How Your Boundaries Can Lead to Blessings with Sara Hagerty Episode 307

How Your Boundaries Can Lead to Blessings

I am so happy you are here. In our “Living Well” series, we are talking about all aspects of living well and staying emotionally and spiritually healthy, no matter what craziness the world serves up. 

Today, Sarah Hagerty is joining us to share about the unexpected gift of limitations. Now you know me, Enneagram seven, more is always better. But I feel this topic, the gift of our limitations, so deeply because it’s how God develops us so often. And how He points us to where He wants us to focus in life. Sarah is absolutely brilliant, and you are going to love her.

Sara Hagerty is a bestselling author and Jesus follower. She has written four books, including her most recent release, The Gift of Limitations: Finding Beauty in Your Boundaries.

As a writer, speaker, and mother of seven, Sara Hagerty knows what limitations feel like. Yet she has also seen how the boundaries of our life circumstances can bring about growth and satisfaction we’d never experience otherwise.

Alright, let’s get started! 

How Our Limitations Can Be Blessings

I asked Sarah to share some examples of stories that either she used in her book or women that she’s talked to with their limitations and what God’s teaching them based on the limitations that God’s allowed them to have. And Sarah provided her own example of infertility. She shares that there was a stretch of watching her friends have their babies for their second and third birthdays, and she was still waiting. We feel an acute ache when we watch others experience what we can’t have. And nowadays, it’s exacerbated with social media. 

In her 40s, she had a surprise pregnancy. And so she started thinking, “I’m watching my peers launch their kids, and I’m launching mine, and I’m also bringing a baby along. How am I going to do this?” But we all have our limitations; we wake up with them, even if not everyone posts them online. 

Identifying and Grieving Our Limitations

We have to identify our limitations and grieve them properly for our well-being. Sarah says we often don’t name our limitations. So there’s an ache underneath our limits that needs to be grieved with God, but we live at such a surface level that we don’t name our limits, so we can’t grieve them. This causes the limits to have a secret power over us, where we are resentful and grumpy and constantly trying to hurdle this fence line that God has given us because we’ve never really named the limit; we just keep working against it.

How to Surrender to Our Limitations in a Healthy Way

Sarah says that as Christians, she feels like we skip steps. But we have to surrender, and it’s something she says she preaches to herself multiple times. When she looks back on her life, the places where she has surrendered have been the process of naming her limitations, grieving them, and bringing them to God. And then letting Him sit with her in them. What a word. 

She shares that when she was going through the surprise pregnancy, she lived in Psalm 23; she said, “I felt like it was the valley of the shadow of death, not that the pregnancy was the valley of the shadow of death, but we were also in some pretty intense parenting.” And so she allowed herself to grieve, and grieving her limitations made her move during that season. 

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Favorite quotes: 

“Comparison puts us constantly noticing our limitations against someone else who doesn’t have them.”

(7:10 Audio) 

“There are all different flavors that women experience, but the reality is every day we wake up to our limitations.”

(8:39 Audio) 

“We often don’t actually name our limitations, so there is an ache underneath our limits that needs to be grieved with God. But we live at such a surface level where we don’t name our limits, so we can’t grieve them. “

(11:03 Audio) 

“There is something significant about noticing ourselves because then we can actually have something we can bring to God.”

(14:11 Audio)

“The “sigh of life” is surrender and a sigh that comes after the grief of our limitations.”

(23:29 Audio)

Coaching this week: 

How to Deal with Toxic People   (29:21 Audio)

Remember, sometimes people are toxic for us, but that doesn’t mean they are bad people. We are going to run across people who kind of stand in the way of God’s calling for us. People who mean harm to us harm, people who are not good for us, who are abusive. However, we need a game plan when we run across these people. 

Here’s how to deal with toxic people; think about these three things when interacting with toxic people. Keep interactions:

1. Short
2. Upbeat 
3. and Surface-level. 

When you think about a short interaction, don’t allow them to suck up all your time, emotional or mental energy. You want to avoid drama with them; you want brief interaction that will cut down the chances for conflict. What this does is that it will limit the negative influence they have in your life. The less exposure to you means the less impact on your mood and your outlook. 

Second, keep your interaction with them upbeat. Stay positive so you don’t give them any place where they can perceive that they can attack you. Perceived weakness is where toxic people go in for the kill. This way, you control what you can, right, you can control your attitude and your reactions. It will keep you strong and not let their negativity bring you down. When you keep things positive, think of it as using your positivity as a shield. 

The third way is keeping interactions surface-level when dealing with them because this will protect your heart and mind. This is another shield against their negativity; it will help you stay peaceful and safe. Don’t get into deep conversations with people who are toxic for you. 

Remember, people who are toxic for you are not a project for you to change. 

Links to great things we discussed: 

• Sara Hagerty Website
• Sara Hagerty  Instagram
• The Gift of Limitations
• Hereos – Ben Rector
• A Hidden Life
• Toups & Co. Organics Tallow Balm – Vanilla + Almond
• Bigelow Perfect Peach
• Belif Moisturizing Eye Bomb
• Alli on YouTube
• Called Creatives
• Remaining You While Raising Them

Order your copy of Remaining You While Raising Them here.

Hope you loved this episode!  Be sure to subscribe in iTunes and slap some stars on a review! 🙂

xo,

Alli