Rejection

The hardest part of rejecting is being rejected. Webster's dictionary defines rejected as "the act of refusing to accept."

When someone rejects me, the first feeling is not of understanding, peace or compassion. It's fear. There is a message in rejection that is hard to miss. At some point that person decided to not accept me. There are many reasons why I decide to reject things or I decide to not allow things. But when someone is standing in front of you loving me one moment, then walking away without a look back another, whether it is a friend, a lover or a stranger, the message is clear: I do not accept you anymore.

A knife to the gut, the immediate following question is, why? The desire to understand to comprehend the rejection to make it about anything other than a simple decision to not love, to not be near, to not share in the future with me is a neon sign of insurmountable proportion. No voice is louder than the voice of silence. It is a dismissal, an indifference that communicates a lack of space in the heart of the other. Gone is the soft tenderness and desire to love. Was it me, was it you, was it someone else? No answer matters though. No justification, no reasoning, no defense takes away the pain, the message, the clear indication of lack of love. No hope is left when there is nothing to work with.

Inevitably the other messages come in. Straight from rejection to worth the path of the heart goes.

I have long been a victim to the opinions of men. Whether friend or foe, whether lover or enemy, whether family or coworker, the most important thing I could always do was be loved. I may not think I am okay, but that doesn't matter as long as you think I am. My heart regarding myself became entangled, than dependent on the feelings of others. If you hated me, I hated you, if you loved me, I loved me, and needed you. Manic in the need for someone to tell me I'm worth sticking around for, I cared more about filling my need than knowing the freedom of my Father.

In this scenario, accepting failure, mistakes and the inevitable heartbreak other's sustain on my behalf is more terrifying than base jumping without a parachute. There is a quote from Pride and Prejudice that epitomizes this fear. The hero, Mr. Darcy is looking at Elizabeth Bennett, the heroine and states "My good opinion once lost, is lost forever." There is no where to hide in that. If this is the encounter I have with others, I am lost.

I can make no amends for the mistakes I make, I can make no reparations for the time lost, the hurts caused, and when I can no longer control what someone thinks of me and still, I watch them reject me, there is a free fall of heart that sinks to no where. I deserve no real love, can require no real love, but the desire for it will never go away. Especially when the person walking away is someone I admire, the message only gets deeper, harder, more pronounced. I must not be worth the goodness I thought I had hoped for, I had once possessed.

John 12: 42-46 states, "Nevertheless many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God. And Jesus cried out and said, 'He who believes in Me, does not believe in Me but in Him who sent Me. ^"He who sees Me sees the One who sent Me. I have come as Light into the world, so that everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness.'"

Jesus was the chosen one of God, I am a chosen one of Jesus, thus I am a chosen one of God, as we all are. To reject myself, to let men take the place of determining my worth is to put out the light He came to bring. It's to call Jesus a liar and a lunatic. There is a voice that is bigger, that is more important, a voice that puts all else to shame. A living sacrifice that came down and spoke worth when I was beating my wife, killing my best friend, stealing from the poor and spitting on my mother. There was one that still came to save me and no matter what any other message sends, that message has to be more powerful. It has to be the only one that matters. If it doesn't, every time someone betrays me, hurts me, every time I hurt another, I betray another, I will have to hang myself in a field with my 30 pieces of silver lying below me.

Grace is imperative to my life. I cannot pay for the mistakes I have made, towards Him, or another. No one can also repay me for the mistakes they have made. Neither have to be made though, they already were. A payment was made, a sacrifice offered. If that voice does not become louder, more true, more relevant than any other, the roller-coaster of the rest of my life is going to be hell on earth.

I may be dismissed easily on this earth for my sins, but in a different kingdom, in a different realm, one more powerful, more permanent than this one, my failings are part of a greater story, a weaving of a tapestry I can't see in fullness. I know my need for grace and my recognition, my request of it, my desperation to hear a bigger, deeper voice than those that surround me, that is the aroma of beauty, it's my sacrifice of me in response to a sacrifice for me.

I have to choose to live a life based sole on the heart of Another. If I don't, if I keep turning my heart back over to others who are as fallible as I, I will never survive, at least my heart won't. I can't live for the approval of men, if I do, I will end up rejecting the only thing that matter, the only One that matters. My heart will eventually die and I will end up lost in a world of hate and disappointment.

There is a line in a Lifehouse song I have loved forever:

"You didn't know I had planned to go this far, traded your worth for these scars, for your only company. Don't believe the lies that you they have told to you, not one word was true, you're all right, you're all right, you're all right..."

Messages will be sent for a lifetime. I will send some and others will send some my way. This world seeks to destroy, to maim, to lie. My worth is not built into whether or not someone else determines it. It was already determined 2000 years ago by the life and love of the One that still lives and breathes my name everyday. See, I'm His favorite. I'm His beloved, His heartbeat, His joy. When I kick dirt in the face of my friend, He never stops loving me. He just cleans off the other, picks them up, heals them with a touch while I watch. Then He turns to me, tells me how much He loves me. I bend, then break, begging for a forgiveness from everyone within earshot and I stop kicking dirt. But even if I don't, He still loves me.

No matter how loved or unloved I am here, now, nothing takes that away from me. No one can tell the One that died for me I am irredeemable, unlovable, or unaccepted. You can't reject me when I have already been chosen... at least by who it matters the most to be chosen by.