I remember it like it was yesterday, despite it happening twenty years ago.
My husband and I were a few months into married life when he encouraged me to try to work on the strained relationship I have with my mom. Although I had tried to explain how complicated our relationship was, his close relationship with his mom rendered him unable to fully understand. He thought my mom’s hurtful behavior was just a result of her feeling guilty and not knowing how to apologize. So, with his prompting, I decided to try to work on the relationship again. For the hundredth time.
I arranged a mother-daughter weekend filled with shopping, a spa visit, and lunch, and then I drove to her home about an hour away and picked her up. As we made the drive back to my city, I swallowed deeply, inhaled, and said, “Mom, I really want us to have a healthy relationship. But, in order for that to happen, we have to talk about Lee.”
The mood in the car turned icy at the mention of his name, and she said, “There’s nothing to talk about. That’s in the past.” But it wasn’t. What happened with Lee stood like the Atlantic Ocean between my mother and me. It kept us an entire hemisphere apart.
Lee became my mother’s live-in boyfriend when I was four years old. I hadn’t liked him from the moment I met him, but my mother told me to give him a chance because he was a nice man. He wasn’t. He sexually abused me between the ages of five and eleven. And since my mother had him arrested because of it, she knew what he had done. The problem was that, despite knowing what he did, she took me with her to pick him up on the day of his release from jail and brought him back home.
His abuse picked up where it left off. I figured it didn’t matter if I said anything, since she brought him back knowing what he was capable of. After he came back, my mother became physically and verbally abusive to me on top of his sexual abuse. I tried to end my life at the ages of nine and eleven because of the pain.
“Mom, it isn’t in the past. We’ve never talked about it. You’ve never acknowledged it or even apologized for it.”
“Apologize? It wouldn’t have happened if you would have just kept your legs closed!”
As I stifled a cry, I turned my car around and drove her back to her home . . . for the last time.
…………………………….
For as long as I can remember, my mother blamed me, shamed me, and abandoned me when I needed her most. And this formative rejection experience ultimately shaped me in ways I can only now understand after years of prayer, introspection, and self-work. One thing is very clear to me: rejection made me become a woman who pursued achievement and applause to fill the bottomless pit of unworthiness that my mother’s painful words and actions dug in my heart.
Maybe you know what that’s like.
- Your dad has never said a kind word to or about you, leaving you susceptible to the compliments of men who mean you no good.
- Your husband cheated on you after you gave him the best years of your life, leaving you clinging to a wine bottle every night to anesthetize the pain.
- Your manager chose someone else for the promotion despite you training the person they chose, leaving you questioning your value as a professional.
Like my own experience, each of these rejection experiences is deeply painful and visceral. But what if pain is simply the wrapping paper that rejection comes in, and there is a gift on the inside? I can hear you now. “Nona, gifts are good. Gifts bring happiness. Rejection doesn’t. It brings sadness and pain. How can you suggest that rejection is a gift?” Well, while the act of rejection itself is not a gift, I have come to believe that what it can teach you about yourself and others is a gift.
Rejection can flood you with thoughts and feelings. Before you allow them to drown you in discouragement, take a moment to ask yourself, “What am I thinking and feeling right now?” Find a piece of paper or open a notes app and jot down your thoughts. As you review them, take the process a step further by asking yourself, “Is this thought true?” You might also name the main emotion gripping your heart. Is it anger? Fear? Sadness? Instead of catastrophizing, try to assess your thoughts and feelings as an impartial observer. Identify the lies, because what you name gives you power to change.
No matter how long you’ve been alive or how many Scripture verses you know about God’s love, rejection still hurts. You are not crazy, weird, or spiritually weak because you feel the pain of abandonment, humiliation, being overlooked, or being fired. My sister, you are human, and God loves you so much that he can take the pain of your rejection and give you beauty for ashes. In God’s hands, rejection is a gift.