In the bubbling hostility of our social climate today, you may be among the growing number of people who feel, simply, rejected. Perhaps it is not the emotion that you lead with in your day to day relationships, maybe it brews beneath the surface like volcanic magma. Rejection is painful. Maybe you’ve tried all kinds of seemingly positive approaches and though you may have felt a little immediate relief, as time passed, you may have sunk even deeper into despair, thinking you will never find a way out of the soul trap of rejection.
We often accept the false belief that rejection lies in things we simply cannot change such as gender, ethnicity, disability, social class or sexual orientation. Certainly, these realities are often cited as reasons in which people and systems reject people. Discrimination is very real and should be resisted and transformed. But rejection itself is not rooted in these things. Rejection is kept alive by a constant diet of pain and fear.
Strangely, this is good news. Because we certainly can’t change the gifts of our DNA, in fact, we want to learn to celebrate them. And we can’t change other people. But we can change our lives and the way we feel. We can recover from feeling rejected. Not only can we grow beyond that hollow and paralyzing feeling rejection brings, but we can find acceptance, love and healing in the process. Helping others to find the same along the way. We may even be surprised to find that purpose and meaning await us on this journey.
I offer this quote from Jean Vanier, founder of 147 L’Arche communities in 35 countries for people with intellectual disabilities writes:
“People cannot accept their own evil if they do not at the same time feel loved, respected and trusted.”
― Jean Vanier, Community And Growth
People who are rejected often practice rejection as a reaction to the stored pain a lifetime of rejection brings. It can come if the form of perfectionism, shame, impossible expectations and many other forms. Rejection is passed on from generation to generation. The fear of rejection traps us in the pain of isolation, convincing us we are alone, and that it is us against the world. This kind of learned and deeply engrained belief keeps us from reaching out to communities of healing that might be the key to our self-acceptance and the doorway to letting go of painful emotions that block us from our higher selves.
It seems that we need to place ourselves in relationships and communities in which we find love, respect and trust. But these don’t just magically appear. We have to risk looking for them. In my experience, the way I’ve approached this is to become willing to give the very things I crave myself: love, acceptance, healing and trust to some of the most rejected people on the planet before I could open up and receive these things for myself.
For a decade, I followed this mantra (and I still do):
“We are healed by those we reject.” – Jean Vanier – (winner of the 2015 Templeton Prize in the company of Mother Teresa, Dalia Lama and others.)
We are not doomed to hatred, fear and rejection, there is another way. We are not doomed to constantly spin into frantic action driven by our pain. I call that way of living emotional whiplash. There is a better way, and the key is through offering not necessarily our great achievements to others, but our vulnerability, acceptance and love.
I began to experience the kind of healing Vanier refers to when I began working with the community that suffers from homelessness as a pastor in urban churches. As I began to open myself to the woundedness of others, some of the most rejected people on the planet, I began to gain the courage to explore my own wounds. Something was broken open in the exchange of brokenness. I could see into my own heart in ways that had been previously sealed off to me by pain and my own efforts to protect myself from pain. I had fear, certainly, but something more powerful than fear took over as I continued to put my body, my work and my faith into a community that was, by all outward appearances, not thriving but dying. Healing. Love. Trust. Faith. None of these things were misplaced. I began to believe that I had a path to walk, a path of purpose and meaning and it came by taking the risk of loving those whom the world seems to have stamped “rejected.” It was not easy, but I was ushered through cosmically, somehow, by the needs of others, by the very real healing presence of Christ between us, and my willingness to respond to those needs. I didn’t fix anyone, I helped some, but mostly what I had to offer was acceptance and love. And over time I leaned that it was enough.
When we interact with those we reject, we somehow feel safe enough to open up our own deep wounds for healing. Because of this, we gain the courage to take the rejected pathway in ourselves. I say that Christ, the sacred, shows up when we open ourselves to those we reject, because it takes the power out of our fear and shows us true power, that of love. Love transforms fear into the energy of hope. Rather than rejection, we suddenly experience acceptance. Rather than fear, we have the sudden bodily knowledge that we are loved and that we are capable of love. Rather than mistrust, we have the experience that we can trust others and be trusted. There are plenty of places in your community that need you to express love and acceptance. As you become willing to find them, you will.
I wrote a song about my experience, it’s called “Tending Angels,” and it tells the story of how I began to have the real life experience, working among the homeless community that I was, in fact, as the passage in Hebrews states, “tending angels unaware.”
Have you had experiences that have changed your life similar to this? How did it change you? I would love to hear about it, leave your thoughts in the comments box below.
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