Her eyes were bloodshot as she sat across from me looking down at her hands. I allowed the silence to sit between us as I prayed faintly.
”I don’t know where to start…” she said.
”How about with what made you ask to meet?”
”I’m tired,” she said as she sighed. “I feel like nothing I do is ever good enough for my husband.”
”Why do you feel that way?”
”I found out yesterday that Charles has been cheating on me with a woman at his job. I met her last year when I made a surprise stop by his office and she was there. They were laughing in a too-familiar way when I walked in and I noticed an immediate shift in their behavior when they saw me. I felt something was off then… but I told myself I was overreacting.”
”Did you ask Charles about her?”
”No. I didn’t have to. He cheated on me twice before we got married and at least three timed that I know of in our ten years of marriage.”
I sat in stunned silence as she shared the deeply painful twists and turns of his infidelities.
”Yolanda, why have you stayed?”
”I mean… what would I do? Charles is the only man who ever wanted me. My own father abandoned me when I was in elementary school. How could I leave the one person who hasn’t left me?”
I knew at that moment that it wasn’t just Charles’ infidelities that left Yolanda feeling broken. It was how her father’s choice to leave her as a child left her believing that her husband’s emotional abandonment was better than her father’s physical abandonment. And, sadly, rejection has taught many of us to similarly devalue our worth.
When we get married, we don’t walk into marriage with a clean slate of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. We show up pre-programmed by past experiences that shaped the way we view ourselves and the people around us. While the logical part of us wants to be able to wipe away the pain of being overlooked, unwanted, and abandoned with the cloth of scripture, I have found that no matter how much you know in your head, that doesn’t make the pain in your heart magically disappear. And you know why? You’re human.
Human beings feel pain no matter how much we’re told we shouldn’t.
Human beings feel pain no matter how much we’re told the love of Christ should make us immune to our humanity.
When people we care about reject us, especially in our formative years, their words, actions, and decisions teach us to believe something is wrong with us. A belief that can express itself in one of two ways in our marriage.
Explosion
When we explode into anger, our rejection pain becomes visible to others in the form of anger; fighting, yelling, and hurting people. This rejection expression is easily condemned as wrong. But, while it is viewed as vicious, we can also explode into a rejection expression that seems virtuous; hyper-achievement.
When we explode into ambition, people can admire us for being successful. But, when our ambition is fueled by rejection pain, there is no lasting fulfillment in our achievement. The same rejection root causing anger, fighting, and yelling can cause determination, dissatisfaction, and a relentless pursuit for success.
Implosion
When we implode, our rejection pain takes the form of self-harm; drug and alcohol addictions, depression, suicidal ideation, and even submitting to the abuse of another person out of fear of being abandoned. This rejection expression is usually the type that makes people shake their heads at us in disgust because they can’t understand why we keep hurting ourselves. But, at the root of this expression is the same pain of being abandoned, humiliated, discarded, embarrassed, and unwanted.
Whether you explode externally or implode internally, there is hope and an opportunity to heal by realizing a seemingly paradoxical truth; rejection is gift.
When it happens, it doesn’t feel like a gift. But that’s because pain is simply its wrapping paper. The gift is on the inside. And what is that gift? Every rejection you have experienced contains lessons that can make you better if you learn them; lessons about yourself, about others, and even about God. I’ve spent the last year studying, praying, and writing these insights in my new book, The Gift of Rejection, because my life is proof that even the deepest rejection can become a springboard to purpose when surrendered to the power of God.
As paradoxical as it seems, rejection is a gift that can make you better if you open it, or bitter if you don’t. No matter how “over it” you may think you are, pain works its way out of us in ways we don’t always recognize. But God is a healer. And he will help you O.P.E.N. the gift so you can truly heal.
The Gift of Rejection combines research, practical insights, and Biblical teaching to offer a new, unconventional vantage point from which to view rejection; instead of being a pain to heal, it becomes a teacher to learn from.