biblically.
It was just God giving me this beautiful confirmation that he was the son that was promised. To do for him what God has done spiritually for me, rescuing me out of the darkness, adopting me into His family, to be able to do that for our son and really change the trajectory of his life has been such a beautiful picture of God’s redemption. We are so grateful and he’s really cute. He’s 14 months, he is walking and running and we decided to call him by Isaiah, a reminder of God’s promise to us. I love how God works. He never ceases to amaze me.
Gina:
That’s amazing. Wow, congratulations. Is the adoption going through right now?
Monika:
We’re working with attorneys to solidify everything, God willing. My sister, she’s been very cooperative and is really thankful that he’s in a good home and that he gets to grow up with siblings. God has been so faithful throughout the whole journey, he really completes our family in this really beautiful way.
Check out Monika Kirkland
Check the rest of this conversation The Journey of Slow Healing, Intimacy with God
Check out the Dwell Meditations
