ON CAPACITY, BOUNDARIES, AND LOVING WELL
We are all created with the capacity to receive the love of God, and to share that love with others. In fact, Jesus makes this plainly clear to his disciples. All of the Bible boils down to the two greatest commandments:
The thing about this: Jesus doesn't just preach this, he lives this out in its fullest. This makes it rather important for those of us who want to become MORE like Jesus.
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH COOKIES AND COOKIE JARS?
The early church father (and one of my personal favorites) Gregory of Nyssa imagined humanity as vessels: souls fashioned intentionally (because we are no accidents) as containers meant to receive good. These vessels are jars created purposefully with the freedom to expand as they are filled. Therefore, the more good that is poured in, the greater our capacity becomes to hold and to give goodness.
We are not static containers. we grow. We are also not created to remain empty.
My Methodist roots (because I am a Methodist Pastor and Deacon) has this beautiful concept called sanctifying grace. God's grace shapes us. By God's grace we mature and grow in our ability to love and be loved. We are becoming all that God intended for us to be.
But there is a caution embedded in the image of a jar.
If we repeatedly fill our jar with resentment, unhealed wounds, chronic stress, or destructive patterns, cracks form. Capacity diminishes. Space that could hold goodness becomes occupied by pain. Just imagine if our cookie jar was filled with rocks instead.
And over time, what leaks out of us is not love, but exhaustion, defensiveness, or withdrawal.
If, however, we work hard to remain as an empty jar, we will never be fully whole/complete. We were created for community. We were created for relationships.
So we can ask ourselves frequently:
At the deepest level, your jar is filled by God. Other people can contribute to your jar, but they cannot sustain it. When we make another person responsible for our core sense of worth, we place an unfair/unholy burden on them they were never meant to carry. That responsibility belongs to you and your relationship with the Divine.
1) Love God with everything we are; and
2) Love others AS we love ourselves.
2) Love others AS we love ourselves.
The thing about this: Jesus doesn't just preach this, he lives this out in its fullest. This makes it rather important for those of us who want to become MORE like Jesus.
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH COOKIES AND COOKIE JARS?
The early church father (and one of my personal favorites) Gregory of Nyssa imagined humanity as vessels: souls fashioned intentionally (because we are no accidents) as containers meant to receive good. These vessels are jars created purposefully with the freedom to expand as they are filled. Therefore, the more good that is poured in, the greater our capacity becomes to hold and to give goodness.
We are not static containers. we grow. We are also not created to remain empty.
My Methodist roots (because I am a Methodist Pastor and Deacon) has this beautiful concept called sanctifying grace. God's grace shapes us. By God's grace we mature and grow in our ability to love and be loved. We are becoming all that God intended for us to be.
But there is a caution embedded in the image of a jar.
If we repeatedly fill our jar with resentment, unhealed wounds, chronic stress, or destructive patterns, cracks form. Capacity diminishes. Space that could hold goodness becomes occupied by pain. Just imagine if our cookie jar was filled with rocks instead.
And over time, what leaks out of us is not love, but exhaustion, defensiveness, or withdrawal.
If, however, we work hard to remain as an empty jar, we will never be fully whole/complete. We were created for community. We were created for relationships.
So we can ask ourselves frequently:
- How full is my jar?
- What am I allowing to fill it?
- How am I unintentionally keeping it empty?
- Do I know when to open myself to receive?
- Do I recognize when I need space to heal?
At the deepest level, your jar is filled by God. Other people can contribute to your jar, but they cannot sustain it. When we make another person responsible for our core sense of worth, we place an unfair/unholy burden on them they were never meant to carry. That responsibility belongs to you and your relationship with the Divine.
The Cookie Jar of Relationships
Every relationship is build on love, and love requires vulnerability, trust, and patience. Now imagine that every interaction we have places a cookie in someone else's jar, or removes a cookie from theirs.
When you:
But when you:
Relationships don't fracture in a moment. They erode over time when jars are repeatedly emptied without being replenished.
Now, you can also produce not-so-good cookies when you are only half-hearted invested in a relationship. When you offer insincere apologies. When you have no clear boundaries in place. When you treat a relationship as a transaction.
These not-so-good cookies offer the illusion of filling another jar, but they do not carry the same weight. Over time the relationship deteriorates similarly as if you were taking cookies. Often-times these become toxic relationships.
WHOLENESS MEANS AWARENESS
Emotional and spiritual wholeness means recognizing that your interactions (intentionally or not) either expand someone's capacity or depletes it. It also means recognizing your own limits.
If your jar is nearly empty, you cannot sustainably give cookies to others. You will begin to grow resentment rather than generosity. From obligation rather than love. Margins matter.
Margins are what ensures you have enough cookies to offer them freely. And here's the hard truth...
Only you are responsible for providing margins to keep your jar full. No one else is responsible for filling your jar. Others may add or remove cookies through their behaviors, but the filling of your soul (your identity, worth, belatedness) is not their job. That responsibility exists between you and God.
When we demand that another person makes us whole, we are, in effect, taking cookies from their jar to patch our own emptiness. That is unsustainable. It places weight that they were never designed to carry. Healthy love is shared from fullness, not extracted from need.
When you:
- Keep a promise
- Listen without interrupting
- Speaking truth with kindness
- Show up consistently
- Apologize sincerely
But when you:
- Break trust
- Dismiss feelings
- Weaponize vulnerability
- Avoid having hard conversations
- Carry unspoken expectations
Relationships don't fracture in a moment. They erode over time when jars are repeatedly emptied without being replenished.
Now, you can also produce not-so-good cookies when you are only half-hearted invested in a relationship. When you offer insincere apologies. When you have no clear boundaries in place. When you treat a relationship as a transaction.
These not-so-good cookies offer the illusion of filling another jar, but they do not carry the same weight. Over time the relationship deteriorates similarly as if you were taking cookies. Often-times these become toxic relationships.
WHOLENESS MEANS AWARENESS
Emotional and spiritual wholeness means recognizing that your interactions (intentionally or not) either expand someone's capacity or depletes it. It also means recognizing your own limits.
If your jar is nearly empty, you cannot sustainably give cookies to others. You will begin to grow resentment rather than generosity. From obligation rather than love. Margins matter.
Margins are what ensures you have enough cookies to offer them freely. And here's the hard truth...
Only you are responsible for providing margins to keep your jar full. No one else is responsible for filling your jar. Others may add or remove cookies through their behaviors, but the filling of your soul (your identity, worth, belatedness) is not their job. That responsibility exists between you and God.
When we demand that another person makes us whole, we are, in effect, taking cookies from their jar to patch our own emptiness. That is unsustainable. It places weight that they were never designed to carry. Healthy love is shared from fullness, not extracted from need.
SOMETIMES YOU NEED A LID
There will be seasons when protecting your jar is necessary. When you put a lid on your jar, this doesn't mean you stop loving. It means you are intentionally creating space for repair.
This might involve:
Remember this: boundaries are not rejection. They are healthy stewardship. They preserve your capacity to love well over time.
Healthy relationships are rarely going to be perfectly balanced in every moment. There'll be seasons where you will lean heavily on others. There'll be seasons where you become the steady support.
Resilience grows when both people are aware of the season they are in, and when both are committed to replenishing what has been given. Highly intimate relationships are formed over years of exchanged cookies.
As you receive the love of God, your capacity increases. As you care for your margins, you preserve what has been given. As you love intentionally, you help others grow their capacity as well.
Over time, the kind of cookies you give, and the care you take with your own jar, will determine the depth and durability of your relationships.
This might involve:
- Clarifying expectations or asking them to be clarified.
- Naming harmful patterns that exist in a relationship (or within your own self).
- Setting firmer boundaries when needed.
- Creating temporary distance in order to gain clarity, to discern, or to heal the relationship.
Remember this: boundaries are not rejection. They are healthy stewardship. They preserve your capacity to love well over time.
Healthy relationships are rarely going to be perfectly balanced in every moment. There'll be seasons where you will lean heavily on others. There'll be seasons where you become the steady support.
Resilience grows when both people are aware of the season they are in, and when both are committed to replenishing what has been given. Highly intimate relationships are formed over years of exchanged cookies.
As you receive the love of God, your capacity increases. As you care for your margins, you preserve what has been given. As you love intentionally, you help others grow their capacity as well.
Over time, the kind of cookies you give, and the care you take with your own jar, will determine the depth and durability of your relationships.
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