I just read a Facebook post which is the inspiration for today’s blog. My friend, Pastor Vanessa Brown, wrote about “radical inclusivity,” which is a term I believe that Bishop Yvette Flunder coined to describe the love of God as inclusive of everyone. The sentences that, sort of, jumped off the screen and got in my face were these: “I am realizing everyday that being radically inclusive is not just something that is easy to walk in or do . . . Every time you think you’ve mastered radical inclusivity, something else comes along to challenge you in that love.”

She’s strumming my pain with her fingers; singing my life with her words! I am currently in one of the greatest emotional and spiritual struggles I’ve been through in a long time, as my ability to love everyone and to see everyone as a beloved child of God is being sorely tested. It is so hard to view people who mistreat us as beloved children of God. I own that it is, for me, and I have heard lots of folks say it is for them, too. We want God to be on our side. We want God to see how right and mistreated we are, and how wrong the other person clearly is. It just gets under our skin to think that they are walking around, living their lives, enjoying their food, probably even smiling and laughing! How dare they - when their inexcusable behavior toward us has reduced us to an angry and/or hurt and/or obsessive walking, talking, mass of misery?! How dare they be okay? How dare God let them be okay? What kind of God can love them?

I heard a “new” phrase today - as in, new to me - that I just love; so I’m going to throw it out here in case it might help someone else - “warm detachment.” I think I’m going to grow more and more in love with this concept.

Before I explain it, let me share how I came to be introduced to it. Over the last few months, the biggest, heaviest, most nearly unbearable stressors in my life have been situations that I had absolutely nothing to do with creating and about which I can do absolutely nothing. Sound familiar? In the interest of preserving close personal relationships that I value, I will not going into detail, here. Let’s just say that the subject of this blog is setting and maintaining solid emotional boundaries as a form of self-care. And the take-away thought is: Do it.