First post of the year...and in what is becoming typical, it's not about what I had intended! A year and a half ago, I got a book called "Uninvited: Living loved when you feel less than, left out, and lonely - by Lysa TerKeurst. What a lot of "l's" :) Like most non fiction books, I started it, and stopped because who am I kidding - if I read, I want to escape my life and not have to be forced to think about it more. But tonight, I pulled it out, perused the table of contents and picked out a chapter called: When Our Normal Gets Snatched. The first topic was rejection and something I needed to read. I'm guessing some of you out there need to see it too!
"It's like taking a photograph containing all the people we love and suddenly some of those people purposely cut themselves out of the picture. And the gaping hole left behind is in some ways worse than death. If their absence was caused by death, you would grieve their loss. But when their absence is caused by rejection, you not only grieve their loss but you also have to wrestle with the fact that they wanted this. They chose to cut themselves out.
Though you are devastated, they are possibly walking away feeling relieved. Or worse, they might even feel happy. And there you sit, staring at a jacked-up photograph that no glue in the world can fix. Normal has been taken. Not by accident. But very much on purpose by someone you never expected could be such a thief."
Holy schnikes. Did that speak to something in my heart that I didn't even know was an issue. It didn't have a name. It was a hole in my heart/brain...but it didn't have a name. And now it does. Rejection. The loss of normal. And the grief caused by such things.
Here's the crazy part. Now that it has a name; it can be healed. Now that I know a little more of the specifics in the hole that exists in my heart, I can fill it. Actually; God can fill it. I'm learning it's much easier for God to move into the empty/hurt spaces when I can name them and ask Him to move in. So I am feeling unbelievably grateful that some of my holes have names! Perhaps now rejection can be replaced. A new "normal" can be found. It is weirdly freeing to feel like I just put in an interlocking piece to the healing puzzle. As if God had to an answer the question of how I have been hurt before before he could fix it.
Friends, in whatever ways you are hurting...I pray that God helps give that pain a name so that He can move in and fix it. So that he can replace the whatever you've got going on with grace and love and anything else you need.
He can't fix what you don't know is broken! And for that matter, neither can you! Wait on the Lord. He will show you what your wounds are when you're ready. And then He will show you a way to move aside and let Him take them away...sometimes in the most surprising of ways.
"It's like taking a photograph containing all the people we love and suddenly some of those people purposely cut themselves out of the picture. And the gaping hole left behind is in some ways worse than death. If their absence was caused by death, you would grieve their loss. But when their absence is caused by rejection, you not only grieve their loss but you also have to wrestle with the fact that they wanted this. They chose to cut themselves out.
Though you are devastated, they are possibly walking away feeling relieved. Or worse, they might even feel happy. And there you sit, staring at a jacked-up photograph that no glue in the world can fix. Normal has been taken. Not by accident. But very much on purpose by someone you never expected could be such a thief."
Holy schnikes. Did that speak to something in my heart that I didn't even know was an issue. It didn't have a name. It was a hole in my heart/brain...but it didn't have a name. And now it does. Rejection. The loss of normal. And the grief caused by such things.
Here's the crazy part. Now that it has a name; it can be healed. Now that I know a little more of the specifics in the hole that exists in my heart, I can fill it. Actually; God can fill it. I'm learning it's much easier for God to move into the empty/hurt spaces when I can name them and ask Him to move in. So I am feeling unbelievably grateful that some of my holes have names! Perhaps now rejection can be replaced. A new "normal" can be found. It is weirdly freeing to feel like I just put in an interlocking piece to the healing puzzle. As if God had to an answer the question of how I have been hurt before before he could fix it.
Friends, in whatever ways you are hurting...I pray that God helps give that pain a name so that He can move in and fix it. So that he can replace the whatever you've got going on with grace and love and anything else you need.
He can't fix what you don't know is broken! And for that matter, neither can you! Wait on the Lord. He will show you what your wounds are when you're ready. And then He will show you a way to move aside and let Him take them away...sometimes in the most surprising of ways.
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