How I Learned to Handle Rejection in a God-Honoring Way

Please enjoy this guest post from Breana (@ohbreedle on Instagram):

Recently, I asked a newly married couple how they saw the Gospel symbolized in their marriage. Through tears, my friend expressed that life with her husband was helping her to understand more clearly what it meant to be “fully known and fully loved”. Behind the closed doors of their home, she was completely herself: sometimes quirky, sometimes moody, sometimes homely. But despite seeing her inside and out, good and bad, her husband continued to walk with her in love every day; he continued to choose her. Fully known, fully loved.

Not long after that conversation, I experienced painful rejection from a potential future spouse, and, funny as it may sound, it was my married friend’s comment about feeling “fully known and fully loved” in her marriage that helped me process the pain of my rejection.

If part of the purpose of marriage is to symbolize Christ’s unconditional love for his Church, then it shouldn’t surprise us that rejection hurts the way it does. A good, healthy marriage relationship shows us, “I know you, faults and all, and I’m not going anywhere.” But rejection says the opposite: “I’ve seen you for who you really are, and I’m walking away.” If marriage was meant to point us to the joy and security of being chosen and loved, then rejection nudges us toward the fear and insecurity of not being cared for or pursued.

Painful though it may be, the experience of rejection is an opportunity to reflect on Christ’s acceptance and appreciate it anew. In the same way that the word “big” has no real meaning unless you’ve experienced “small” and we fail to appreciate light until we’ve been in total darkness, we are not likely to appreciate God’s acceptance of us until we’ve understood rejection. I don’t think this means that everyone has to experience rejection personally in order to appreciate how it adds shades of richness to the reality of God’s acceptance. Similarly, not everyone has to experience marriage personally to gain from its symbolism. Regardless of our personal experiences, both acceptance and rejection work together to teach us something about God that is worth meditating on.

Here are some ways you might consider processing rejection in a God-honoring way:

1. Give yourself permission to feel the pain. Experiencing pain in the face of rejection is entirely normal. God wired our hearts for relationship, love, and acceptance; it’s why we love our dogs (they always come back to us), and it’s why we long for marriage. Taking time to feel the pain of rejection honors and makes space for this aspect of how God created us.

2. Take your feelings to God. In a recent sermon, my pastor helpfully made the distinction between complaining about God and complaining to God. Complaining about God generally does not stem from faith and is not honoring to God, whereas complaining to Him does come from a heart of faith and honors Him. It’s totally fine to express the pain of rejection to a friend or in a journal, but include God in the list of those you complain to.

3. We have permission to feel our pain, and we have permission to talk to God about it, but we can’t stop there. The Psalms provide a model for navigating our pain and questions in a way that honors God. Like the Psalmists in Psalm 13, 22, 42, and others, we ought to take time to lift our eyes above our momentary circumstances and gaze with hope on our more ultimate and eternal realities. We ought to remember God’s love, meditate on his promises, and find renewed strength. The discipline of looking to the eternal rather than the temporary doesn’t completely remove the pain, but it does soften the blow and allows us to experience pain in a way that honors God.

4. Don’t identify yourself with the rejection you’ve experienced. The stories we tell ourselves matter. I’ve heard friends say things like, “Men just don’t find me beautiful.” or “Girls like her never go for guys like me.” These sorts of statements have a surprisingly powerful effect on our minds and ultimately shape our realities, much like self-fulfilling prophecies. We can become utterly convinced of an entire narrative based on a handful of hard experiences. I don’t mean to imply a sort of toxic positivity where we refuse to accept the facts. It may very well be that you’ve been rejected multiple times because of your waistline, personality, appearance, disability, or some other factor. But the language we choose matters. I’ve learned to say things like, “It looks like I wasn’t his cup of tea.” or “He just wasn’t interested in me romantically.” Statements like this allow me to be honest about the facts without assuming it will be my experience every time.

Although we may not get to walk down the aisle as young as we would have liked or with the

person we dreamed of, we will sit down at a marriage feast as the bride of the one who died to

have us as His own. Whether accepted or rejected here on earth, let’s lift our eyes to the One

who, as Isaiah 62 tells us, rejoices over us the way a groom rejoices over his bride.

-Breana

(@ohbreedle on Instagram)