The BIG R - REJECTION

To reject someone means to refuse to grant that person recognition or acceptance, to discard that individual as being worthless.

Have you ever felt rejected in some of the ways listed below?

• Did you feel rejected because your father or mother was distant and too busy to give you time and attention?

• Being Bullied?

• Struggled at school academically

• Did you feel rejected because your parents favoured your older sister who was prettier or smarter?

• Did you feel rejected because you weren't gifted in athletics and when the class divided up into teams, you were the last one chosen?

• Did you feel rejected because your school clothes were not as nice as the other kids' and they made fun of you?

• Were you fat? Were you plain looking? Did you have acne? Did you have to wear thick glasses?

• Were you passed over for promotion at work because someone else was younger or prettier?

• Did you lose your job because you were getting older?

• Did you date a man for several years, expecting to marry him, only to have him back out?

• Do you feel rejected by your children, after giving your life to raise them and to provide for them the benefits you didn't have?

• Did your husband leave you in midlife for another woman - or worse yet, another man?

Rejection is a painful experience no matter what the cause, and all too often, we don't assign enough blame to the rejecter. We simply agree with his or her evaluation of us and carry a feeling of inferiority or of being "damaged goods" all our lives.

But does rejection really affect our basic worth? If individuals don't appreciate me as a total person because they don't like my looks or my performance, does that mean I really am what they think I am? Am I basically less valuable? Should I permit them to label me for the rest of my life? What if they are wrong?

We need to come to a point in our lives and give up on unrealistic expectations. We make ourselves unhappy by envisioning changes that aren't going to take place. Your mother may never be a warm, loving person. Your father may never tell you verbally that he loves you. Your husband may never be able to let down the walls of protection he has built around himself and share the intimacy you long for. If you spend your life focused on making some other person change, you're wasting your energy. The problem is not yours; the fault does not lie with you. You are not unworthy. Instead, the other person may be incapable of the normal responses of an emotionally healthy person.

To accept the way things are and to admit you would like them to be different are two different matters. Stop pretending that everything's fine and you aren't really hurt when you are. Share your feelings with a trustworthy friend, mentor, counsellor, leader (someone you trust) who will guide you correctly which is important to your emotional and spiritual health.

We will all experience pain in this world as there's no way to escape suffering and as we learn to deal with adversity, our personal character develops. Let rejection not become a hindrance in your life, rather grow through the experience and let it add value to your life and be part of your life story.

Rev. George Matheson was a brilliant young man who was engaged to a woman he loved very much. While studying he was told that he would soon be totally blind as his sight was deteriorating. Just before their wedding, his fiancée told him she wouldn't marry him because she couldn't face life with a blind man. Matheson never married.

But the wounds of his rejection changed lives through his story and famous hymn “O love that will not let me go.”

I end with his famous quote “I will have reached the point of greatest strength once I have learned to wait for hope.”