On Boundaries, Losses, and Saying Yes or No

Another Friday, another letter from Jen Michel Pollack in our ongoing series on creativity, writing, and family life! Check out a preview below:

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“Dear Shawn,

. . . I so enjoyed your thoughts on “vocational holiness” in your last letter, how it calls us to set things apart, even set ourselves apart. I used to imagine a stark division between all that matters to God and all that doesn’t, but I’ve come to see that the messy, ordinary whole of life is his—though as you reminded me, there’s a certain focus that’s required for drawing a circle around what we’ve been given by God to do and to tend. We have to admit what falls inside that circle and admit what falls outside. In fact, there is no circle without the line, no shape to the whole without the definitive boundary of in and out.

I have to confess that I hate boundaries; I want capacities that are endless, energy and time that is infinite. No doubt there’s a lot of pathology in this (not to mention sin). But as I also realized in a recent session with my spiritual director, I think it’s also difficult for me to draw that circle because I feel everything that remains outside of it to represent a kind of loss. Worse, in facing the losses of the things I must leave undone, I can start convincing myself that I’m doing the wrong thing. Because if I were doing God’s will, surely there would be no losses, right?”

Click HERE to keep reading.

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What began as a Twitter conversation between two writers on creative work and family life has become an exchange of letters. Here is a list of our prior letters for Postmarked:

Postmarked: Dear Shawn (1)

Postmarked: Dear Jen (2)

Postmarked: Dear Shawn (3)

Postmarked: Dear Jen (4)

Postmarked: Dear Shawn (5)

Postmarked: Dear Jen (6)

Postmarked: Dear Shawn (7)

Postmarked: Dear Jen (8)

Postmarked: Dear Shawn (9)

Postmarked: Dear Jen (10)

Postmarked: Dear Jen (11)