Life without limits sounds exciting, but limits are a gift. Limits are a guide that points us to our greatest potential. Without limits, we become overloaded. To protect our
potential, we need spiritual, mental, and emotional margins.
“Emotional overload saps our strength, paralyzes our resolve, and maximizes our vulnerability, leaving the door open for even further margin erosion.” 3
Learning to be strong ultimately means learning to live within our human limitations. When Paul exposes us to his ongoing struggle with his “thorn,” he points us to a truth we often ignore—we are at our strongest when we identify where our weaknesses begin. We all struggle with this in ways so profound that we have yet to discover the depths to which this idea affects us. In many ways, we have created a new sense of what it means to be human without realizing that our quest for unlimited resources, unlimited access, and unlimited strength has created an unrealistic expectation of what it means to be human.
We have dehumanized ourselves, giving ourselves a false sense of importance and yet at the same time making ourselves nothing special at all. The world we live in now has unfortunately made it easy for people to ignore their own pain and suffering.
The world we have created continues to make it easier for people to ignore limits, limits that often save us from hurting ourselves beyond healing. Hopelessness is the product of the gradual dehumanization of humanity. When we ignore the limits of our own human capacity, we lack the ability look beyond ourselves for the strength, love, and security found in a relationship with God and a relationship with one another.
When Paul comes to grips with his “thorn,” he makes an assumption that the purpose of the thorn is not to give him pain but to keep him from becoming proud. What if our limits are a gift from God that keeps us mindful of our inability to be totally self-sufficient? What if our proverbial thorns are designed to do exactly what Paul suggests his did, prevent us from the trap of pride that eats away at our humanity? 
For years, I lived an unrealistic life that pushed me well beyond my human limitations, and it resulted in my slowly becoming more and more disconnected from the real me. The most troubling part of living this way is that I had spent so much time chipping away at my own humanity that I began to struggle to see the humanity in others. If I was going to attempt to be something more than human, I expected others to attempt it, too. If I was going to ignore my limits, I fully expected others to push themselves beyond what is human.
The problems we face in our current culture can often be rooted in this very issue. This one is bigger than just me wrestling with characteristics associated with autism, this is about the human insistence on becoming bigger than our boundaries.
When we forget that we are human, we forget that we are human. When we dismiss our own humanity, we create a breeding ground for all sorts of heinous acts against humanity.
We teach ourselves and our children not to feel. We teach ourselves and our children to do away with our basic human instinct to have compassion and empathy for the weak and oppressed.
We teach ourselves and our children to ignore our duty to the world around us.
The absence of boundaries breeds a culture that lacks humility, and a lack of humility always results in a lack of humanity.
From my book I am Strong: The Life and Journey of An Autistic Pastor
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