Bad Lines

Do you have some bad lines?

I don’t mean cheesy pick-up lines or corny sayings…

I’m talking about false boundaries that keep you from living as you could, living as you should.

Quoting Seth Godin from his new book Poke the Box:

“My dog wears one of those Invisible Fence collars. There’s a wire around our small yard, and if she gets near it, her collar buzzes. If she goes a bit farther, she gets a small shock. (I think she’s been shocked exactly once.) The dog associates the buzz with the shock and never goes near the edge.

The thing is, the wire broke a year ago, so the system doesn’t work. But Woodie now associates the collar with the behavior, and leaves the yard only if we take the collar off.

The boundary is in her head, not in the system.”

So, back to my question—do you have some bad lines?

Do you have false boundaries that keep you from living as you could, living as you should?

Are you “playing old tapes” that reinforce your fears, insecurities, hurts and issues?

Maybe you’re like Woodie, Seth Godin’s dog.

Maybe the boundary is just in your head.

Maybe you have some bad lines.

Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, encouraging them to remove the bad lines:

“Dear Corinthians, I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!”
(2 Corinthians 6.11-13 MSG)

My paraphrase:

We’re not fencing you in or shocking you with a dog collar—the limits are just in your head. You’ve got some bad lines. Time to erase those lines and live big, live full… live as you could, live as you should.