S1, E30 of the Dream Doers Podcast – “Forgiveness, Without Access.”

Forgiveness is powerful, but forgiveness with full access? That’s where a lot of us keep ending up in the same cycle with the same people in life and in business. In this episode, we’re unpacking the hard truth most of us were never taught growing up in church, loving people like Jesus does not mean allowing everyone into your life. Jana shares raw personal experiences, including being blamed for other people’s choices, learning the difference between love and enabling, and what it actually looks like to set boundaries without guilt. If you’ve ever felt drained, confused, or questioned your own worth because you kept giving chances that led nowhere or to further pain, this conversation will help you see it clearly.

We also break down what Scripture really shows us about Jesus and boundaries, why He didn’t entrust Himself to everyone, how He loved people without giving them unlimited access, and what that means for your life today. You’ll walk away with practical ways to set healthy boundaries, stop over-explaining, recognize patterns instead of promises, and finally understand how to forgive without reopening the same door. This is for anyone ready to grow, protect their peace, and love others without losing themselves in the process

______________________________________________________________

✨Episode Highlights

00:00 Understanding Forgiveness and Boundaries
02:38 The Importance of Discernment in Relationships
04:59 Establishing Healthy Boundaries
08:22 Boundaries in Business and Friendships
09:56 God’s Boundaries and Wisdom in Relationships
13:46 Self-Love and Personal Responsibility
17:17 Forgiveness Without Access
19:16 The Balance of Love and Boundaries
19:38 You Tube – Outro – Dream Doers.mp4

_______________________________

Follow Jana: 🌈 ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠ → @thedreamdoers.podcast

🌐 Visit my website at ⁠⁠⁠www.thedreamdoers.com⁠⁠⁠

✨  Subscribe to Dream Doer’s YouTube Channel: ⁠⁠⁠   / @dreamdoers.podcast⁠⁠⁠  

___________________________________________________________________

Show Notes: “Forgiveness, Without Access”

Jana Marler (00:00)
Forgiveness with full access can sometimes lead back to the same shipwreck. Loving people like Jesus doesn’t mean allowing everyone in. And a lot of us who grew up in church were never taught that. So today, we’re talking about it.

Welcome back dream doers in honor of the Derby this weekend. I’m wearing my fun hat. If you are watching from YouTube, you can see me. So I encourage you to pop in over here. if you’re out here trying to grow, figure your life out and not lose yourself while doing it, you’re in the right place.

A lot of us who grew up in church were told to love people like Jesus, to forgive quickly, to keep showing up, keep giving, turn the other cheek, and I get the heart behind that. But what I’m realizing now is how incomplete that teaching was because it wasn’t paired with discernment or wisdom, and Jesus had both.

Ultimately, we were being taught to be blind. And I don’t say that with bitterness, I say that with clarity. We talk about clarity a lot on this podcast. Because when you teach someone to love without teaching them how to recognize what isn’t healthy, you are setting them up to not only ignore red flags, but be completely unaware of them in the name of being a good person.

And that’s exactly what I did. I look back now and I can see so many moments where I didn’t have boundaries or maybe I had them but I didn’t hold them. I thought I was being kind, loving people like Jesus, believing if I just tried harder, explained better, gave more, showed up more, fixed more, then things would change. And they didn’t. Not because I didn’t try hard enough, but because I wasn’t trying to do something that was never mine to do.

I was trying to fix things or fix people who had no interest in changing and calling that love. Because that’s what I thought love was. And I know I’m not the only one who’s done that. Because when you’re not taught discernment, you don’t know what to look for. What’s a red flag versus what’s just someone having a hard day? When to lean in and when to step back. So you just stay giving, forgiving, hoping.

And over time that doesn’t just drain you, it changes you. You start questioning yourself, wondering what you’re doing wrong, carrying things that were never yours to carry. And maybe even that person or those people start blaming you. Does that sound familiar?

That part isn’t hypothetical for me. I’ve had a loved one then say to my face, look at the common denominator in all of these affairs around you. It’s you. As if I somehow caused affairs, chose for them to have affairs. If I did the betrayal, financial loss, all of it. I remember sitting there thinking, wow, we’ve really

flipped the script around. And years ago, I would have stayed in that conversation, tried to explain myself, tried to soften it, tried to fix it, tried to people please make everyone happy. But in that moment for the first time, I didn’t. This is like next level healing shit right here you guys, I didn’t.

I just stood up calmly and said, I can tell that you’re still hurt, but it’s not okay to talk to me like that, especially in front of my child. And I walked out, no dramatic exit, no argument, just clear boundaries, calmness. That moment mattered to me because it showed me something I hadn’t fully grasped before. There’s a difference between being the common denominator

and being the one who kept allowing access. I didn’t cause those behaviors, but I did allow people to stay in my life after they showed me who they were.

And there comes a time you all when a lot of our unresolved childhood traumas and things we’ve been through, you know, we become adults and there becomes a time where if you’re a competent adult who can hold a job, if the government and the law thinks that you can also parent children, then you are perfectly capable of making the choices that you’re making. So we’ve got to stop saying that

people’s behaviors are because of XYZ in their past.

because they’re making the exact decisions they want to be making. So when they show you who they are, believe them.

That’s not blaming, that’s being aware. And awareness gives you the ability to do something different moving forward.

Because one day something will shift. You’ll get real tired. Tired of explaining, circling the same conversation, seeing the same patterns with no change. And that’s usually where boundaries start to show up. Not as walls, but for healthy guardrails. This is okay, this is not. This works, this doesn’t. This is mine to bear, and this is your responsibility. And hold

holding that line, this is where it gets interesting. Someone explained boundaries like fences in our yards, setting clear expectations of what is yours to take care of and this is mine to take care of. But nobody talks about what happens when you finally do hold your boundaries in life, not in your yard. You can be patient 99 times, calm 99 times, forgiving 99 times.

And one time you say, hey, this isn’t okay anymore. Suddenly you’re the problem. Now you’re difficult too much. Society will label you, especially if you’re a woman as a bitch. Heard me talk about this before. I say a lot of these things over and over and you’re sitting here thinking, wow. So all that grace didn’t count, but this boundary does.

That moment will teach you so much. It’ll teach you that some people were only comfortable with you when you were overextending yourself or they were able to take advantage of the thing they were using you for. Like money. Maybe your physical labor, your time, your management skills, your energy, maybe your care.

And it’ll also teach you that someone else’s reaction to your boundary doesn’t determine whether your boundary is valid. It just means they don’t like it. It speaks more about them than it does you. And that’s okay because clear is kind. You might have heard me say this before as well. My child therapist used to always say clear is kind. I said this in my last episode. I thought being kind meant being flexible, understanding, giving people room.

Unclear is actually what creates resentment and confusion. It’s what allows the same behavior to keep happening.

Clarity says this is what I can do. This is what I can’t what’s okay, and what’s not it’s understanding your capacity to it’s all full circle And then you have to actually follow through I didn’t always do that. I thought loving people well Was staying flexible giving them extra chances? Helping fixing explaining, but what I was actually doing was enabling without realizing it. I wasn’t helping people grow

I was helping them stay the same while slowly wearing myself down or changing who I was to fit inside their mold instead of holding true to myself, my integrity, my values. But I had to own my part. Not that I caused what happened to me, but that I allowed certain patterns to continue longer than they should have. And those are two very different things. This shows up everywhere too, not just in personal relationships.

It shows up in business. Clients who push boundaries, who expects more than what they paid for, who say things that aren’t okay, who try to leverage bad reviews to get their way, who call at inappropriate times like 10 p.m. on a Friday night and then expect you to answer and then harass you all weekend because they can’t get you.

I used to joke all the time, would your dentist pick up the phone on a Saturday morning at 9am? Typically not. Now, if you’re a business who’s changed and work 7 days a week, have multiple employees and work weekends, that’s different. If you don’t have clear agreements, clear expectations, clear guardrails, you end up trying to enforce something that was never defined to begin with.

Even those businesses that are open on the weekend have office hours and won’t pick up their phone after the hours end. All of this becomes so exhausting if we’re trying to go backwards.

It shows up in friendships, helping someone out, trusting them, giving them access to your resources, and then realizing they had no intention of honoring what they said they would.

And now you’re sitting here thinking, how did we get here? We got here because there was access without accountability. And again, I’ve been there many times and I’m not perfect still. I will forever be learning. But things have changed because now I understand boundaries.

I understand you can forgive people without giving them full access. There’s this simple phrase, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. My children’s therapist would say that all the time. She would say, it’s okay to call it a duck. Patterns matter more than words. This is the part we don’t talk about enough when it comes to faith. I read the book,

boundaries and it flipped everything over for me. I became quite obsessed with this book. This is a book that explains something that I think a lot of us miss growing up. That God has boundaries. He gives us free will, which means He allows consequences. He doesn’t chase us down to force us to behave differently. He lets truth and consequences do their job.

That alone should tell us something. Love does not mean removing consequences for someone else’s behavior.

And too often I found myself doing that instead of just trusting God to do his job. It also talks about how Jesus didn’t entrust himself to everyone, which is literally written in scripture. He knew people’s hearts and chose not to give access based on that. That’s not rejection, that’s wisdom. We really don’t talk about this enough. Jesus knew his assignment. He knew he came to die for all of us.

who accepted him. knew betrayal was coming. Abuse was coming. His murder was coming.

He even knew one of his own disciples would betray him, and he still chose to sit at the table and break bread with him.

that part matters. He wasn’t naive, he wasn’t unaware, he wasn’t hoping Judas would change. He knew exactly who he was, but he also knew that moment had a purpose in fulfilling God’s will. That’s the difference. Jesus didn’t sit at the table because he lacked boundaries, he sat there because he understood his assignment.

That does not mean we are all called to endure abuse in the name of love. Jesus fulfilled a very specific purpose at a very specific time for a very specific reason. Outside of that assignment, he moved wisely, withdrew from unsafe environments, told people not to spread information too soon,

protecting his timing and removed access when needed. People were literally hunting him, you guys, trying to trap him, trying to harm him before it was his time. He didn’t just stand there and take it to prove he was loving. He moved, he left, he created space, he stayed aligned with God, not pressured by people. So when we say love people like Jesus, we need to include all of that. Loving people does not mean allowing harm.

Loving people does not mean giving unlimited access. Loving people does not mean staying in cycles that destroy your peace, your home, your children’s safety. We can pray for people from afar, love them without proximity, trust that God is working in them, and still protect ourselves. That is not a lack of faith, that is wisdom.

I think another one of the biggest shifts for me has been realizing that loving people like Jesus actually starts with loving being who you are, holy in yourself. Because if you’re not healthy, grounded, and aligned, you’ll tolerate things you shouldn’t tolerate. I had to come to terms with the fact that I was expecting people to fill a space that only God could fill. And when they didn’t, I tried harder, and that became really exhausting for

One of my all time favorite authors and modern Christian mentor women is Lysa Turkeurst She is incredible. I remember discovering who she was at the peak of a lot of betrayal and change in her own life. And it was completely aligned with what was going on in my family’s life. So I followed a lot of her journey, felt her from afar.

kind of felt the same feelings and healed and growed at the same time, but a lot of the words she spoke in interviews and her books changed so much of who I was and how I moved amongst my relationships and how I worked and how I protected my peace and all sorts of things. So I’m going to read two quotes that she said during an interview and they’re a little bit long, but bear with me.

She said, I will always desperately want from other people what I fear I will not ultimately get from God. One way that I really made progress in this area was to work on living from a place of acceptance. God had already accepted me, so I don’t need to walk around begging other people for scraps of acceptance.

I’m living from a place of love. I don’t need to walk around begging other people to make me feel loved and to make me feel okay in this world. And it’s great to have needs with other people, but it’s not okay to demand that they give you what we really should be getting from God. That, quote, changed my soul. Here’s another one that really, really hit home for me.

Lysa said, I was giving level 10 access to people without requiring level 10 responsibility. I have limited time capacity, financial capacity, relational capacity, energy capacity, right? I’ve got limited areas of capacity, not because I’m selfish, but because I’m human. Only God has unlimited capacity. Like today, if I said, hey, what’s your bank account number?

And what’s your passcode? You would probably say back to me, I’m not sharing that, right? Probably yes. Why? Is it because you’re unchristian? No, it’s because what? You have limited finances in your bank account. So here’s where I was getting it wrong.

I was giving level 10 access to people without requiring level 10 responsibility.

That mindset changed everything for me because It helped me realize boundaries are not about controlling others. They’re about stewarding myself. So what do you actually do with this? You start by identifying where you feel tension. That’s usually where a boundary is missing. You define what is yours and what isn’t.

If it’s not your behavior or responsibility, it’s not yours to carry. Got it? You communicate clearly without over explaining. Gosh, that was so much of what I did. And I still I’m working on over explaining things to people. So I started a podcast, right? And then you follow through even when it’s uncomfortable. You watch patterns instead of promises. Adjust access based on consistency, not potential.

and you stop trying to fix people. That’s not your assignment. Your assignment is to be healthy, grounded, aligned, and let God handle what only He can handle.

So much of my own personal story. I realized that so many people love the idea of people. They don’t actually love the people. True love would be loving someone in the patterns they’re showing you.

late all of the time.

you would understand, I see this pattern, I see this in them, and I still love it anyway, or I still love them anyway, and you accept that.

if it is something that you can accept. A lot of us love the idea, well, I can maybe make this person on time, but look, they’ve clearly showed you over and over and over and they’re an adult. So if you’re looking at things like relationships or even client relationships, what kind of client you’re gonna take on. If they’re showing you, especially quickly, a lot of things that don’t align with your values, your integrity, your professionalism.

then don’t take the assignment thinking that they’re going to change or maybe because you’re responsible that it will work out. It’s probably going to bring a lot more tension than you would like.

Everything will change when we stop tolerating the same things, stop clinging to the same people, and we don’t reopen doors that lead to the same outcomes. Forgive, move forward, protect your peace, and trust God with what was never yours to carry. You can forgive someone and still not give them access. Love someone and still choose distance. Be kind and be clear at the same time.

that doesn’t make you unloving. It makes you wise.

Forgive, don’t forget, and give access where there is safety, consistency, and respect, and then trust that God is going to do the rest.

Jana Marler (19:12)
Unconditional love does not mean unconditional tolerance. Unlearn that. If this episode resonated with you all, would love if you could leave a comment, if you could share it with a friend, make sure you like and subscribe. And if you want to come watch me, come find me at the Dream Doers podcast on YouTube. Thank you all and until next time.