Drawing the Line by Kate Crocco

Scripture: Psalms 16:5-11

God’s Pleasant Boundary Lines

Does this sound familiar to you? You live life going through the motions but aren’t exactly sure why you’re doing what you’re doing or how you got there. You are tired and overcommitted. You care deeply about what others think of you, and you’ve neglected yourself to make them happy. You’re not even sure what you want out of life anymore. All that’s clear is that you could use a nice nap or a weekend away, not with those you love most but by yourself. You desperately want to throw the phone across the room and never hear a notification again, yet you sit on the couch craving connection at night. You wonder if anyone else feels this way. 

This is what I call being out of alignment. I know what it feels like because I’ve been there. Oh, how you wish life could be simple, and you could leisurely read, organize your home, sit and laugh with your hubby, and collect lightning bugs outside with your kiddos without feeling the pull to refresh your screen just once more to make sure no emails have gone unnoticed. 

What if I told you that it’s possible? That you can begin living a life of peace, simplicity, freedom, and abundance. Free from the pressure of missing the mark, passing over opportunity, or the dreaded FOMO. 

It all begins by drawing the line—setting boundaries and limits in every part of your life. Allowing anything to cross those boundary lines will inhibit you from living the life God has available for you, a life of holy fulfillment. 

I find Psalm 16:5-11 to be one of the most freeing and helpful Scriptures for living within our God-given boundaries: “The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places” (verse 6). 

When we live within God’s boundaries for our thoughts, schedules, possessions, relationships, and dreams, we find ourselves ready to trust in God’s great provision—and we find a fullness of joy that is even more than we can fathom. 

Take a few moments to sit and meditate on Psalm 16:5-11. Close your eyes and slowly breathe in. Envision how different your day-to-day would be if you infused this passage into your future steps.

Scriptures: Jeremiah 29:11, Proverbs 16:9, John 16:33

A Future and a Hope

When I hear the word alignment, some things that come to mind for me are being more patient with myself, playing princesses with my girls free from the pressure of needing to be productive, speaking truth to those I love without sugarcoating anything, saying no way more than saying yes, having margin in my schedule to sit and read a book with a hot cup of tea while petting my dog, being open to conversation with a stranger after yoga class, having time to write and mail a handwritten letter, not checking the time every twenty minutes, and the best of all, starting my day in the Word with Jesus. 

Alignment for you today may look more adventurous. No one way or another is wrong, and alignment will shift for each of us with the shifting of life’s seasons. But we all desire to have what alignment ultimately delivers, which is greater peace, fulfillment, and intentionality. 

You will know you are in alignment when, even if life is hard or devastating, your hope in Jesus is not shaken. You may want to throw in the towel and doubt his plan, but you know that you will be okay in time, and even if you’re not okay yet, he is still working. 

Write this verse where you can see it every day this week, as you think about living a life aligned with God’s boundaries for you: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’” (Jeremiah 29:11, NIV). 

It’s hard to feel like you’re giving up on a dream. But do you know what’s even harder? Waking up one day and realizing that the job or relationship or ministry you’ve been trying to make work for years is out of alignment with God’s pleasant boundaries for you—and that life would have been a lot easier if you had trusted that God’s plan is always better than yours because his plan has hope and a future. 

Is there something in your life—big or small—that you have been forcing to make work lately? In what ways might you be out of alignment with God’s calling to you in this area?

Scriptures: Isaiah 55:8-9, Psalms 37:3-4

Releasing the Chains

The year 2020 was when everything I had not just asked but begged God for was now in my hands. I had high hopes for all I would accomplish in my writing and coaching career. My two girls were entering full-time daycare, and I was getting ready to launch my first book. I was going to be unstoppable. 

So when a mysterious virus called COVID-19 hit our country, and our city of New York went on lockdown, instead of experiencing what I thought would be my big break, I laid down my career to become the 2020 version of June Cleaver. 

Let’s say I didn’t take this gracefully—my pride was hurting big-time. And what does pride do? Pride eggs us on to kick, scream, and hold on tightly to things that are no longer aligned with our life vision until we can’t hold on any longer. 

I am sure that God will always give us what we need, not necessarily what we want. I love Isaiah 55:8–9: “My plans aren’t your plans, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my plans than your plans” (CEB). 

Being locked inside, left to face myself, my feelings, and my family, I began to see God soften my heart and call me to quit chasing all I had wanted. I felt him calling me to be the opposite of what I had prayed for. 

I realized I was no longer living in alignment—a life of provision, an unshakable faith, security in his plan, fullness, joy, and peace. I needed to release my pride, quit the inflexible thinking, and begin leaning into him again. And so, the journey of getting back into alignment began. 

As I was learning, to fully live out God’s promise, we have to set pride aside, live with open hands, and realize that his plan is always better than what we had in mind. 

What dream are you holding on to today that you sense God is trying to tell you to release? What would it look like to tune in to God’s still and steady voice, release the chains holding you captive, and surrender to him?

Scriptures: Psalms 90:12, Luke 10:30-37

Room for Beauty

In Luke 10, Jesus tells the story of a man lying on the side of a road. A priest and a Levite passed by this man in need at separate times. Rather than stopping to help him, they intentionally ignored him, walked to the other side of the road, and continued on their journeys, so fixated on their destinations. 

This story always stings a bit because, like the priest, the Levite, and potentially others who most likely walked right by this man, I can get so fixated on my mission that I don’t allow any margin for magic. Am I the only one? Can you relate? 

Rather than turning your computer off to take a ten-minute walk around the block with your husband or a neighborhood friend, you say, “Maybe tomorrow.” Or rather than having a spontaneous coffee date with the bestie you haven’t seen in months, you feel pulled to go home and follow through with your plan to finally deep clean the kitchen. 

We pack our lives with so much, leaving very little room for the magic of life. But have you ever been courageous and paused or pushed off what you had hoped to accomplish to relish in the beauty of life with someone you love? Was it worth it, or did you regret it after? 

Here’s the truth. When it’s someone important to you, you most likely will not regret it. Or when you know that pausing your plans to do a good deed made a difference in someone else’s life, maybe even the life of a perfect stranger, you probably won’t regret it either. If anything, you might receive a sense of satisfaction witnessing the little negative impact that time spent on what needed to get done. Each time, I am truly amazed at how easily I can shift things or how what I thought was necessary was really unnecessary. 

When we allow flexibility in our schedules and with those around us, we can welcome in new freedom and a level of fulfillment we never knew existed. 

When have you recently said no to being present with someone because you were focused on a task? What is one thing you could do to create more margin in your life, so you have room for greater spontaneity to be with others?

Scriptures: Matthew 6:21, Colossians 3:2

Clearing the Clutter

One practical way to make sure you are aligned with God’s dreams is to take a consistent inventory of relationships, habits, or possessions no longer serving you. If you can immediately get rid of them, do it! Implementing this simple skill of clearing the clutter in your life each day allows blessing, goodness, and peace to have the space to enter in. 

Try this instead if you aren’t quite sure if it’s time to part ways with something. Commit to a fast. Fasting can be used for anything keeping you from living fully and intentionally. 

For example, after becoming quite obsessed with checking the news, publications, opinion accounts, and social media during the monumental year of a pandemic and extreme social and political unrest, I realized how life-sucking it was. In some ways, checking and educating myself, having the facts, and being able to formulate my take on things gave me peace, but they also led to an obsession of wanting to be up-to-date and on top of it all. 

I tried cutting back my news consumption each day, but it wasn’t quite enough. So I completely cut the news out of my life for thirty days. Whenever I was tempted to check the news, I filled my life with God’s Word or connected with a loved one. After a few days, I felt convicted to lay down more and decided to add ten more days. 

After forty days news free, during an election, I can honestly say my life felt so much richer, less on edge, and more in control than ever before. It was one of the best things I did that year, and by getting a taste of what life could be like sans distractors, I now automatically guard my mind when it comes to what I put in it (see Colossians 3:2). 

Remove all the physical, emotional, and relational clutter that has been weighing you down so that you can begin feeling lighter in your day-to-day, more intentional with the things and people you care most about, and, most importantly, filled up yourself. 

In Matthew 6:21, Jesus tells us that our heart will be where our treasure is. What does the “clutter” in your home, mind, or spirit right now say about what you treasure?

Scriptures: Psalms 56:9, Ecclesiastes 3:1, Romans 8:28

Desert Seasons

What about those desert seasons, when we’re waiting to hear God’s call more clearly or start in on what we believe he wants us to do? 

First, practice acceptance. Accept that life might not feel ideal today but that every moment leads you to your ultimate destiny. In seasons of waiting, God recharges us, allowing us to rest up and get ready to run our race, which will appear when his time is right. 

Second, embrace the desert, get quiet, lean in, listen for what the Lord is trying to reveal, observe deeper, and rest because the floodgates are about to open. This desert season will give you strength for the race to come. 

Third, release the outcome. When we bet on ourselves and take bold calculated risks, we fall flat on our faces. In those instances, you need to remember that God has brought you through to show you something better. His ways are always better than ours, and he brings us through lost opportunities to show us what is available for us. 

I know it’s not always easy to see, but what looks like seasons of stagnation are also seasons of growth. What looks like seasons of heartache are also seasons of redirection. What looks like seasons of pain are also God stripping away pride from your life. And what feels like seasons of hit after hit can also be seasons of great joy. We must eliminate black-and-white thinking with either/or and welcome the word and into our vocabulary. 

At times when it felt I was the only one believing in my dreams, it gave me peace to remember the words from Psalm 56:9: “God is for me.” I reminded myself, It may seem like no one else is for me, and it doesn’t matter because God and I are for me.

Acceptance and trust go hand in hand. Once we can accept that God’s will is always best, we can trust that when the times feel hard, “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28, NIV). Things will always work out, and when they haven’t, remember that he’s just not finished yet. 

Do you believe that God is for you? What does that mean to you today?

Scriptures: Luke 1:37, 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

Tostartull Alignment, Fulfilled Life

In order to step into this promise that is available for us, we need to be crystal clear on what our goals, desires, and dreams are by tuning in to God’s voice. And the only way we can begin hearing from God is by silencing the noise. 

We need to slow down and begin releasing the things that no longer serve us and may even be toxic. We need to begin doing more of what fills our cup rather than pouring from our empty pitchers. We need to state and claim what we feel God has placed on our hearts, no matter how out of reach or impossible the dream may feel. We need to begin praying audacious prayers and believing for God-sized abundance in all areas of our lives, not because we deserve it but because it has already been written, even before our birth. 

And once we become so confident that God has indeed called us to live not just a mediocre, check-off-my-to-do-list life but a fulfilled kind of life, we will begin stepping into a place of complete alignment. 

Our God is a big God! He gives us the strength to pull through the unimaginable. We cannot do it through our strength but his, knowing that his strength is made perfect in our weaknesses (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). 

Remember, we always have a choice. We can choose for life to feel hard by resisting the current, or we can choose alignment by cultivating humility and surrendering, and allowing God to swoop in and take over. The sooner we can grasp that we have a choice and release control of outcomes, the sooner we can begin living the life He designed for us—a life of freedom, fulfillment, and peace. 

God wouldn’t put a calling on your heart if he didn’t believe you could live it out. If it’s there, it means it’s possible. You don’t need anyone else’s permission or belief in your dream. Go and bet on yourself! 

Lord, give me the confidence to know I am already strong, courageous, resilient, and wise. Could you help me to see myself as you see me? Please help me to dream big dreams. Give me discernment to know when and where to draw my boundary lines. And help me get back up when I fall. In Jesus’s name, amen.