On Abandonment, Rejection, and Jesus

"The enemy loves to take our rejection and twist it into a raw, irrational fear that God really doesn't have a good plan for us. This fear is a corrupting companion. It replaces the truths we've trusted with hopeless lies." (Uninvited, 129)

When people used to ask me what my greatest fear was, I would always answer "abandonment." I was terrified of being alone, not because I didn't know how to do it, but because I equated it with rejection. If I was alone, I wasn't good enough for anyone. I wasn't worth anyone's time, effort, or love.

And then, one day, my greatest fear was no longer a nightmare to be dreamed in the darkness of night; it was reality. Abandonment was staring me in the face, baring its angry teeth and pushing me deep into the ground. I was alone. I was rejected. I was not enough.

After pole vaulting from one relationship to another, I found myself choosing Jesus over everything else, and I walked the path alone. And the most ironic thing was that it was my choice. I created my own abandonment.

For a good while, I wallowed in my misery, feeling invisible and unwanted. I cried out to the God I had given up everything for to heal me and to fill my heart with something, anything other than despair and emptiness.

I had lost deeply, and I felt it hard.

Soon, His grace fell upon my heart, and I began to realize a solid truth.

Rejection is usually the pathway toward something far greater than we've even imagined.

He has to remove our blindness so we can see Him.

As creatures of habit, we like to bask in the warmth of our comfort zones, all the while unable to imagine life any other way. We like the expected. We like the routine. We like to know what's coming. But it is in that kind of living that we sometimes stop seeking His next steps for us.

Do you see? The rejection we fear is often God's way of clearing our world so we will see what He's got planned for us next. And His way is ALWAYS better than our comfortable existence of routine and ease.

"I say to myself, 'The Lord is my portion; therefore, I will wait for him.' The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord." (Lamentations 3:24-26)