Ripples of Rejection.

I’m sitting at the beach watching the waves come in. They touch the soft sand and retreat back, leaving tiny little etches along the shore. Leaving little trinkets of the ocean and taking some back. This is kind of how my heart feels from the ripples of rejection. Pieces of me scattered here and there. Some stay and some dissapear forever.

I love the ocean. It’s so funny because growing up, probably even still at points, I’ve hated the stickiness of the salty sea water, the sand that gets everywhere!! Who else feels me? 🙋🏼‍♀️😂 But, I grew up on the ocean, in big boats and small boats, endless beach days.. It’s a part of me that is engrained in every part of my soul. I don’t know what it is, but it calls to me. (okay, who just sang Moana? LOL 🤣) But it does!

It’s beautiful, It’s peaceful, it’s mysterious and scary. The smell is cleansing to my lungs. The sound is soothing to my spirit. It’s a place that I feel the most at peace. A place where I can’t see God, but I can. In the water as it comes and goes. The tiny signs of life in a single little seashell. The rocks and all their forms. I see him in his creation every where that I look.

It’s a place where I go at my happiest, and at my most painful moments in life. Where even in the loudness of waves crashing, it’s also the quietest. Where I can tell the Lord everything on my heart, without having to utter a single word, but through the painful tears of my broken heart. It’s the place I feel I can relate to the most.

I once heard a quote many years ago that has stuck with me.

“She loved the ocean because every time the waves left the shore, they always came back.” ~ author unknown.

This quote can define exactly how I have felt almost my whole life.

Rejected.

This is a subject I have avoided for months. Literally, months. Since last summer to be exact. I have written, deleted, rewritten and deleted again.. I can’t seem to just put the words down. Because I know, once I start writing, the years of pain will pour out of me and I will not be able to stop it. I mean who really wants to deal with rejection any way?

God has had me on this journey of uprooting a painful past, tilling soil and planting new seeds. Most of this journey has been painful, scary, hopeful, and joyful all in one. But when he touched on this subject… Probably the single most core issue of my life, I said “NOPE!” And I took a break from writing. Some of it was not wanting to deal with it all together. Some of it was trying to find ways to tell my story without hurting others involved. And some, well okay, just avoidance of the whole horrible feelings altogether.

I do not wish to have the thoughts and memories and feelings stirred to life again. Sometimes, it’s all well and great that God is dealing with all these things, but I am also so tired of feeling! YUK! It’s like that’s all I do sometimes. At the end of the day, I can choose to keep stuffing it away and covering it up and living with the nagging pain, or i can let God heal it.

The Lord, in our own wanting and needing to heal, wants to heal us!

Amen! But he is not a God who does things half way. He always brings them full circle and to completion. Another Amen! Also, yikes! Full Circle would mean, digging up graves. Possibly confronting the ones that hurt me. Forgiving fully, and then releasing them for good. I mean it all sounds really great 😵‍💫 But it’s a process, and a painful one. One that I have managed to run from, doge, skip over, and avoid most of my life.

I sit alone at times and beg God to heal this pain that runs so deep. Pain that has managed to run my entire life for nearly 37 years now, but yet, not wanting to go through the process. Anyone else ever feel this way about something?

But as the ocean calls out its beautiful song to the creatures of sea, to the birds in the air; He calls to me.

So, finally, I am ready. It has taken me years of taking abuse, struggle upon personal struggle, losing someone so very precious to my heart, and the desperation to just be whole again.. But here I am Lord. I am ready.

Growing up I was the difficult child, the one with the temper tantrum’s, the too sensitive one… The problem child. Don’t let this fool you, I was trouble. But looking back, having children of my own and seeing their behaviors and knowing its a call for something; I look back at that little girl that I was and I see a little girl that just wanted to be loved. Needed to be loved.

My parents divorced and us kids walked through some really hard stuff. All of us kids faced some sort of rejection and abandonment from our parents split. Mine happen to hit really hard and showed in my behavior. In my eyes I had a really great relationship with a particular parent. Without sharing too much detail and to protect their privacy I’ll just say things happened that left me feeling like I had no place in their life. I was too much of a problem. Like I wan’t important enough. Maybe that wasn’t the case but it’s how I felt, and I didn’t know how to deal with that emotion other than to act out and carry it over into bad relationships.

I had then faced more trauma.

Some trauma by a boy I went to school with. Trauma that defiles, and steals things from you. It left me feeling even more worthless as a young teen. When I told my parents, well, there were excuses and honestly I think they didn’t know what to do or how to deal with me at that point. My acting out at that point was out of control and my parents didn’t know how to deal with it. Looking back, I know that now. But at the time, well at the time, it ripped gaping holes in me.

Instead of dealing with issues they threw medication and counselor upon counselor at the issue, They even put me in a foster home for a weekend hoping it would straiten me up. Please hear me, I love my parents and they have been overall great parents. I think they were in a place that they didn’t know what to do. Maybe it’s fair to say I didn’t know how to ask for what I truly needed. Whatever the case may be, fast forward to today and I’m trying to untangle the mess of emotions and brokenness that all come back to this continuous rejection from the people that I needed to love me.

I have spent most of my life looking to be accepted.

To be loved and wanted. All of those emotions stemming from rejection. Staying in relationships too long because I thought it was love. People pleasing so that they will like me and stay. Even with my own family at times. I see it come out in my house work, in these expectations. Expectations are huge! If I don’t parent my kids well enough, someone will tell me that I’m not good enough, if my house isn’t perfect all the time, I’m not doing a good enough job. If I’m not making x amount of money, I’m not good enough. All of these scenarios have played out, have been said to me, and have been done to me.

These things have taken that hole built by rejection long ago, and over the years have widened and deepened that wound so badly that even when I have a good thing, I don’t know what to do with that feeling. It’s so foreign to me.

My last relationship ending was a tipping point. The insecurities and pain from my past had done enough damage. I prayed for God to just heal it all. Prayed for him to send someone that wouldn’t give up on me. That didn’t care about anything but my heart. no expectations. just my heart.

I just wanted to be loved.

As I mourned yet another relationship, although this one very different, but kind of hurt more because there was no toxic part of the relationship. There was nothing bad other than timing because my past had finally caught up with me, and I wasn’t ready. This time there was good, but I didn’t know how to accept the good and I didn’t know how to accept being loved. At the end of the day, He didn’t think it was worth working through. No hard feelings. But also, ouch. HARD pill to swallow…

Rejected, again.

Then, one evening, when I felt as though there was no hope of healing left for my depth of brokenness, in the darkness of that night, tears streaming down my face; the Lord whispered to my heart.

But I love you.

“Yes, God, I know but…..”. But what? But it’s not good enough…???

The truth was, it wasn’t good enough.

My human heart wanted fulfillment from things and people in this world that could not and would not ever be able to to fill the void of what I needed.

My heart wanted people and things to heal the hurts that have gripped my soul for decades now.

But nothing and no one will ever be able to heal those deep chasms.

Except, God can.

I’ve allowed God in in so many places. I’ve let him change, heal, fix, and do so much work in my life. But this area. This area was sacred. Its been a wound that no-one gets to touch. Often ebbing and flowing with the feelings of joy or sorrow. It’s been such a vital part of me I don’t know how to live apart from it.

I’ve spent nearly 37 years trying to satisfy my soul with people and things and not fully realizing that only God will ever be able to truly satisfy those desires.

These are the ripples of rejection.

Our souls were designed with the built in need for our creator. I love God. I always want to grow and deepen that relationship with him. But why wasn’t he enough for me?

Well, He wasn’t enough because my focus was just on my pain. It was on my rejection. It was on the need to fill the void rather than the actual void itself.

I never stopped to sit and actually ask myself what I truly needed.

I needed to be loved.

All along, I have been loved. Deeply loved.

Had my focus been on God every step of the way, He would have been entirely ENOUGH! He IS the bread of life, and He DOES quench every thirst, and boy is He ever so sufficient in ALL areas.

He is enough.

I’ve been working on changing my mind set. This is such a hard thing to do because the flesh wants what the flesh wants; people, things, success… But as I’ve said earlier, our souls were designed to be one with our creator and so we constantly yearn for that oneness with God.

Sadly, we often fill those desires with things of this world. Things that are just empty promises. People who are just other humans that have the frailty of the human heart. We do not have the capacity to fulfill and replenish and heal as God does. So, at the end of the day, all those things and people and expectations just leave us empty, broken, and rejected.

How many relationships do I need to walk though, both friendships and partners; I mean, how many times do I need to listen to others opinions and have it cut so deep. How many times do I need to fail at things and be disappointed… When will enough be enough?

Before I realize…. All that I seek is found in Him.

I wish I could say that months of counseling and refocusing on God has magically taken all this away. And sometimes God does work that way. But with these deep wounds, he takes his time. stripping layer upon layer. Like the waves of the ocean on rocks or a piece of sea glass. It takes years of waves crashing, flowing and eroding the outer layers. Leaving in its wake a smooth soft surface. A perfect and beautiful little trinket.

I wrote a previous blog post last year called Waves. You can find that here. It talks about learning to love the storms that are meant to change and strengthen us. Meant to cleanse and heal us.

That is where I am at. Another wound. Another layer. The deepest one. But He is here. Stripping back the layers of my soul, digging up the root. Preparing for something new.

Friend, if you’re feeling rejected, or hurt or abandoned. Don’t keep throwing things of this world at it. No amount of money, no person, no thing will ever satisfy. Go to the source that gives you all that you need. He’s waiting for you too.

“Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”

John 6:26, 35-37

Ripples of Rejection