When I first started counseling after the divorce, Dr. Runyeon began working with me on boundaries. 

He likened my heart and soul to a castle.

He pointed out that there is an outer courtyard, and there is the inner vestibule. There are rooms on the rising floors, and there is a tower at the very top. 

He also made serious mention of the mote and drawbridge. These, he said, will become important as you begin to clarify for yourself who does, and – he emphasized – who does not, belong in your life.

With this tool I began recognizing relationship dynamics, and boundaries which, as an adult child of alcoholic parents, had never been clear to me. I didn’t even know they existed. But I was ready to understand, and to do the work required to see clearly, and to know what’s true. 

These sessions were twenty five years ago, and they serve me still. Through the years I have reconnected with parts of myself that I unconsciously discarded in an effort to appease others. I now know to listen to my intuitive self without ignoring what it tells me. As a result, my life today looks very different than it did before. 

I am on the path back to who God created me to be. And the people who are in my life support the authentic me as passionately as I support them.

In thinking about this process, and the intersecting pieces, I’m reminded of the gimmel ring. A gimmel ring is a ring with two or three hoops or links that fit together to form one complete ring. The name gimmel comes from Latin gemellus, twin, via Old French. They were known as joint rings in Elizabethan England.

These separate but united rings remind me of the pieces of myself that are designed by our Creator to fit together perfectly. Remove one section, and I am not “all here.”

But link them together as they are designed, and the one ring is perfectly complete. 

My goal is to be wholly present and as complete as the beautiful gimmel ring.

And I shall wear it from the courtyard to the tower in the castle of my heart