(I was introduced to this strategy for handling rejection by Anne Hamilton. Thank you, Anne!)
The holiday season is often a time when feelings of rejection are at their highest. One reason rejection is so painful is because it produces the emotion of shame along with a sense of abandonment. Shame feels miserable. Being alone in rejection is horrible. It drives to us perform for approval, appease people, and/or withdraw.
We all face rejection and we all struggle with it. I want to offer a strategy that I find hugely helpful when dealing with rejection. This is a strategy, so there are steps.
First things first
The pain (shame) of rejection makes it difficult to willingly engage with it, so ask the Lord to take the pain so that you can bear the memory or the feelings. That is first and very important. The more work you have done on your heart beliefs and vows, the better. Don’t forget to do that work. (See books The Quiet Heart and The Performing Heart). Again, ask the Lord to take the pain.
Now that the pain is manageable
As you apply this strategy, do not seek healing from rejection. Sounds weird, I know. This strategy is not about being healed from the trauma of rejection. Because rejection is so painful we want relief, so we turn to inner healing. There is a place for that, of course. I am NOT saying to not seek healing from the trauma of rejection. I AM saying that this strategy is about removing the FEAR of rejection so when it strikes, you can be restored to your right mind.
The fear of rejection: Two kinds
Before it happens:
When we fear rejection— and who doesn’t? —we try to keep it from happening by performing, people pleasing, or isolating. You may try to head off rejection by rejecting others before they can reject you.
We may try to avoid self-rejection by being perfect, making no mistakes, being super successful, or super helpful. Or we embrace rejection and live there feeling like a helpless victim. In other words, we give up.
Most of us bounce between all of these attempts to manage the fear of rejection.
Once it happens:
Once rejected, we are scared to connect with the pain of rejection. We try to manage the pain by ignoring it, distracting ourselves, fighting the memory off, denying its importance, and denying our feelings. We try to minimize its effect by becoming angry. We may try to off-load our emotions by picking fights with other people. We may seek healing for the traumas we have suffered, but find that healing from rejection is very difficult because rejection just keeps happening.
What to do
Here is what I want you to do. Take your rejection (Gather it up. Remember you have asked Him to take the pain) and go sit with Jesus. Go sit with the Jesus who was despised and rejected and abandoned by humanity.
He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Isaiah 53:3
Just sit with him in the rejection. Don’t go to Him for healing (Not at this time). Don’t try to escape or manage your feelings of rejection. Simply sit with him. You can talk about it, but try to just sit there quietly.
As you join him, you are entering into the sufferings of Christ. You are joining him in rejection and just being with him, two rejected people. Two people who know what it is to be misunderstood, mistreated, unwanted. Two people who know what it is to be dishonored and rejected by men.
Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. Romans 8:17-18
Do this for as many days as you can. I try to sit in rejection with Jesus a few minutes every day. As I sit with him, asking him to take the pain so I can bear it, my fear of rejection that drives performing, people pleasing, and isolating becomes less and less. I gain control in the best possible way. I become self-controlled not other-controlled. As I sit with Jesus, the Rejected One, the opinions and actions of others lose their grip. I am restored to myself, calmed and settled; the dust of rejection shaken off of my feet.
The positive and the negative
In the western church, we have been taught the positive side of our redemption, but little has been taught about how to navigate the negative side. This makes it difficult to simply accept that rejection is bound into our experience on the earth. It is just a part of our walk.
The day after I tried this strategy for myself, I was given a vision of Jesus being beaten by the Romans soldiers. (See John 19). Every time that whip fell on his back, the Lord asked me what I was seeing. I said, “Lord, I see rejection.”
Now I want you to think about Jesus being beaten, insulted, spit upon. What was the message being conveyed? Wasn’t he being punished for not fitting in, for not being what they wanted, for speaking up, for telling the truth, for being a nuisance and a threat to the powers that be? Isn’t that rejection?
I was taught that the stripes were for physical healing, and I am not against that teaching, but I think it was much more about rejection.
And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. Mark 8:31
We have a Savior who knows rejection. He has lived it.
When I go to Jesus to share in his sufferings, we are always seated on the edge of the world, looking at the stars. We are just being together, his arm around me and my arm around him, leaning into each other, not talking, just looking and being, two rejected people who are not alone and not afraid of rejection.
Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:2
God bless you,
Susan
