You Can't Please All of the People All of the Time!

I remember the first time I really felt rejected. I was around 4 or 5 years old. We were visiting my grandparents in Northeast Philadelphia. For those of you who have never been to Philadelphia, various neighborhoods in the city are made up of row houses. The backs of these houses consist of garages and cement driveways that back into an ally. Adjacent to the backs of houses are the backs of other houses. On this particular visit, we were outside sitting in folding chairs on the driveway and across the way was a bunch of kids playing in their driveway. I remember looking at them, so wanting to join them in their fun. My mother saw me looking over and she encouraged me to go over and ask if I could play with them. So, I did. I strolled over with excitement to ask if I could play with them, but before I could even get the words out of my mouth, they yelled at me, “Get out of here! We don’t want you!"

I do not have a ton of memories from that age, but now, almost 40 years later, I still remember that vividly. It stayed with me and affected my whole childhood. I became a very shy child, because the hurt from that rejection was so strong and I never wanted to feel that sting of rejection again.

 

Have you ever struggled with feelings of rejection? The pain of perceived rejection by those in our lives cuts through skin, bone and marrow, right to the farthest reaches of our soul. It hits upon our deepest insecurities; why am I not good enough? So how do we deal with those feelings? As a child, I became fearful of putting myself out there again. I took those kids’ behavior personally. That is what children do. In their naivety, they may not understand why someone else is acting in a hurtful way, so they try to make sense of it by blaming themselves. I saw this over and over again when I worked in Children and Youth Services as a caseworker. This was way before I had children of my own. I remember taking the children for supervised visits with their abusive parents and many of the children ran to their parents in spite of their horrific abuse or neglect. All they wanted was for their mommies or daddies to love them. The little ones made their parents’ behavior their own fault; they started to believe they were bad and “made” their parents do it. How sad I felt, but now, as a parent, it really makes me sad to know that my children may have personalized other people’s bad behavior and they may have thought it was because they were not good enough. I feel my children’s pain and hurts and I never want them to feel that way.


As adults, we have wisdom that children do not have. We can learn to depersonalize someone’s hurtful treatment of us. So how, you may ask, do we do that? First, we may need to recognize that we are using faulty thinking. In other words, although we may think we were rejected, that may not actually be the case. Test it. Ask the other if that was their intention. You may find that was not the case. However, in some cases, we may in fact have been rejected. That does not mean there is something wrong with us. Perhaps the other person has his or her own insecurities and something about us reminds him or her of them.  Perhaps personalities are incompatible.


There are many reasons why someone may turn from us. It happens to all of us at one time or another, but it does not mean we are not worthy. For every person who has rejected us in our lives, there are others who love us for the beautiful and wonderful things we have to offer. Of course, we have the most unfailing love of all in our Creator. In Jeremiah 31:3 it says, “I love you with an everlasting love.” Also in Jeremiah, the Lord says, “Before I formed you in your mother’s womb, I knew you.” (1:5). No matter what other people do or say to us, we belong to Him. We are so precious in His sight. What consequence then should the opinion of people have on us? I say NONE!

The bottom line is this; we just cannot please all of the people all of the time! We must first learn to love and accept ourselves for who we are. We must remember and be grateful to the One who made us for His everlasting, unfailing and unfathomable love for us. If God is with us, who can be against us? Once we can do that, rejection from another becomes nothing more than a temporary disappointment instead of a life-long burden of emotional pain. If you are feeling rejected today, I challenge you to shift your focus. Instead of ruminating on hurt feelings, focus on the people in your life who truly value you. Focus on the Living God and draw from His love and grace. They deserve your mental and emotional energy, not those who would cast you aside. You ARE loved! God bless!

Know your W.O.R.T.H. (Women, Overcoming, Rotten, Thinking, Hallelujah) in GOD!