Monday, November 29, 2010

Rejection

Have you ever been completely rejected by someone you loved more than life itself? You would do anything for that person. You would spend every last penny to help them pay for a chemo treatment. You'd donate a kidney or your bone marrow. You'd take their children in as your own if something happened to that loved one. You couldn't imagine life without them so much that you would give your own life for them if it came right down to it. Have you felt this way about one particular human being? More than one?


Rejection is one of the worst feelings in the world. It's one I fear more than any other. I suppose that is why I'm such a people pleaser today. However, I am resilient. I can overcome rejection with the best of them. Yet, there is someone that, if rejected by them, would devastate me to my very core. I know my heart would sink to my toes and I would wallow in my own self-pity for a long time. I never want to see the day that this one person rejects me.


Yet, I saw it happen. I am seeing it happen. Right before my eyes, as clear as day: rejection.


Now I'm left here wondering what to do. I realized how much I am disliked by this one human being. I'm not just rejected, but hated! I've come to the realization that it has been this way for a long time now, I just chose to ignore the signs. I loved this person, prayed for them and even loved their loved ones! I would have given my life. Now, I realize that had I given my life, it would have been seen as a kind gesture at best. They might never have mourned for the loss of my life. They would have looked upon my bullet wounds and said, "How ridiculous was she?" As a means of coping, I tell myself that if they saw my body, left in cold blood, that maybe they would have had a change of heart and gone to my funeral. But, that's just coping.


It's funny how we love those who will never love us in return.


I walk around my apartment and wonder why? And, where did I go wrong? Did I love too much? How could it be that I was that blind? Or was I blind? Did I just chose to ignore the blatant display of dislike, or did I really believe this individual loved me for who I was? And even though they were rough around the edges, was I so blind to think that they still cared about me? I fear it isn't the latter, but rather the first of which makes me a fool! Or am I a fool? That's what I question right now, at this very moment, in the pit of rejection. Was I a fool for loving this person who would never love me in return?


My reply might be yes. Of course! I loved an unlovable person, but that doesn't make me any better of a person. It doesn't make me special! If anything, it makes me look ridiculous in the bright and shaming lights of reality. But, maybe this is the wrong reply to my own question.


Maybe my reply is yet another question: Was Jesus a fool? Was Jesus a fool for loving every soul on this earth so much that he willingly, yes willingly died a gruesome death that every transgression, every iniquity might be paid by his blood and broken bones? Was he a fool for expecting anything in return? He experienced the most abundant form of rejection ever known to man. He was whipped with multiple whips that had broken glass on the tips of them. He was beaten with rocks, and bruised by the words of the passerby who believed him to be a thief. He was accused on multiple accounts, yet completely innocent. He walked a walk of utter shame as he carried his wooden cross up a hill far away on his broken, bleeding back- he carried his own death steak! He glanced around at the scoffers and saw a face greater than the sea of sheer rejection, disgust, dislike, hatred, and loathing. He walked a shadowy road with spit flying at his head and feet and finally reached the end. The end of which was three nails!! Two in his wrists and one in his feet. Three nails hung an innocent man to a cross to pay the ultimate price, one that would give the world eternal life if it so chose to take it. The weight of his head was too much to bare any longer, and with his last breath he uttered, "It is finished…" he laid his head to his chest and and died. With love in his heart he died willingly! No scorn filled his lips to reply to the scoffers! No shame came over him through an indecent action. He bore the ultimate rejection known to man.


Was he a fool?


Three days later, bursting forth in glorious day he came bounding from the grave of which was graded and sealed by an impossibly massive boulder. With flames of glory and light so brilliant it was devastating to see, the stone rolled away. He walked among the living with nail pierced hands and feet for forty days and forty nights, sharing love to those who still rejected him. He died a shameful death of rejection and hate, and yet through it, we… the ones who gave him rejection are saved from rejection itself.


Not so foolish.


My only prayer is that this one person of whom is still so beautiful to me, so wonderful in spite of rejection, knows who their Savior is. After all, that is all I can really do. Loving someone to the cross; it's not so foolish, it's what we were taught to do the day he died… the day he rose again.

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