The Moveable Gate

The Moveable Gate

Emma is  a fluffy, white, papillon cross maltese dog.She is soft and gentle, loving and kind and she lives comfortably inside our house. She has her very favourite places to sleep. She enjoys napping contentedly on any of our cosy floral lounge chairs, raising her head occasionally to bark at some sound in the distance, before lowering it again and continuing to sleep. Her most enjoyable place to doze peacefully, is on my bed. She loves to lie with her head on her paws, across the bed, gazing contentedly through the large floor to ceiling window, at the world going by outside. She trots cheerfully between her most beloved places to slumber, interspersing her naps with loyally following me around the house as I work. Each evening she squeezes into the small gap on the recliner between myself and the chair, in utter perfect bliss, as we all spend the evening together. Then comes the highlight of her day as she gets to snuggle closely with me on my warm, comfy bed, as I am restfully reading. Finally, Emma ends each day with a downcast dejected and most miserable look, as my husband takes her to the laundry, to sleep on her colourful doggy blanket for the night.

Then came the day when her routine was dramatically impacted. It was time to repaint the bedroom, replace the wallpaper border and freshen the entire room up with new bedding and lovely bedside lamps. Over a week or more, I worked diligently, painting the ceiling in cream, cleaning down the walls, applying the first coat of candy pink paint and then the second. The feature wall had two different colours, the blush of pink was separated from a baby blue, with a colourful wall paper border of bright butterflies. Our ceiling fan was replaced with a new working one, faded curtains were removed and fresh new ones were bought excitedly and hung. Bedside lamps in fuchsia cast a haze of pink around the room. A beautiful new quilt cover tied the colours of the room all together perfectly.The cover  was snow white with bright splashes of colourful flowers in hot pink, blue, yellow and orange, with a dash of brilliant green leaves. I love pink, and thankfully my husband does too,  and the pretty warmth of it’s colour echoed around the room, bring me much delight. However, looking down at Emma filled me with dismay. I did not want her sleeping through the day on my beautiful new bedding. We could give her a special doggy blanket at night but during the day we longed to enjoy the quilt cover, dogless.

We decided on a plan of action to retrain Emma’s sleeping arrangements. We pulled an old wooden baby gate out of the shed and secured it to the doorway of our bedroom. Every day, every hour of every day, and moment by moment, Emma paddled wearily up the hallway and stood there staring in abject misery at the gate. Surely that gate had to disappear. It could not remain there, or so she thought. After a week of wearing the carpet thinner, Emma settled to checking on the gate’s presence only several times a day, until finally she accepted the new situation. The new habit was established. My husband and I had been stepping over this gate, swinging our legs up and over as we came and went. I had managed to bruise myself on the door frame and Michael had walked into the gate in the dark. It was time to take the gate down. Within moments of removing the baby gate, Emma was happily ensconced on the bed once more, this time with a look of guilt at being caught. This wasn’t going to work. Plan B was rolled out into action.Now we just leaned the baby gate against the door frame instead. We could easily remove it whenever we wanted to walk in or out. Now that Emma understood that this barrier was not permanent and could be shifted, her vigilance increased as she waited for that moment of neglect when the gate would be forgotten by me. Today, months later she still paces up and down the hallway, looking hopefully at that barricade. She can still be caught sneaking cunningly into my room at any given opportunity. The seemingly indecisive boundary allows my dog to live with the thought that this really isn’t a boundary. 

Just as we placed a boundary with our dog, so too God places boundaries in our lives and He asks us to reflect His image of love and put boundaries in place with others. Are we decisively kind and respectfully open in our communication with others when we need to say no, or we need to place limits on another? Do we seek to please others so much, fearing their rejection or displeasure that we become  enablers, with boundaries that are moveable, opening the way for the other  person to be controlling, thoughtless or disrespectful towards us? Boundaries produce healthy relationships. They clearly define who I am and who the other person is and how that relationship is to function. Healthy boundaries allow trust and security to develop in a relationship. God calls me to love others how He has loved me. Will I do that? Will I allow Him to work in me to step out of people pleasing and step into loving and truthful communication? Will you?

John 13:34  “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

Matt 5:37 “But let your communication be, Yes, yes; No, no”

Eph 4: 25 “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.”

Eph 4:15 speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ