it's Nita.

(audio and text)

A couple years ago the weight of it almost caused me to crack. Rejection. It is a pain that runs deep. Feeling isolated, misunderstood, or “weird” has to be one of the worst feelings in the world.

I remember crying to a friend about it in being hurt and different—doubting I would ever be understood or loved for simply who I was. In that place of brokenness, I stared the ugliness of rejection right in the face. My hurt and discontentment was more than just from other people rejecting me. I had rejected myself. Through the years I had learned and starting believing that something was inherently wrong with me.

Self-rejection. It manifested as a strong inner critic, hopelessness, debilitating shyness and social withdraw, self-sabotage, perfectionism, controlling behaviors, people-pleasing, feelings of unworthiness or lack of motivation. Yea, all of that and more… Once I started connecting the dots, I could see how one behavior fed into another. I began to realize that self-rejection was the root of many of the stumbling blocks in my life.

Symbolically I would describe it as living from a place of chronic ailment. Emotional woundedness. I took the beauty of my uniqueness and smeared over it with mud and accusations. I bent and twisted into a form I was never meant to assume. I believed the lies associated with “no being good-enough” or being “too different”.

What a terrible place to be…

For a time in my life I was just simply going through the motions; life was listless and I only participated from a “safe” distance. I became in a way an orphan unto myself. Outwardly I appeared fine but inwardly all was not well. The truth of my identity was darkened and obscured.

I was stuck there. I named the problem but I was unable to get to the solution. As I pondered on my situation, the roots started to show. The truth started to reveal itself like a plant breaking through the cracks of the concrete. There was life beneath my hardened exterior.

The revelation of this truth came in my reflection time. This is the time I spent to journal and take stock of myself. The revelation was simply this…I had been absorbing and comparing myself to other people’s standards and opinions for years. I stacked up some many masks and misconceptions of my personhood that I lost sight of who I was created to be.

Well, this isn’t a particularly deep revelation but it helped me appreciate the power of 2 Corinthians 10:5 (a scripture I had come across many times before).

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

The solution was this simple. I had to start discipling my mind to the truth of God’s word. I had to consciously and actively uproot the voice of self-rejection and the accompanying behaviors. And so I did.

And as not to be caught off guard by my thoughts, I began keeping notes of how self-rejection showed up in my life. It was not particularly please with this process but I began to work through my past hurts: early childhood abandonment, mistreatment from peers or friends, failed starts at new ideas… a litany of moments in my life.

I share these aspects of myself not as a damper but as a means of freedom. We overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony (Revelation 12:11). You do not have to live your life from hurt or rejection. There is hope. I found mine as I went to the Lord.

Here are some truths he spoke to my heart (some are first person affirmations and others are as if the Lord was speaking directly to me).

This is God speaking 1) “You’re valuable because you’re mine” Me speaking to myself 2) I can rest in my identity in Christ. 3) I love all parts of myself and I am exquisite. 4) I will always be different and that’s ok.

Now you may wonder how that last statement is positive. Why would I want to be ok with being different? Doesn’t that make me more of an outsider? Well, this is where I learned to seek God even more on my identity–not the roles I fulfill, not my job titles, not my relationship status– but my core identity.

Reflecting on the word God led me to in the 100 word test I remembered that God crafted me uniquely. I remembered I am exceptional. I remembered that I am loved even when I don’t feel loved. I am chosen by Christ. I am accepted. As I began to love myself from that place, I began to see change in my temperament and the relationships around me. I started living again.

In the years since starting to work on my issue of self-rejection, God has given me AMAZING brothers and sisters in Christ that have loved me unconditionally. I began to open up without fear of rejection. God gave me safe spaces to be open and vulnerable. I feel redeemed. God has loved me back to life itself. Where depression, rejection, and fear would have kept me from growing into who I am called to be, delighting myself in God has given me abundant life!

The glorious nature of God is revealed in His sons and daughters as we basque in Him, as we come into the fullness of our image in Christ, as we embrace difference not as a badge of defiance but as an act of love! -Nita

So I’m going to wrap this up.

God could have made carbon copies but He chose to make us unique, one of a kind. I have learned so much about myself in the last few years through the various phases of my life. From graduate study, developing friendships, taking a battery of good (and bad) personality tests, examining my strengths and weaknesses, exploring spiritual gifts and learning how to exercise them… many things have helped me. But most importantly I have taken time to reflect on who I am and whose I am…that my friends is how I am walking out my freedom.

I am His.

I am loved.

I am valuable.

I am beautiful.

The world will always have opinions. I choose to remain steadfast in God’s truth.

P.S. The book below helped me tremendously in learning to overcome rejection. John Eckhardt is one of my favorite authors.

💕

Love always,

it’s Nita.