When we feel rejection
For me, an unexpected move in the middle of my eighth grade year started a chain reaction of soul crushing rejections. I was LOVING life. I had everything a thirteen year old girl could ask for. Friends, great grades, activities I enjoyed, and physical health. Then my parents told me we were leaving our beautiful home and happy neighborhood to a place where we knew no one, I was devastated. That move was to a new state was a catalyst for all of my future anxiety-fueled ailments; life could shift unexpectedly and at anytime.
Not only did I lose the friends I loved (who threw me a surprise birthday/going away party which is HUGELY my love language), but I lost the dreams I had for my life. I felt invisible. I was at a new school and earned my first detention (me?!?! detention?!?! Why? Because some girl asked me to hold the door for her in the bathroom. Umm… how was I supposed to know that was a signal for being a lookout while the one inside is smoking?) Anyway, I was now repeating classes I had taken years before in my old school, and girls were pushing me into lockers and threatening to beat me up after school. I retreated. I started believing the lies that I just didn’t matter.
Fast forward to a marriage that ended in divorce which was probably the nail in the coffin sealing the belief I was not worthy. I felt unloveable. I was discarded trash, and a second-class citizen. My self-worth was dead. Non-existent. And my physical health had paid a heavy toll for that negative thinking and codependent compensations. It permeated every area of my quest for human connection and relationship.
We all approach rejection differently depending on our personalities and our past trauma. But I believe it hits us all in the very same place. Our inner child.
Okay, okay, I know that might sound a little psycho-babblish, but trust me she is in there! And her thoughts and feelings are VALID. Opening our hearts to embrace the girl that once was in us and to really listen to her is the key to breaking the hold that past rejections can have on us. Listening to the small voice and what she has to say is freeing. She has been silent for so long; whether we have silenced her or it has been the heavy hand of others in our lives slapped across her mouth. But it is healthy to explore the reasons we have silenced our inmost thoughts and feelings. Over time we realize our self-worth has been based on the actions of others and the lies we have believed.
When we realize we are powerless to the things that have happened to us (or are still happening to us) because we cannot control anything or anyone around us, that is the key to breakthrough. We will always be disappointed in life. We will be left, hurt, used, abused, rejected and abandoned, but we don’t need to be afraid of it. The trauma that has happened to us and has been afflicted by the hurting and broken people in our lives actually has NOTHING to do with our self-worth. We need to go deeper to see where truth actually is based. There is a deep bedrock that we can count on. It is there, solid, and never wavering. When we base our thinking and value on the shifting sand that is above the bedrock of truth, we will always feel like we are in flux. Nothing will seem solid or consistent. Nothing will give us stability.
So here is that bedrock of truth. We are not an accident. We are not invisible. We were created for a purpose. We are beautiful and loved by a God who knows all of our history, our genetic makeup, our traumas and past hurts. They have shaped us, but they do not define our worth. He has collected every tear that we have ever shed, and has good things for us. The pain that we have endured can be used to create a loving, empathetic and self-sacrificing version of ourselves that has something to offer. In order for something to bloom, the seed has to die.
We may not see the good plan that God has for us in the muck and the mire, but if we can at least believe that God’s word does not return void, then we know He has a good plan for us. We can rest in the knowledge that He will work together ALL things in our lives for good. He is faithful to complete the good work that He has begun in each and every one of us. It starts with forgiving ourselves and loving the beautiful and innocent child within; watching her blossom into something beautiful and new. Just what she was created for.