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Setting Boundaries During the Holidays | Wounds of the Faithful Podcast
In this special holiday episode of Wounds of the Faithful, host Diana addresses the challenges of celebrating Christmas for domestic violence survivors. She offers practical tips for setting boundaries with toxic family members, managing holiday expenses, and dealing with grief and loss. Diana also shares personal updates, talks about holiday films, and recommends devotionals by Wayne Stiles. Enjoy a heartwarming Christmas song performance by Diana to close the episode.
00:00 Introduction to the Podcast
00:38 Holiday Reflections
01:40 Coping with Loss During the Holidays
03:52 Setting Boundaries with Toxic Family Members
07:01 Financial Boundaries and Gift Giving
07:56 Personal Stories and Holiday Experiences
12:01 Bible Devotionals and Spiritual Investments
18:47 Final Thoughts on Holiday Boundaries
26:27 Musical Conclusion and Christmas Wishes
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Song Candlelight Carole by John Rutter
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Christmas part one
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Wounds of the Faithful podcast, brought to you by DSW Ministries. Your host is singer, songwriter, speaker, and domestic violence advocate, Diana Winkler. She is passionate about helping survivors in the church heal from domestic violence and abuse and trauma. This podcast is not a substitute for professional counseling or qualified medical help.[00:00:26] Now, here is Diana.[00:00:33] Welcome everyone. Merry Christmas to everyone listening today. We’re going to do a solo podcast today. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? We do still have part two of Ana Megrelishvili tomorrow on the podcast, but I wanted [00:01:00] to take some time to talk to you about the holidays to update you on some things and send you some Christmas thoughts. I will be doing a solo episode New Year’s Eve also for you. I call it the State of the Podcast Address. Now, this is primarily for my regular listeners. You’re still welcome to listen to it if you are new here, but It’s going to be more things about my personal life and what is coming up for the podcast, some reflections on this particular year that’s ending.[00:01:40] So today I wanted to be there for you during this time when the holidays can be really tough. I have to admit to you that Christmas is not my favorite holiday. Not by a long shot. Now there are many reasons for [00:02:00] that, one being commercialism, of course, but the real answer for that is many terrible things happened on Christmas.[00:02:11] One in particular is a death in the family. Actually, many deaths in the family. If you’ve been listening to my show for a long time, you know that I lost my oldest brother during the holidays in 2020. Maybe you have losses of loved ones this year. You don’t know whether to mourn or to celebrate. Now, I’m here to tell you that both are valid responses.[00:02:42] It’s okay to mourn during Christmas, and it’s okay to celebrate Jesus birth. Just do what feels right to you. It might be a little different this year. You don’t have to do all of the Christmassy [00:03:00] stuff that people expect you to do. You don’t have to cook, decorate, bake cookies. Or even go Christmas shopping.[00:03:09] Delegate that to somebody else. If you want, I promise you, the world will not come to an end. If you skip a year. Maybe you’d rather just stay home, watch movies, eat some soup, some hot chocolate. Great, do that. Here’s your permission slip. For the rest of you. You’re probably dealing with abusive family members.[00:03:36] You’ve tolerated them for years. It could be a spouse, it could be a former spouse, a parent, siblings. Extended family. And all of the uglies come out during the family gatherings, don’t they? Well, today we’re going to talk about boundaries during the holidays. And I will tell you this [00:04:00] right now, you don’t have to put up with the toxic family members during the holidays.[00:04:06] You don’t. Oh, but Diana, you don’t understand their game. Yes, I do. I had to play my ex’s games and my ex’s family’s games. Now, this year has been a dumpster fire, just like 2020. We’ll talk more about that during my New Year’s Eve episode. Let’s say you’re having dinner with the family at your relative’s house, and they start verbally abusing you, like they do every year, about your job.[00:04:37] It could be about politics, your faith, how you raise your kids, your outfit, whatever. They’re aren’t going to treat you with respect, then get up and leave. I’m serious. up and leave. They will probably make a huge deal and be upset, but just get [00:05:00] up and quietly leave. Pack up the kids. All you need to say is, you don’t have to be treated that way.[00:05:07] And my children seeing me being treated that way. Now, if they’re in your house, you’re hosting the family. Ask them to leave. Party’s over. Get out. Don’t come back until you can show some respect. You think I’m joking? If that’s a regular occurrence every year, you don’t have to do this.[00:05:29] You know, you can stay home and do your own holiday in peace. You just say, I have other plans. Don’t host this year. I’m not hosting this year, folks. You tell your family members, I’m not hosting this year. Somebody else can volunteer to do it. And you don’t have to apologize for it either. And setting boundaries is something that’s difficult for a lot of you.[00:05:56] I just finished a Mending the Soul group, [00:06:00] and we talked a lot about boundaries. Because everyone in the group had trouble saying no, saying I’m not going to be treated that way. I deserve respect just like everybody else and learning how to not apologize[00:06:20] and stick up for yourself. That does take some learning, does take practice and skill, but you can do it. I don’t know your situation. You’re probably gonna email me and tell me your situation is different and you don’t have any choices. That may be the case. Try, try to find something that you do have control over that you can make choices on.[00:06:46] You’ll have different situations, different families. You have to decide what boundaries to set for your family, but you do need to set them. Things are not going to change until you do.[00:06:59] [00:07:00] There’s another aspect of the holidays that require boundaries. Your kids don’t need the newest fad toy, the newest phone, or designer clothes if you can’t afford them. Don’t go into debt for Christmas presents, please. They won’t die. Contrary to popular belief. Yes, there are things they actually need.[00:07:23] Maybe save up ahead. Plan ahead. Christmas comes every year. You can start saving up for that, uh, that store they always want to buy at, that you don’t have money for the toy of the century, even if it’s five bucks, put it in your savings account, put it in a jar, the old fashioned way, get a gift card when you’ve saved enough up.[00:07:47] And we are all pinching pennies this year. This year I didn’t buy very many gifts. Very few, I haven’t shared this yet on the podcast, I don’t think. We [00:08:00] went to the first vacation since before the pandemic. We went to San Antonio, a road trip through, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. And we got into a car accident and totaled our truck on vacation.[00:08:19] We hit a deer and yes, we are physically okay, thank God, but we did have to leave the truck in Texas. We now have a car payment we didn’t expect and a higher insurance bill. So with Brian being disabled. I’m the only one that’s working. Uh, no, I can’t afford much this year. I can’t afford to buy all of the fancy gifts.[00:08:45] Uh, I did buy my husband a cat t shirt customized with our cat’s names, and there are six of them. I’ll talk more about that in the New Year’s episode. We did have [00:09:00] a secret Santa at work with a small spending limit that I did participate in.[00:09:05] I decided to do that because I work with these folks every day. I think it’s great for the morale of the team to give gifts between one another, even something that has a 10 or 15, limit. It’s fun to see your co workers open up a gift that you gave them and[00:09:27] it, makes things go a lot easier at work when, there’s gift giving and joy and, you know, you are working very hard and you get on each other’s nerves. That was fun. So I sent my brother back some cookies that I had bought last year from them.[00:09:46] You may have heard of crumble cookies, these gourmet cookies. I sent them last year and they absolutely went bonkers. It was something inexpensive that, I could at least show my love.[00:09:58] I did take my mom [00:10:00] out for tea beginning of December We usually go to the tea house nearby She had a birthday that passed and We had Thanksgiving and now Christmas. So we did this whole conglomerate at the tea house and it’s very nice.[00:10:20] It’s a little expensive, but we each just paid for our own lunch.[00:10:26] And I don’t do that, but once a year for mommy. Spending time together, that’s what counts, right? Quality time together. Let’s see, Black Friday, hopefully none of you guys are, like, sleeping overnight outside of whatever store and running inside to get the big screen TV.[00:10:49] I always found that to be insane. But there are a lot of Black Friday deals that came by that I wasn’t that impressed with. Were you? I [00:11:00] have quite a bit of control when it comes to spending money online. I, see something I want and I put it in the shopping bag and just decide over sometimes a week or two, whether I really need that or whether I really want it.[00:11:16] There was a Coldwater Creek shirt that I really wanted. I wanted this white shirt with purple tulips[00:11:23] but it was 100. I was like, I can’t justify spending 100 on a shirt. I’ve got plenty of shirts. I don’t really need the shirt. But I waited till they had Black Friday and it was 20 percent off. And I was like, you know, 20 percent isn’t enough.[00:11:39] That just brings it down. 20 bucks. So I’m still paying 80 for this shirt and I don’t really want to. And they were sold out of my size. So I didn’t get anything.[00:11:50] The only deal I took advantage of on Black Friday was Wayne Stiles. He’s the Bible [00:12:00] teacher I tell you about all the time. He has these Bible devotionals that I’ve been wanting to get. I wanted to buy all of them at once. The price was a little too much for my budget but he had the greatest Black Friday deal, uh, 60 percent off.[00:12:19] Right now he has the Old Testament completed for the devotionals. . And I have all of the, from Genesis to Malachi. And so that was, I think it was nine devotional books.[00:12:33] Now it’s okay to treat yourself once in a while, especially investing in your spiritual walk with the Lord. this is something I would spend money on. I have probably everything in Wayne Stiles store, Because he is such a good Bible teacher, and I really like his, products that he offers.[00:12:55] So, you’ve heard of people reading through the Bible in a year. This [00:13:00] includes the reading plans. It has a devotional each day. How to apply the passage you’re reading to your everyday life. It has journaling pages in it. It has beautiful pictures, and it also has QR codes to watch one of Wayne Stiles videos.[00:13:22] One of the pictures in the book is of a lion, one of the mosaics along the processional where Nebuchadnezzar’s throne room was in Babylon. So this is a picture from the British Museum, and we know that Daniel probably passed those murals of the lions almost every day.[00:13:45] That was kind of a neat thing to find out. So you can get these individually if you only want a particular book or want to buy them one at a time. Or you can get them all like I did. One more thing about the devotionals. He does have an [00:14:00] app that has these devotionals on it that is just like the book. I don’t think that the, promotion is going on anymore. That was Black Friday. But he has a special Christmas reading plan that you can sample his devotionals. This is really great. Just in time for Christmas.[00:14:22] You can sample his Christmas reading plan.[00:14:25] This is something he’s promoting right now. You get a five day Bible reading plan and a virtual video tour. with Dr. Wayne Stiles. And so you can sample some of this stuff if you decide you don’t want to buy anything, there is absolutely no pressure to buy anything.[00:14:44] So. Um, please don’t think that this is a hard sell of any kind. There’s no funnels, but, this is a way you can sample to see if you would like this. You can go to walkinginthebiblelands. com [00:15:00] slash pages slash Christmas dash reading dash plan. Yes, that’s a big long link, but I’m going to put it in the show notes for you so you can experience.[00:15:13] Christmas in a different way this year, I guarantee it’s going to be, a great experience for you.[00:15:19] Okay, so hopefully that didn’t sound too sales pitchy.[00:15:23] But you can check out waynestyles. com and look at his store. I am not an affiliate for his books. His devotionals, I am affiliate for, his videos to the Holy Land. So those videos are his trips to the Holy Land, he goes twice a year and he creates these videos of places in the Holy Land and tells you all about them.[00:15:49] The history, the geography, the practical application, some interesting things that you may not have known. Something that just brings the Bible to life. So those are the [00:16:00] videos that he has. And they’re incredible. I’ve been to Israel, as you know. We went with a different group.[00:16:06] We had a wonderful time and when I came back from Israel, I found out about these videos and he goes to places that the tour groups cannot go. We were just there and I was like, we didn’t get to go to the south wall.[00:16:23] We didn’t get to go inside the mosque in Jerusalem. We didn’t get to go to Jacob’s well. Those are the places that he can go to, but we can’t with a group. So I do have an affiliate link in the show notes. If you want the videos. They are really incredible. If you can’t afford to go to the Holy Land, this is the next best thing.[00:16:48] It’s almost like being there.[00:16:49] So you have today’s reading, Genesis 1 4, Psalm 1, and it has the devotional, and then it [00:17:00] has related videos from his Bible land. And then you can Comment to Wayne.[00:17:06] All right. So it will connect you to a video. He’s at an archeological site. He talks through those things.[00:17:14] He’s an excellent, Bible teacher, very compassionate, he is not one of those, legalistic preachers that you’ve read about. He’s very well balanced. He’s very knowledgeable about the Bible. And I learned something all the time from him. He was on the podcast in season one. So you want to[00:17:38] learn more about him and his story you can look up Wayne Stiles in season one. I think it’s episode 35,[00:17:48] again, if you, want to sign up for the videos, please use my affiliate link that will support the podcast, whom you know and love.[00:17:58] So, back to [00:18:00] setting boundaries. So we just finished talking about, gifts and Black Friday. Holidays with family is always stressful, even among the best families.[00:18:12] So, what if it’s Family that’s different than you, or you don’t have anything in common, or you don’t like their lifestyle. We all probably know people like that.[00:18:24] How do we deal with that?[00:18:25] Maybe they drink too much. Maybe they swear a lot. Not necessarily abusive towards you, but kind of don’t want to be around that environment. you could skip going to dinner, but you say, well, Diana, if I don’t go to family dinner,[00:18:40] Then my kids won’t have anything to eat. Uh, we won’t get any gifts for the kids. I understand that.[00:18:48] And maybe your kids like certain family members, like grandparents, and they want to be with them, you don’t want to be around. Uncle Harry. [00:19:00] You don’t have to spend there all day.[00:19:02] Have dinner, open gifts, spend a little time with the people you wanna spend time with, and then say you have to go home. You have to get up for work the next day. You not feeling well. There’s a long drive, whatever, plan ahead, what you’re going to say. Tell your kids ahead of time that you’ll be staying X amount of hours.[00:19:26] and then going home so they’re not surprised. Other boundaries you can put on are how much gift exchanges are.[00:19:37] Maybe you suggest that we’re not going to buy gifts for everybody this year. Let’s do pulling names out of a hat or we’re just going to buy for the kids and this is the limit that we’re going to use for each gift. Like, okay, 50. or we’re not going to buy gifts for the adults this year. So, [00:20:00] you can put limits on those things.[00:20:02] You know, maybe you’ve lost your job this year. Maybe your hours were cut. Maybe you had a surprise expense like I did. But, you can suggest those things. You don’t have to buy gifts for every single person. How do you have a nice, happy Christmas? Spend more time with the people you want to hang out with.[00:20:22] Okay? Friends, coworkers, maybe some cousins. You have some cool cousins you want to spend time with? Whoever. Make a list. And just tell your family you normally spend it with. We have plans with Cousin Anne this year. We’re going to have Christmas with them, get to know them more. You know, you could say, I haven’t seen them in years, and they’re growing up so fast, their kids.[00:20:46] Like I say, plan what you’re going to say and stick to it. You can create your own Christmas. Again, control, make choices in the areas you have control over. So when you are in [00:21:00] these. family gatherings, and maybe you have some unsaved family members.[00:21:05] Don’t expect your unsaved family to act like saved people. If you have saved family members, you probably expect them but they don’t. Don’t let that sour your Christian demeanor or your disposition. You’re not going to change them. I wish I could say we can, but We’re not going to change them, but you can still be the light and the example during the holiday. That is what we’re called to do as christians is be the light[00:21:38] and You know, I don’t expect a lot out of people who don’t name the name of christ[00:21:44] and Especially in this day and age Lower your expectations around the holidays to stay sane. The Norman Rockwell Instagram perfect Hallmark movie Christmas is unrealistic [00:22:00] and fake. Come on, guys. Don’t try to measure up to that. Most people’s Christmases are much simpler than that. at least in the real world where I come from, nobody’s Christmas looks like a Hallmark movie.[00:22:15] Speaking of Hallmark movies, I can’t stand them.[00:22:19] One of my family members likes to watch Hallmark movies as the Hallmark Channel when we come over for Christmas and I’m just, gag me, but I ignore it. I don’t look at the TV. I go in the other room and chat up the other family members.[00:22:38] Brian and I have been watching some Christmas movies. We have a list of ones that we enjoy. Yes, some of the traditional ones that we like to watch every year, The Grinch, Rudolph, some of the claymation stuff, The Little Drummer Boy, The Year Without a Santa Claus. Last night we were watching It’s a Wonderful [00:23:00] Life.[00:23:00] Some of the more modern ones I love. I love Elf. I can’t get enough of Elf. The whole thing is just brilliant and so funny. And we like the Christmas Chronicles. That’s with, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn.[00:23:14] We like,[00:23:16] let’s see, I like Nightmare Before Christmas. We watched that when we were traveling this year. It’s just a totally unexpected twist on Christmas that if you’re tired of syrupy, gushy Christmas movies, then try that one. We just watched a brand new one called Red, that has The Rock in it and a couple other really well known stars. it’s very rare that I find The Rock, Dwayne Johnson in any bad movies lately. He’s terrific. He plays Santa’s bodyguard and, he’s thinking of retiring and, I won’t give away the whole plot, but [00:24:00] Krampus is in it, and Krampus is glorious.[00:24:03] I have a cousin that loves Krampus. I told her about this movie. It just puts a different flavor to it. It’s very funny. It’s got some heartwarming scenes in it. Dwayne Johnson is incredible, and so that’s one I recommend if you like the Santa movies.[00:24:21] It’s clean, it’s family friendly. It has some really good messages.[00:24:25] The only religious movie Christmas movie that I watched, probably the Little Drummer Boy, the Claymation one. It’s a Wonderful Life. We already watched Jesus of Nazareth this year. That’s a great movie any time of the year. One of the few Bible movies I like to watch. Oh, and a Charlie Brown Christmas. You can’t lose with a Charlie Brown Christmas. It’s perfect. So anyway, those are some thoughts on the holiday boundaries. I would like to recommend the book Boundaries by Dr. [00:25:00] Henry Cloud and Dr.[00:25:01] John Townsend. We did this as a church, as a group course, but you don’t need to do it as a group. It’s, focused on boundaries. When to say yes, how to say no, and it can, how to take control of your life. It’s excellent.[00:25:16] Tomorrow we’ll still have part two of Anna Magrelashvili. Be sure to check her out. I would like to leave you with a Christmas song I recorded. If you are new here, you might not know that I’m a musician. It has been a while since I’ve ended with some music. But since this is a solo episode, I will leave you with a Christmas song.[00:25:41] It’s called, the Candlelight Carol and it’s written by John Rutter, from Cambridge. I did a cover on that song. It’s one of my favorites. So enjoy that. If you like what you hear, I have more on my website to listen to. So just remember that [00:26:00] Jesus is what makes Christmas special. Focus on that this season in whatever way you can.[00:26:06] So we’ll see you on New Year’s Eve. God bless you, and have a Merry Christmas.[00:26:11] How do you capture the wind or water? How do you count all the stars in the sky? How can you measure the love of a mother or how can you write down a baby’s first cry? CandlelightCandelight Firelight and star glow. Shine on [00:27:00] the cradle til the breaking of dawn. Gloria Gloria in excelsis deo[00:27:13] [00:28:00] [00:29:00] The Christ Child is born.[00:29:47] Thank you for listening to the Wounds of the Faithful podcast. If this episode has been helpful to you, please hit the subscribe button and tell a friend. You can connect with us at [00:30:00] DSWMinistries. org, where you’ll find our blog along with our Facebook, Twitter, and our YouTube channel links. Hope to see you next week![00:30:15]