fear of rejection...

“It is not rejection itself that people fear; it is the possible consequences of rejection. Preparing to accept those consequences and viewing rejection as a learning experience that will bring you closer to success, will not only help you to conquer the fear of rejection, but help you to appreciate rejection itself.”

I felt rejection from an early age. I experienced one of the worse rejections imaginable…a son being rejected by his father. I, many years later, finally decided that he never really sat out to intentionally reject me. He just decided to reject life and I unfortunately was a part of it. I can remember always being picked last for things at school, which a kid translated to mean…not desirable, not valuable, and not wanted. Those are tough things for a kid to carry around growing up. I think God designed our families to be places of acceptance, nurturing and unconditional love. When that all goes away for whatever reason we seek those things in other places and in other ways. This is supposedly one of the driving motivations in people joining gangs, clubs, and organizations. We have this primal need to belong and be accepted despite our faults and flaws. I never was a “joining up” guy or a gang member but I certainly had every reason to be. Statistically speaking I had every reason to be in jail or even worse, prison. The toll on society from boys who are fatherless is staggering both financially and culturally. There was a tremendous absence in my life when my dad decided to leave a son at the time a son needed a dad the most. Obviously he wasn’t thinking much about that. He was only thinking about his pain which still feels awfully selfish. As a result, I adopted an attitude that nobody would ever leave me again…no one would ever walk out on me. So, growing up I did the leaving, I did the walking and I did the quitting. Although I far from understood it at the time, for many years I took on a “victim mentality”. The regrettable consequence of this is you live your life with low expectations, low effort and always fear potential rejection in everything. In effect you imagine yourself unlovable and this affects every relationship you have. It affected my relationship with God. I ran away from Him. I was afraid. I didn’t feel worthy. Nobody wanted to pick me for their team. I was always the last guy left standing who got picked by virtue of being last. I didn’t think God was any different. It took a long time for me to figure out I was wrong on that one…boy was I wrong.