Rejection, how do I even begin? It seems the theme of my life has been that of rejection, and growing up in an environment of conditional love never helped to say the least. I was raised in the most legalistic of churches just to begin. I was utterly rejected in junior-high because I was awkward as an early teen with stories to tell that still break my heart to this day. At age 16 I left the only life I had ever known that was completely entangled in a church community, and my whole family was severely rejected by that whole community. It was then that I was rejected by my extended family and those who helped raise me and loved me until the time we left the church. I was rejected by every friend that I grew up with from the time I was a baby. I went into rebellion and was even rejected by some of my immediate family members. I barely made it through my high school years and then went to college, got in with the wrong crowd, and was rejected by my whole group of friends at the end of four years that led me to an emotional breakdown. I suffer with the worse self-esteem and get mad at myself because I feel so weak. I haven’t understood why I couldn’t just have a good self image, why I couldn’t just love myself; why couldn’t I trust others? Why couldn’t I just toughen up, be strong, and get through life loving myself?
God brought a memory to surface tonight that I stuffed down so deeply, I erased it from my memory because I couldn’t deal with the pain of it, but it was still there, lingering and festering, causing me to interpret my whole world around me from a place of severe wounding. I have been through very dark places in my life, but God never stopped perusing me through it all. The truth is that he always had my heart, but I just couldn’t trust him.
As every memory started coming to mind, one after the other, of times that I my heart was broken from the rejection that I experienced, God started speaking to me, “Kellie, you look at yourself as weak. You don’t like yourself because you don’t understand why you can’t be stronger, or why you can’t have a high self-esteem like others around you. The question that you should ask yourself is this, “How am I so strong?” From the level of rejection and conditional love that you have received, how have you held up under all this weight? Do you know the answer to that question? I’ve carried you. I’ve continually pursued you. I have loved you and held you so close to my heart through all your pain and suffering, that it has been my love that has kept you going, that has kept you from completely buckling under the pressure. My dear, I have seen the suffering that you have endured, and I have seen your heart shattered time and time again. My heart has been broken for you, I have wept with you in your suffering! All your life all I’ve longed for you to turn to me so that I could fill you with my love and restore you back to myself. I want to put the pieces of your shattered heart back together again, to make you whole, complete, and a light to this world. You have been so rejected Kellie because you have always been a carrier of my light, and the dark places you have gone and been to, you were rejected there because darkness hates the light. I came to you and told you to turn from that path, to turn from darkness; I opened your eyes to the reality that you were living in because I love you and wanted you to come back to me. Kellie, you are strong, you have carried so much pain, and look at how beautiful you are still weary one. You have a heart of love and to love others, despite the rejection you’ve been through, and I find that beautiful beyond any measure. You are amazing, and I am so proud of you!
He told me that the story I recently put together from the bible, “My Beloved”, was actually about me, and that I was to take it personally. I went back and read through the whole thing, and could hardly even get through it. I saw the whole story through new eyes. It was my life.. it was me. I couldn’t even believe it.
This is the God that I now know I serve. He is soooooooooooooooooooooooo good! He is beautiful and loving beyond measure! I always thought that he barely tolerated my sin, and that he was sick of having to redeem my life time and time again. I always felt that if I pushed him just a little farther, he would surely finally wash his hands to me. I just saw him as constantly frustrated with me. Now I have found the opposite of that to be true. He has a heart that is desperately in love with us, and his heart breaks when ours gets broken. He isn’t mad at our brokenness, but instead is broken-hearted because of our brokenness, and longs to restore us and make us whole again, if only we would turn to him. Every time that I even slightly turned back to him in my life he would shower me with his love, mercy, and grace. How about this: even when I was not seeking him and purposefully turned my back to him, he opened my eyes to see the reality that he saw, desperately trying to pull me back to him. His love is so beautiful that our human minds can’t even comprehend it! I’m madly in love with him, and I KNOW that all of us would be if we only truly knew his heart!
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Kellie, I feel as though I am getting to know you and your heart since I have started reading your blog. It makes me sad that I didn't get to know you in a deeper way a long time ago. We have a lot of the same struggles. I didn't know we had so much in common in that way. Any time I was around you, you were so quiet. And it's true (I think you said it in a previous post) that you were always kind of in the background. I was close to your older sisters with big personalities and because you were so much younger than me, you were just the little sister. I never felt like I had an opportunity to get to know the real you. But I should have made more of an effort to create opportunities. As I read what you've written, I feel so much regret that I didn't do that. Thank you for being so open with your heart. I have really connected with you as I have read. I also struggle with rejection issues and these have manifested in similar ways as far as how I have always imagined God viewing me. My whole life, I continually felt that I was a disappointment to Him. It is definitely a by-product of the legalistic atmosphere we both grew up in. I'm so thankful for your deliverance...and my own as well! I'm very proud of you (if you don't mind me saying that). Since your older sisters have always been kind of surrogate sisters to me, I guess that makes you my little sister, too. I really do love you, Kellie.
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