How to Find Your Boundaries #1 | Girl Pursuing God
This series is a guide on allowing God to re-define your identity in Christ. Part 1 explains why boundaries are an essential part of this.
Rewind to about 5 years ago; I was obsessed with the show Gossip Girl (honestly still am) and my #1 goal in life was to be like Serena Van Der Woodsen.
Free, effortlessly charming. The definition of “lucky girl,” of “I don’t chase, I attract.”
After all, isn’t America a free country? Aren’t we all free to say what we want and do what we want? Everyone has a right to pursue their dreams.
I still believe that. I really do. But it comes from a very different place now.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past 5 years, it’s that many of the things that I thought would bring me freedom just chained me down even more.
When I got a job that felt brag-worthy, I became chained to that job.
When I had the freedom to go wherever I wanted to, I became chained to making that place worthwhile.
When I had the freedom to hang out with whoever I wanted to, I became chained to trying to find people who understood me.
I crashed into my own limitations and was plagued by cognitive dissonance. Why wasn’t I who I thought I was and who other people saw me to be? What did I have to do to get there?
The more freedom, the more imprisonment. It was quite interesting, actually.
That was until I realized that there’s only so much we can take.
And these constraints can actually be liberating.
This series is a guide on allowing God to re-define your identity in Christ. It’s based on my personal (and current) experience after experiencing a complete change in my job, the place I was living, and the life I thought I wanted. 23 may be a very young age to make such a statement, but I truly believe that my unique experience as a “third culture kid” has taught me this.
Personally, as someone’s whose lived with half her life split across 2 polar opposite countries (the U.S. and South Korea), I’ve struggled with the question “who are you.”
I knew who I WANTED to be. But I didn’t really know myself.
But that was OK, because social media and the American Dream said anything was possible.
You just had to optimize. Wake up at 5 am, do your hot girl morning routine, exercise more and eat less, manifest, visualize, put yourself out there, try new things, and everything would be OK. You could become invincible.
So, I did all those things. But still, there was a lingering feeling of emptiness.
If you are struggling with something similar and actually want to change, here are a few chains of logic that I want you to consider:
Point #1: So many of us say we don’t really know ourselves.
What does that mean?
That means that not all of who we are comes from choice. There are parts of us, waiting to be discovered.
Point #2: Boundaries define us.
What does that mean?
That means we are quite literally defined by how much we can take.
Therefore, oftentimes the answer to finding ourselves and finding fulfillment is LESS, not MORE. Circling back to the first 3 sentences of this article:
It can be really, really hard to figure out what you want in life.
Personally, for me, I’ve found out that there are constraints.
And that constraints can actually be liberating.
In Girl Pursuing God #2, I’ll be talking about how I’m figuring out what those constraints are.
See you soon.
-Kristen
