The Wall and the Boundary

"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." (Proverbs 4:23)

After you have been wounded enough times, something in you starts building. It is not a decision. No one sits down one afternoon and resolves to stop loving people. It happens quietly, in a hundred small places, and it feels like maturity. You do not go quite as deep in the conversation. You do not ask the second question. You hold something back at the funeral. You stop learning names. Every one of those is defensible, every one understandable, and a person who has been badly hurt is not a coward for flinching.

But there is a difference between a wall and a boundary. A boundary says, this far, so that I can keep coming back. A wall says, never again, and it does not care what it costs. The boundary exists to protect the love so it can continue. The wall exists to end the exposure, and it ends the love along with it.

The wall will keep you from being hurt. It will also keep you from being reached. And you will not notice which one is happening until years have gone by and you realize you have not been moved by anything in a long time. That is not peace. That is scar tissue where a heart used to be. So guard your heart, yes, exactly as the proverb says, but know the difference between guarding it and burying it. Build boundaries that let you keep loving. Tear down the wall that only lets you survive.