Uninvited: Living Loved When You Feel Less Than, Left Out, and Lonely

by Lysa TerKeurst

Honesty isn’t trying to hurt me. It’s trying to heal me.

Negative self-talk was a rejection from my past that I had allowed to settle into the core of who I am.

Self-rejection paves the landing strip for the rejection of others to arrive and pull on up to the gates of our hearts.

Rejection steals the best of who I am by reinforcing the worst of what’s been said to me.

That person’s line becomes a label. The label becomes a lie. And the lie becomes a liability in how we think about ourselves and interact in every future relationship.

Rejection steals the best of who I am by reinforcing the worst of what’s been said to me.

Broken boards can’t provide stability. There was nothing profound about that from a construction standpoint.

For years, I’d been expecting stability from a broken identity.

fears that feed a person’s sensitivity to rejection: The fear of being abandoned The fear of losing one’s identity

When a man is physically present but emotionally absent, a girl’s heart can feel quite hollow and helpless.

A girl without a daddy felt to me like a girl without a place in this world.

His words were harsh. But it was his silence that most terrified me.

We’re all desperate to anchor our souls to something we can trust won’t change.

And once I saw it for what it was, I never returned.

Things of this world all eventually reveal what incapable anchors they really are.

The beliefs we hold should hold us up even when life feels like it’s falling apart.

Colossians 3:12,

I knew I had to stop assessing God’s goodness by how my life felt at any given time. Feelings are broken boards. Only truth is solid, unchanging, and stable through and through.

My identity must be anchored to the truth of who God is and who He is to me. Only then can I find a stability beyond what my feelings will ever allow. The closer I align my truth with His truth, the more closely I identify with God—and the more my identity really is in Him.

The exhausting manipulation and control it takes to protect an identity based on circumstances will crush our hearts and hide the best of who we are behind a wall of insecurity.

the ties that truly bind me to Him and the truth of who I am in Him are given to me in those quiet moments where I say, “I’m Yours, God.

We need to develop an “intimacy-based identity,” and this starts with answering three core questions: Is God good? Is God good to me? Do I trust God to be God?

I didn’t doubt God’s power. I didn’t doubt God’s authority. But I did very much doubt God’s goodness. However, when we go to the truth instead of our feelings for the answer to this question, we can understand God’s goodness in a whole new light.

In Romans 8:21 Paul explains that the world is in “bondage to decay” or, as some versions say, in “slavery to corruption” (NASB, THE VOICE). This decay and corruption is evidence of the brokenness of this world.

For the Eternal is on His way: yes, He is coming to judge the earth. He will set the world right by His standards, and by His faithfulness, He will examine the people. (PSALM 96:13 THE VOICE)

God’s goodness will eventually set the world right. In the meantime, we must hold fast to the truth of who God is and His unchanging nature: God is good. His plans are good. His requirements are good. His salvation is good. His grace is good. His forgiveness is good. His restoration is good. That is what I believe about God. God is good.

C. S. Lewis said it best: “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”1

Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.

if I have the Holy Spirit in me, my spirit is different because God is there—His indwelling presence with me. He speaks reassurances in the spirit. He speaks comfort in the spirit.

Isaiah 26:3–4: You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you. Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD himself, is the Rock eternal.

The Hebrew word for steadfast used in this verse is samak, which means “to brace, uphold, support.” Amazing, huh? In other words, those with minds fully braced, upheld, and supported by truth and trust in God will be kept in perfect peace.

The mind feasts on what it focuses on. What consumes my thinking will be the making or the breaking of my identity.

God is good at being God.

“God, I want Your truth to be the loudest voice in my life. Correct me. Comfort me. Come closer still. And I will trust. God, You are good at being God.”

The mind feasts on what it focuses on. What consumes my thinking will be the making or the breaking of my identity.

We live in a broken world, where rejection—even from fellow Christians—could be just around the corner.

Jesus brought with Him a love that remains … is constant … stays the same.

The most beautiful love story ever written is the one you were made to live with God.

My whole life I’ve searched for a love to satisfy the deepest longings within me to be known, treasured, and wholly accepted. When You created me, Lord, Your very first thought of me made Your heart explode with a love that set You in pursuit of me. Your love for me was so great that You, the God of the whole universe, went on a personal quest to woo me, adore me, and finally grab hold of me with the whisper, “I will never let you go.” Lord, I release my grip on all the things I was holding on to, preventing me from returning Your passionate embrace. I want nothing to hold me but You. So, with breathless wonder, I give You all my faith, all my hope, and all my love. I picture myself carrying the old, torn-out boards that inadequately propped me up and placing them in a pile. This pile contains other things I can remove from me now that my new intimacy-based identity is established. I lay down my need to understand why things happen the way they do. I lay down my fears about others walking away and taking their love with them. I lay down my desire to prove my worth. I lay down my resistance to fully trust Your thoughts, Your ways, and Your plans, Lord. I lay down being so self-consumed in an attempt to protect myself. I lay down my anger, unforgiveness, and stubborn ways that beg me to build walls when I sense hints of rejection. I lay all these things down with my broken boards and ask that Your holy fire consume them until they become weightless ashes. And as I walk away,...

It’s all been a perception thing on my part. Let me rewrite the story as I now believe it actually is.

Live from the abundant place that you are loved, and you won’t find yourself begging others for scraps of love.

Live from the abundant place that you are loved, and you won’t find yourself begging others for scraps of love.

It’s easy to live loved when I feel loved. But some days I’m just not feeling it.

The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. (ZEPHANIAH 3:17 ESV)

I wanted to get to a place where my immediate reaction to off-kilter interactions with others wasn’t a downward spiral of wonky feelings, but stable love instead.

Love is full. And I was quite empty.

Giving with strings of secret expectations attached is the greatest invitation to heartbreak. That’s not love. That’s manipulation.

Living loved is sourced in your quiet daily surrender to the One who made you.

The stage performance ending in applause isn’t what enables the ballerina. It’s her daily return to the instructor that, because of his love, tweaks her movements in the quiet studio.

I was doing many things with God in mind but not really spending time getting refilled by God and His abundant love at all.