By Lisa Wise Shumway
Lisa is a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints raised in Wyoming. Lisa served her mission in New Mexico and Texas, and married a return missionary in the Logan temple. The Shumways raised their children in northern Nevada. A stay at home mom for 26 years, Lisa became a graduate student in Human Development and Counseling at Walsh University online fall 2023. Three of the Shumway’s five adult children have serious medical, mental health, and/or developmental problems. Both of Lisa’s parents are retired counselors. These experiences have contributed to Lisa’s passion for theology that positively supports mental health. She is deeply committed to following Jesus Christ in including and caring for people who are often marginalized by society. The following piece was adapted from the notes of a talk given by Lisa in her ward in December 2022.
All this fall I have been teaching my sons to drive. My fourth child got his license and I have turned my attention to teaching my youngest. My third son who has been sick for a long time, is feeling better these days and has also been practicing his driving. So almost everywhere I go I am in driving teaching mode saying “Stay in your own lane” over and over.
My parents, who are both trained in counseling, trained me in determining what lane is mine emotionally. When I would complain about something my little sister had done my mother would ask, “Whose problem is that?”
I knew enough by then to know the answer she wanted to hear was “mine,” because it bothered me and that made it my problem. She would say, “How will she know if you don’t tell her? She can’t read your mind.”
She would say “Don’t be a martyr, don’t resent her.” To her, resenting others without telling them why is sinful. She taught me to own my concerns, and share them directly, or to let them go. If it can’t be easily let go, then I was taught to communicate my concern, letting the other person share my problem.
Because of this background, my ears really perked up at Elder Renlund’s talk in the October 2022 general conference entitled “A Framework for Personal Revelation”. When Elder Renlund discussed the importance of individual airplanes landing in their assigned lanes I immediately appreciated the concept. Just like one of my sons swerving into another lane, this can cause an accident. Staying in your own lane can prevent emotional and spiritual injury as well.
The word used in counseling to refer to this topic is boundaries. This term is commonly misused, but it refers to knowing what is your problem that you need to address, vs what is not your problem that you need to let go of. Once you are focused on this topic it can be seen over and over in the scriptures. It’s helpful in managing not only personal revelation, but service and many other interactions with other people. It has been deeply helpful in my life.
If you are interested in pursuing the topic of boundaries of personal revelation vs general counsel, President Oaks addressed this topic in his 2005 talk “The Dedication of a Lifetime” where he describes personal exceptions to general counsel and tells us not to write him letters about it. He says personal revelation for our personal lives is our problem, not his.
This time of year we work particularly hard to serve others and connect with family. In these contexts sometimes it can be challenging to discern what is our problem to handle and what we need to let go of, letting the problem belong to another person or to God. This is a great anxiety reducer: we don’t have to feel responsible for problems that are not our own.
In Jesus’ sermon on the mount Matthew 7:1, he says “Judge not that ye be not judged.” Matthew 7:3,4 tells us why it’s God’s job to judge and not ours. “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest thou not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye and behold, a beam is in thine own eye?”
We each have a limited perspective. For example, imagine that the sister there in the middle of the chapel holds a volleyball up in the air briefly and then brings it back down. On the back of the volleyball, facing the back of the chapel, is an X in duct tape. If we asked each member what they saw, what would they say? The missionaries sitting at the back would have seen the duct tape X. But these families to the right and to the left, likely would not see the X. The bishopric meanwhile has no chance of seeing the X. If asked, people would say different things about what they saw. But does that mean some of them are wrong or lying? No, it means different things can be seen from different points of view. They are all correct, from their vantage point, and incomplete. There is so much that we cannot see. It’s important that we humbly admit we often don’t have the information we need for good judgment.
My favorite scripture on boundaries in service is Mosiah 18:9 where we are instructed that as baptized members of the church we need to be “…willing to mourn with those who mourn and comfort those who stand in need of comfort.”
Here there are also two lanes. Lane one is the person that is in need of comfort. Their job is to determine their own needs and ask for the help that they need. They alone are responsible for this. Only the person in need has the full information to be able to see the problem in it’s full context. Lane two is for the person who is willing to help. They do not determine whether another person should mourn, or what their needs for comfort are. But does that leave us stuck doing whatever someone asks for? It does not. We can be willing to mourn and comfort, but there is so much mourning going on in this world, we have to pick and choose where our obligations are and what we have the time and resources to give. Maybe we choose not to serve because we don’t have it to give, but we drive in the wrong lane if we pretend we know someone else doesn’t really need help, even though they asked for it.
Mosiah 4:16-27 beautifully lays this out. “…ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need; and ye will not suffer that the begger putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish. Perhaps thou shall say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just. But I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this hath great cause to repent; and except he repenteth of that which he hath done he perisheth forever, and hath no interest in the kingdom of God.” Verse 24 lays out the circumstances we may say no to the beggar. They have to do with our own problems and circumstances, not our judgment of the beggar’s circumstances. Verse 27 reminds us not to run faster than we have strength, and to care for our own needs. I love this chapter in Mosiah.
I have some personal experiences to share in connection with this topic. It can be hard to be the person asking for help. I have been in this position before. Years ago my youngest child was having treatment on his rocker bottom foot in Sacramento. I was struggling to travel back and forth with his four older siblings every couple weeks for these treatments. We had stayed in the Ronald McDonald House in Reno for some of my child’s surgeries in the past. I asked the Ronald McDonald House in Sacramento if we could stay there on one of our trips. It was really hard for me to ask for this help. The young woman who answered the phone was just doing her job. Still, after I called and she said no, they didn’t have any openings, I burst into tears. It hurt for me to have to ask and it hurt for me to be turned down even though we both had done the right thing in this situation.
When our youngest son was a baby and toddler, he had multiple surgeries each year. We coped with this by leaving our older four children with a good friend during the surgeries. We would wait in the lobby as instructed for the doctor to come out and tell us if our son had survived the surgery (this sounds dramatic, but yes, this is what I am wondering while I wait). If you miss that moment when the doctor comes to talk with you, it can be very difficult to get the full information about the surgery at another time. It was a tense and difficult time of waiting, and we deeply appreciated our friend’s help. Our children were young and disruptive. The hospital lobby full of family members quietly and tensely waiting to hear back from the doctor about their own loved one in surgery, was an inappropriate place for noisy children. My husband and I needed each other’s support. When the surgery was over and our son could benefit by being cheered up from visits from his siblings, my friend would bring our other children up and we would stay in the Ronald McDonald house.
After my friend moved to another state, I asked my visiting teacher, who had kids roughly the same age as my children, if she could watch my kids during the surgery and then bring them up to meet us. She sent me a long email telling me how I could watch my own kids during the surgery in the hospital lobby. Of course she had no knowledge of what it’s like to wait for the doctor to arrive any minute. Later I learned that she didn’t have a car that would accommodate our children to drive them to the hospital. I wish she would have stayed in her own lane. She didn’t know about our situation and it might have been good if she had humbly acknowledged that instead of telling us what she thought we should be doing. She could have kindly let me know it was her own situation that prevented her from helping instead of telling me I didn’t need help. We found another way to manage the situation with other people who were willing to help.
Today, I have people that ask for my help. In fact, I have an elderly sister I minister to that doesn’t have a car. She is frequently asking me to drive her to the doctor or grocery store or post office. She genuinely needs the help she is asking for. However, I cannot help her each time she asks. When in my judgment I do not have the resources to help, I have to say no. It remains her job to determine what her needs are, and how she will meet them, with whatever other resources she may have.
I encourage each of you to prayerfully ask God’s help to determine what is in your lane, and what is not. We only get to choose what we do. We don’t get to choose how other people respond to our choices. They are responsible for that. If they respond in a negative way, it doesn’t mean we chose wrongly. These concepts can bring great peace into your life.
Please share with me your own experiences with boundaries.
Wheat & Tares 
So wise. And yes, this is a different way of thinking about boundaries. I really struggle with the non-judgmental part, especially when it comes to the behavior of what I perceive as judgmental family and friends (the irony is not lost on me). Our faith tradition, in my opinion, frequently encourages us to leave our own lanes in judgment of others. It’s one of the things I like least about it. It has taken the better part of my adult life so far to imperfectly take Elder Uchtdorf’s advice and Stop It. And yet, when I see others doing it, I judge them harshly. Engaging these folks, however kindly I try, often does more harm than good, so I am left with the reputation as the mostly harmless ward liberal with the quirky opinions, who won’t hesitate to raise her hand with a comment in favor of compassion, forbearance, or non-judgement but secretly thinks at least half the people I go to church with are the most unchristian bunch of Fox News-loving homophobic morons I’ve ever had the misfortune of knowing.
I still have a lot of work to do on myself.
The Mosiah passage is a crib from Romans 12:15
Maybe, since there are so few comments, I should get a conversation going on how the church teaches bad boundaries as normal, or righteous.
Let’s start with the idea of “never say no to a calling.” That is teaching you that your feelings and needs don’t matter, only what the church wants is important. To drop into “therapy talk” that is teaching enmeshment with the church. The church gets to say no to you, but you don’t get to say no to the church.
Another example, the executive secretary calls you and says the bishop would like to meet with you. You don’t have the right to ask to know what it is about, you just have to report to the bishop as instructed with no idea if some sin has caught up with you, he was offended by your Facebook post about his ugly tie, or if you are being offered a calling, released from a calling, or your tithing check bounced. In any other life situation you would not be expected to go into an interview totally blind. So, you ask what the meeting is about and the exec. sec. lies to you and says he doesn’t know, but you are expected to just show up at the designated time. The church has this policy of disrespecting any boundary you try to set, and just expects you to do as you are told.
And what about youth interviews? Plenty has been written about the inappropriate worthiness interviews where an 8 year old is asked questions about sex they don’t even understand. “Law of chastity?” By definition, a child cannot violate that law. Anything that happens to a child sexually is abuse, by definition. Or if between children of the same age and with consent, it is innocent exploration of the children’s bodies and not sexual at all, but children with questions about their bodies. The same with a 12 year old. By definition, they cannot violate the law of chastity because legally, they cannot consent.
Even considering the whole “confession” obsession the church has, it should always, always be the “sinner” seeking to confess, never the church authority looking for confession. Anything except waiting for a voluntary confession is a gross violation of boundaries.
Tithing settlement, same thing. It is the church authority seeking the settlement, not the giver checking to make sure all his donations were received. That is a violation of the giver’s right to maintain an appropriate boundary, of voluntary donations, given by free will, and not as if the church member is paying a bill owed to the church. Giving to a church should be on the giver’s terms, not the church’s terms, and see how the church has switched it around so, instead of giving, the member is paying what is owed to the church. We even twist scripture to make it sound like the member “owes” money to God. “Would a man rob God?” That wasn’t talking about the member failing to give, but priests who used the money for themselves instead f giving it to the poor. But we use it to tell members that failing to pay is robbing God, instead of the priests selfishly hoarding the money in a huge investment firm being what is robbing God.
Somebody else’s turn. How does the church set up people for poor boundaries, or how does it violate your boundaries, or even, is there anything the church does really well for people’s individual boundaries.
Comment
My goal for 2024 is to live life intentionally. I turn 50 this year and regret to say that for most of my life I’ve let others – not necessarily decide for me – but to let them influence me more than I would have liked or that I didn’t try very hard to figure out what’s best for me. As my therapist would say, I desired external validation.
I suppose that’s another way of saying that I didn’t set my own boundaries well. People who I love dearly, and who genuinely want the best for me, gave me bad information (love you mom, dad, grandparents, and childhood church leaders). Sometimes it’s the very people we love the most who are the most biased and we have to figure out how to love them, forgive them, and recognize our own part in failing to set boundaries.
It’s hard to not become jaded and cynical. My single biggest regret is serving a mission because I was that person that I internally mock for not thinking objectively and critically.
I will share a thought I often had growing up and even as a parent, that teens need to learn to lie to the bishop on their own terms. I was only partly joking. It just seemed to me that if someone’s going to ask you a question that is literally none of their business, you have to ultimately figure that out and set your own boundary. It’s like if the school principal asks you to rat out your friends. The principal can’t seriously think that’s a good idea for you to do that, so obviously, you aren’t obligated to tell the truth in that situation. As a teen, I used to do this in a bishop’s interview by telling the truth but in a sarcastic way that left it open to interpretation that I was either saying “yes, I did that thing,” or “absurd! the idea that I did that thing is so laughable that we are now joking about it!” I got this idea from an episode of Taxi in which Danny Devito’s character has been caught stealing from the register, and he turns it into a big joke about how he’s got light fingers and can’t keep himself away from the cash. By doing this, he avoids getting fired. In my case, I think the bishop was just kind of content to live in that in-between space, not knowing which answer was true. I wasn’t really being confronted with super invasive questions; the bishop was my best friend’s dad, and it seemed to me he was using these interviews to snoop on her. As converts, my parents had never been subjected to youth interviews, so they never really shared an opinion and probably didn’t think any of the questions were more than just a routine checkin (which in my experience, they mostly were).
It’s a little bit victim-blamy of my younger self, but I always thought that if you were “dumb” enough to tell the bishop things that were none of his business, you got what you “deserved.” I am not scrupulous, and so I don’t really have that compulsion to conform to authority, so I know that’s because I’m the weird one, not the norm. Now that I’m much much older I see that the naive trust in authority (aka your friend’s dad) as some kind of spiritually superior judge over you is a very real threat in the Mormon church (and probably all churches, but in our case, with an untrained temporary clergy). I just didn’t buy it. After my mission, however, I had adopted this scrupulous attitude much more and was for a time quite superstitious about the ability of church leaders to see into my (lacking) soul. Which is funny because that was probably the time in my life when I was the most compliant with church rules, the exact same time when I never felt good enough.
That’s a beautiful explanation of good boundaries! I hope you got a lot of positive feedback from your ward. It took me a lot of years to learn what your parents taught you so well, and I wish I’d understood all of that sooner. The “stay in your lane” metaphor is really useful. Sometimes we’re thinking that we’re helping by driving into someone else’s lane, and staying in your own lane is a good way to tell someone to mind their own business without condemning them for wanting to “help.”
And it would have been hilarious (in my opinion) if you’d been able to work in some of Anna’s examples of bad boundaries in Church. I would have loved to hear the story about whether the bishop would have interrupted you, or just offered a correction after the fact.
The teaching about never turning down a calling really did a number on me. My formative years were during BKP’s “turning down a calling is like turning down the Lord” teachings. That’s softened a bit since then, and I’m always happy to hear of stories when people managed to set boundaries. I said yes and said yes until I lost it and asked to be released. When the bishop asked if there was anything he could do to help, I told him not to give me another calling. I went a year and a half without a calling.
I turned down a bishop’s interview once. Just said no thanks to the executive secretary. I felt evil and angry afterwards. And I was angry that I felt evil and angry. Like, I could tell that it was my right to say no to an interview, but I was still in Church-thinking mode in which it’s wrong to turn down an interview.
Janey,
Yes! I actually got marvelous feedback from my ward. At that time I was in a tiny ward. At least 20 people thanked me for making things clearer for them and I could tell these thank yous weren’t perfunctory in nature. At least three of those serious thank yous were from older men in leadership positions in the ward and stake.
I have been asked to sit down by my bishop before, a couple years before I was allowed to speak (a very rare thing for me). In that instance it was testimony meeting. During the pandemic, in my very MAGA area every one had stopped wearing masks except my two teenagers (they sleep in the same room and one has a series of defects that makes him more prone to lung infections). One of the ward members had walked up to my 17 year old and told him to stop wearing that muzzle (an inappropriate political comment). My husband called the bishop over that and he told my husband to confront that member personally. My husband is a quiet nonconfrontational type. So he stayed home the next week. I didn’t really feel I could confront this man by myself nor did I feel good about letting it pass. I prayed about it and received an answer to bear my testimony about my family’s love for our ward and to assure them that our use of a mask wasn’t political but medical in nature and that it wasn’t an expression of hatred of people with different political ideas. My bishop did ask me to sit down before I finished. Then he sat there looking uncomfortable and upset. My 17 year old got up and bore his testimony. Then the bishop got up and bore his testimony about my wonderful sons. He asked that we would forgive him for mistakes he might make.
After the meeting I walked up to him and he hugged me and then said I should only give simple testimony and I had broken that rule. I responded that my love for our ward was the biggest part of my testimony. I explained I had expected him to feel that my testimony didn’t meet his criteria of what I should say, but I had to follow the Spirit and I had felt inspired to say what I said.
The next testimony meeting it was interesting to me that our stake president was present. I bore my testimony anyway, and the crisis passed.
Anna,
Thank you for your list. I feel tempted to add to it, but honestly, there are so many I just don’t have time tonight. I promise you another post on boundaries focusing on putting responsibility for others behavior onto people who don’t control that behavior, focusing specifically on misuse of this in the church.
Angela,
Thank you for your snark. I am a very serious person and I always enjoy hearing a different way to cope.
Margie and Toad,
Thank you for your genuine self reflection on this topic. It’s a great pleasure to associate with both of you.
Nice advocating for your family’s needs in a nice way. In so many ways, finding and maintaining healthy boundaries matters. It’s a 2-way street.
A talk can be a good place to gently bring up aspects of our culture that could improve. Thoughtfully. Directly.
One time in a talk, I suggested that we try to not use variations on the phrase, “They’re not Mormon, but they’re good people”. By any means, Mormons don’t have a lock on “good”. Sometimes, we’re pretty awful. (I didn’t include all of that.)
In the same talk, I suggested that when we do good, we do it for its own sake. When we give service, let’s have it be genuine.
Special focus when it is for people who are not Mormon (no injunction to the name at the time). It is troubling when we tie our service with an invitation to come to church, or even meet with the missionaries. I’m still bothered by something like that that I observed. When a family with a toddler and new triplets started showing up at church, and someone mentioned they were taking the missionary discussions, I wondered which of my nice neighbors was so craven. They moved a few months later.
I wonder though, if we might offer help and assistance when we observe a need. Leaving it all up to someone who is struggling may be too much for them. Offering, not pushing. Like, if we see someone who has limited mobility, simply ask if they’d like help opening a manual door. Some do, some don’t. When one RS was bringing meals to a family dealing with cancer reatments, a neighbor picked up the empty dishes, washed them, and returned them to their owners. It reduced a task that otherwise would have been an additional need.
The worst violation of boundary that my family has experienced is when my youngest son went off to college—one that was highly rated for his major. He also became involved in the local LDS institute.
At some point he started dating a nonmember and brought her to institute activities. One day local leadership requested a meeting with him. He assumed it was about “home teaching/ministering.”
But he was wrong. The meeting was to tell him he must breakup with his nonmember girlfriend!
Hello??? I thought one of the most important missions of the church was to bring/invite/convert nonmembers.
And, btw this is a family issue—none of their business.
That was the last straw—the end of his involvement in the church. After graduating they married and we are thrilled to have her in our family.
haveagoodday,
I agree with offering or inviting others, and yes, offering to meet a specific need is highly valuable. However I am uncomfortable with the idea that we should be able to read each other’s minds and automatically take action to serve. This doesn’t allow clear communication or even permission from the person served. It’s a service by itself to allow the person served to control how and when they are served.
Lois,
I am sorry this happened to your family. I believe the church would be better off if we worked at being inclusive of nonmembers, members of all stages of belief, and people who are different in any way. Instead we often find ways to keep our community exclusive. Something to work on for sure.
“However I am uncomfortable with the idea that we should be able to read each other’s minds and automatically take action to serve. This doesn’t allow clear communication or even permission from the person served.”
Did anyone say or imply this?
Offering assistance does give the other permission to accept it or decline it – that was explicit the examples I used.
I sincerely appreciate many of the insights you provide. Thank you for your perspective. Kudos to you on your graduate schooling.
haveagoodday,
Thank you for your insightful question. I was not responding to your statement or implication, but yes, in my upbringing in the church it was often implied and even taught that people should be able to see what’s needed and step forward and provide it, without actually asking what is needed or getting permission to provide it.
In fact, I have received that type of service. When my baby was in NICU, and I and my family were staying in the Ronald McDonald house, my visiting teacher got the key to my house from my friend without my permission. She, and other members of my ward entered our home and cleaned and organized it. They meant it as a nice gesture. I tried to take it that way, but in many ways, for me it felt like a violation. Since they changed the organization of my home, I couldn’t find many things because they had been moved to other places in the home. Additionally, for me at least, it felt uncomfortable to imagine some unknown number of ward members going through my home and seeing it dirty in my absence. And then I was obligated to thank them and be grateful for their help, when it wasn’t actually what I wanted. It put me in the uncomfortable position of being less than authentic about my needs in order to make them feel good about their service.
You don’t say in your examples that you have the family’s requests for help. People don’t always ask. For instance, I was once instructed to provide a surprise meal to a family on a day they had told someone they might be home from the hospital. I declined because I remembered that when my family returned from the hospital I never knew exactly when and if the doctor would agree for us to leave and the nurse would sign paperwork. We were often stuck in town late, waiting for medication to be filled. We would pick up a meal on the road. I didn’t want them to be pressured to be there when the meal arrived.
The RS president released me for declining. She wanted it done her way. I wasn’t willing to do a surprise visit that day or to contact them to arrange food that day. I wanted to wait to contact them the next day, which I did, but that didn’t satisfy the president.
Some people would prefer to do their own dishes than to have someone interrupt them after dinner asking to pick up the dishes. Others may appreciate the help. Some people are very pushy about offering help and believe that it is appreciated. This may be true in some situations, but in others, people may be longing to buy paper plates and be left alone. Sometimes it’s hard to be assertive and decline help, or ask for it. A person serving could try to be sensitive to that. Still, if they don’t tell you what they need, you don’t know.
Again, none of this is actually about what you said. It’s about my own experience with how sometimes people do cross boundaries and do service without permission in the church. And so I responded as if that might be part of what you were discussing.
💯 that cleaning someone’s house without explicit buy-in (2-way) is long jumping over boundaries. I would feel betrayed by the person who supplied the keys, though I can also imagine them not quite knowing how to say no. I’m sorry that happened when you already had a lot to deal with. We’ve done the nicu/RMcDhouse thing. Lots of emotion still.
As far as I know, the two families were long-time friends, and arranged it between themselves. Not a church assignment. I got the impression it was helpful to them. Maybe the one picked up the serving dishes the next day, and visited with her friend. It was only mentioned in passing.