She's got a ticket to ride

I just started a course in “boundaries”. I am really excited about this course ever since I visited Children’s Hospital 5 years ago and the Chaplain there recommended the course to anyone who provides pastoral care in any form. He indicated the course gave him tools to be able to deal with the successes, but most especially the failures that are inevitably encountered in his vocation.


Here’s a case study related to boundaries, based on a real situation that just happened to me moments ago before I boarded the train on which I am now writing this blog entry. The specific case may not be familiar to you, but I suspect the nature of the case will indeed ring a bell. I’ll place the case in third person for you to place yourself in the scenario.

You are waiting for your train to arrive at the station on a winter night at 9:25pm, after a long day at work and an evening at school. You’ve had a good night in class because the professor is outstanding, the material you are learning is engaging, and you just barely covered enough of the required reading prior to class that you were able to follow the professor’s points in an effective way.

A distressed middle-aged woman comes up out of the pedestrian tunnel from the inbound tracks and asks you when the next train comes bound for Thorndale. You reply, “Your timing is great it is just 3 minutes away”, to which she responds, “I hope they let me on, my boyfriend’s truck is broke down and I don’t have any money. I’m not sure what to say to them.” Meanwhile you realize you have 15 tickets in your backpack that you bought ahead at $3.75 each. What do you do?

This is no longer a simple decision for me. Ever since I was a college student at Drexel back in 1970 I learned to simply say, “I’m sorry but I’m a college student” whenever someone asks for money. But she didn’t ask me for anything except information about the next train. I’ve also had people give me huge stories before that I choose to believe and I end up helping out. The course I’m taking is teaching me that healthy boundaries mean that saying “NO” is something you need to be able to do. If you don’t say “NO” to a person who always “has a story”, then you are enabling their behavior by helping them when perhaps they didn’t really need the help or wouldn’t need the help if they managed their life differently.

I might have asked her why she needed to get to Thorndale, so I could evaluate her situation. I didn’t ask. In my estimation her distress was real and it wasn’t just about the timing of the train. Am I going to grill her and cause more distress? That might be the right thing to do if she does this every night. I am at the train station a lot. I never saw this person before in my life so I don’t think her behavior is habitual.

I asked her if she does this often. She said “no”. I believed her, and handed her the ticket I had ready in my hand with the words, “use this”. She thanked me, and boarded the back car as I got on the front car with another ticket from my pack.

A mistake? Maybe. For me I think the criteria comes down to discerning on the spot whether the individual is in a situation that they really need help with, or is this normal behavior they use and their entire life is a sequence of scraping by from one handout to the next, never taking advantage of opportunities to live a better life. Is that rude? I’m not sure. I can’t help everyone, I have to have a boundary somewhere. For now, this is where I place it. If in my estimation you are dealing with a burden that is out of your control, I will try to help you. Galatians 6:2 and Galatians 6:5 form a dichotomy between sharing one another’s burdens but carrying one’s own load. My take on the text from our course interprets that to say that if it’s out of your control and it’s a hardship, then I am called as a Christian, and also as a Deacon who is called to a life of service, to share your burden. What do you think?

Until next month, Happy Hiking, and God Bless,

- allen