Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway.
I am continuing to read the book Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend. The authors are Christian and use Bible scriptures to out line how Heavenly Father also encourages boundaries. Interesting perspective after the last book on Boundaries that didn't include God until the last chapter.
Truth decided is a boundary in itself. Once you decide what you believe to be the truth, you have set a boundary. In the book, the authors equated truth with integrity. If you have integrity, you don't cheat on an exam. My growing up years were fluid as to what truth was. The truth was whatever my mother said it was at that moment. To test our theory, my sister actually had mother contradicting herself within 5 minutes of each statement. If we ask about a past event, mother would deny it happening. If we called her on bad behavior, again she would lie. Sometimes she lied when she didn't need to. I was puzzled for quite a while as to how she could lie so convincingly. I came to conclusion that she believed her own lies. I kept stuff for years to prove that an event occurred. Opinion was often substituted for truth. KavinCoach took time to go through the many dictates I learned from my mother and sorted out which were fact and which were opinion. Opinion is not truth. I developed my own view of truth and wrote an essay to solidify my own belief system.
This is part of an essay that I wrote on this subject:
I do like the book’s emphasis that when we define our truth a lot of other things are decided. If you kick against truth, it is a bit like kicking a cactus, you get hurt. The first truth that every child must learn is that gravity works. The hardest thing I had to do was to step back and allow my children to learn this vital truth. Learned young, it will bless them their whole lives. I believe that sometimes Heavenly Father steps back to let us learn. We get hurt. Heavenly Father knows that there is a path to healing in His Son Jesus.
Each person has a foundation that they consider truth. Those truths influence decisions and actions throughout your life. Foundation principles are difficult to change. Determination and accepting new truths is possible with a lot of work. When I would try to change my mother's mind about some opinion, she would chirp back, "A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still." Used to really irritate me but there is a certain amount of truth in this saying.
PS I am not writing this with an effort to debate religious beliefs. Simply stating that a person will set up boundaries that aline with the principles of their belief system.
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