“Woohoo! I’m done!”  we proclaim after we finish the ACT or a really hard project at work or school.

There was a sense of satisfaction after we were done with Thankgiving dinner. Or maybe more accurately a sense of guilt after that one. 😂

 

Oh the joy of being done with my first book! Happy Anyway Devotional can be ordered at happyanyway.org and proceeds goes to missions! So you will be helping yourself while helping others, too. Love Anyway is almost finished and you can pre-purchase it now on the site and get a free chapter emailed to you for ordering! The free chapter just got done ✅ and will be emailed this week to all who pre-purchased Love ANYWAY so far! 🎉 • Mini commercial over • 

Some of you organized people are done with Christmas shopping while others of us have not even begun. 

We get done with grocery shopping, done with homework, done with potty training, done with a diet, done with decorating, done with dishes, done with our to-do list, done with laundry…well we may never get done with that! 

 

But what about when we get done with people? Have you ever been “done” with someone? But what about “turn the other cheek” and “love never fails” ? Yes to both of those for sure. We are to forgive over and over, 70 times 7 to be exact. And love truly does win EVERY time. 

Did you know you can forgive and love and leave a toxic relationship at the same time? Did you also know you can love and forgive and stay in a relationship at a healthy distance when needed with someone who is unwilling to be at peace with you? And you can be happy to boot!! Is it hard sometimes? Yeppers, for us all, indeed. We’ve all been there at one time or another. 

Watch this:

Romans 12:18 “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” 

 

I’m reminded of when I first started dating my husband, newly in right relationship with The Lord. Yes, he was and still is my knight in shining armor who rescued me from the life I was living. No idea where I would be without him. I literally had to be sort of done with all my partying friends in order to follow hard after God. It was hard for me but I had to save myself so that one day I could live my life in such a way to help many others. Do I even still miss some of those people? I actually do. I would love for our paths to cross again one day. I’ve prayed for many of them on several occasions. 

 

Do you have people in your life that drain you or are not helping to propel you in the direction of your goals? It is ok to limit those people’s access to your life. Being done with people sounds bad and I’m sure we have all at one point or another said those words about someone and later regretted them.  

So I think when it comes to being “done” with people, we have to understand that we truly are never “done”. I am the type of person who always am running to some imaginary finish line of getting my house in order, office in order and life in order as if I will be able to sit and sip lemonade with a sigh of relief. But I’m finally realizing there is this thing called maintenance and we really are not ever done until we are done-done like dead-done! So this realization applies to people as well. 

What we are craving when we are done with somebody are boundaries. And boundaries are healthy. We need boundaries called days off from all of our tasks so we can can take a break from all of the chasing and running and busy lives. We also sometimes need boundaries and breaks from people who drain us like our to-do lists do! And that’s ok. Boundaries may even create distance from toxic people for a season or permanently depending on the toxicity level. Boundaries may also give time for us to take a look within to see where we might be the problem. Take the time to go to God and He will show you your part to play in what has become a messy relationship. The good news is that when we guard our hearts, the very issues of life flow out of it. Sometimes guarding our hearts from offense and further hurt is exactly what is necessary so that love and joy and peace can flow out of us instead of offense and pain and criticism. It’s really the pain we are done with and as we go to God with our pain, His healing balm is like none other. He bore our pain so that we don’t have to! 

Sort of like with house work or bills or the office, we can be done for now in certain situations but then tomorrow is a new day and as long as we leave our hearts open to God, He will guide us in our relational affairs. His mercies are new every morning scripture says and sometimes a good night’s sleep can do wonders for our mercy, too! The key is to not live out of fear or hurt but to live with arms open wide to forgive while knowing that sometimes we need to throw our arms toward heaven and embrace more of Him which will give us strength to again open them back up to people as He leads us to. 

Just know this, when we make our aim to live at peace with everyone as much as is possible on our end and take the pressure off of us for reconciliation, we go free from the burden of it all. Reconciliation is a two way street and you are only in control of you. Let go of the outcome and let God work in you and in them. Watch God work a miracle in your situation trusting that it may not look the way you want it to but you can be happy ANYWAY!

Happy Monday!