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

by Lysa TerKeurst

Someone doesn’t invite me to her event, and my thoughts recount all the faults and frailties I’ve voiced about myself recently. Suddenly, I assign my thoughts to that person. I hear her saying these same hurtful things. I feel labeled and judged and, yes, rejected. Or my husband makes a comment about something I already feel sensitive about, and it incites an emotional response from me that is totally out of proportion. I find myself interpreting what he says and does way more emotionally than he ever intended. And it makes our relationship feel hard and exhausting. I feel so very rejected, and he’s left scratching his head wondering why.

Relationships feel increasingly unsafe. Opportunities feel increasingly risky. And life feels increasingly uncooperative. I carry on, because that’s what we girls do. But this nagging sense of rejection, real or simply perceived, is doing more of a number on me than I care to admit. Rejection steals the best of who I am by reinforcing the worst of what’s been said to me.

Rejection isn’t just an emotion we feel. It’s a message that’s sent to the core of who we are, causing us to believe lies about ourselves, others, and God.

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 love the thought that God is in our midst and that He will quiet me by His love. Yes, please. I’ll take an extra-large order of that every morning. I want to believe it’s possible for me not just in the middle of Bible study but in the middle of life.

Love is full. And I was quite empty. I should have been happy. I knew it. I could have listed out so many things for which I was thankful. So, what was this undercurrent of disappointment that ebbed and flowed just beneath the surface of my more honest moments? I got still, and I got sad. Then I would see something horrific on the news that other people were facing, and I would feel so horribly guilty for even daring to give myself permission to entertain anything other than gratitude. Which just heaped shame on top of my sadness. I’d determine that maybe all this off-kilterness was just because I was running a little low on sugar and caffeine. I’d reach for a handful of something chocolate and wash it down with a Diet Coke. Then I would rev up my Christian to-do list with all manners of serving, blessing, and giving others the kind of love I was so desperate to have boomerang back on me. Those are all good things. Fabulous activities. Biblical instructions. But when given from a heart whose real motivation is what I’m hoping I’ll get in return, it’s not really love at all.

I was doing many things with God in mind but not really spending time getting refilled by God and His abundant love at all. I was saying I was connecting with Him, but in all honesty, I was letting the world stir my deep affections. I’d say, I put God first in my life, but give all my first moments of each day to checking my text messages rather than checking in with His message. I’d post a Bible verse and return fifteen times that next hour to see how many likes I got. I’d think, I am doing everything I can to protect my marriage, but then watch a movie with so much airbrushed love that I couldn’t help but be slightly disappointed with my reality. I’d believe I had prayed about things, but in

reality I’d only worried about them, talked to friends about them, and tried to figure out how to solve them myself. How dangerous it is when our souls are gasping for God but we’re too distracted flirting with the world to notice. Flirting will give you brief surges of fun feelings but will never really pull you in and hold you close. Indeed, the world entices your flesh but never embraces your soul. All the while, the only love caring enough to embrace us and complete enough to fill us, waits. He waits every day with every answer we need, every comfort we crave, every affection we’re desperate for, while we look everywhere else but at Him.

Imagine a little girl running with a cup in her hand sloshing out all it contains. She thinks what will refill her is just ahead. Just a little farther. She presses on with sheer determination and clenched teeth and an empty cup clutched tight. She keeps running toward an agenda He never set and one that will never satisfy. She sees Him and holds out her cup. But she catches only a few drops as she runs by Him, because she didn’t stop long enough to be filled up. Empty can’t be tempered with mere drops.

I am loved. This should be the genesis thought of every day. Not because of how terrific I am. God doesn’t base His thoughts toward me on my own fragile efforts. No, God’s love isn’t based on me. It’s simply placed on me. And it’s the place from which I should live … loved.

Though winds of hurt and rejection blow, they cannot uproot us and rip us apart. His love holds us. His love grounds us. His love is a glorious weight preventing the harsh words and hurtful situations from being a destructive force. We feel the wind but aren’t destroyed by it. This is the “fullness of God” mentioned in the verses from Ephesians 3 that we just read.

“I bring the fullness of God into this room with me. Therefore, I am on assignment to bring His acceptance and love into this place.”

It’s time we prepare ourselves, right now, with the fullness of God. Before that next party. Before that next difficult discussion with our husbands or friends or neighbors. Before that next step we take in pursuing our dreams. Before that next hurt, hurdle, or heartbreak. We must get this settled in our hearts, minds, and souls.

The more fully we invite God in, the less we will feel uninvited by others.

I reasoned, Walk away early so you don’t have to suffer the pain of them falling away later. Some call that protecting yourself. But I knew in my case it was called letting past hurts hurt me all over again.

The peace of our souls does not rise and fall with unpredictable people or situations. Our feelings will shift, of course. People do affect us. But the peace of our souls is tethered to all that God is. And though we can’t predict His specific plans, the fact that God will work everything together for good is a completely predictable promise.

I want the equation to be: make a friend, keep a friend. Live in a blissful place of fun connection. See eye to eye. Believe the best. Get along. Be nice. Collect hilarious inside jokes along the way. And fight for each other always. That’s what I secretly hope for. But that’s not reality. Sometimes the equation is make a friend, try your best with that friend, and things go cold.

The roots of this friendship that once nourished me in deep places now ache with a barren flow. The conversations and connections have been hollowed out and replaced with a stabbing throb of a pierced soul. The arrow dug deep.

She may very well be the cause of some hurt in my life, but she’s not my enemy. And I may very well be the cause of some hurt in her life, but I’m not her enemy. We have an enemy, and it’s not each other. I point my crosshairs at the real enemy and start firing off positive statements about my friend. I list three things about her that are absolutely terrific. Then I remember a fourth and a fifth. I picture each of these positive statements wounding the Devil as this hits him squarely where he’s most vulnerable.

I guess this is at the core of why rejection stings in waves over and over again. There’s a loss of what was and what we thought would be.

To love God is to cooperate with His grace. And since I’m so very aware of my own need for grace, I must be willing to freely give it away. Each hole left from rejection must become an opportunity to create more and more space for grace in my heart.

It’s impossible to hold up the banners of victim and victory at the same time.

Most of us have been made to feel like we don’t belong at some point in our lives. It’s a bummer to be left out, not chosen, and overlooked. But when someone of great significance in our lives makes us feel like our belonging is more of a question mark than a security blanket, we become very sensitive to even the slightest hints of rejection. The wound is reopened, and rejection’s infection sets in.

When I wrote out these thoughts that had been running like a ticker tape in my mind, I was stunned at what I’d allowed. Not one of these statements was helpful. Not one of these statements was God-honoring. Not one of these statements acknowledged God’s provision, which is big enough for us all.

The enemy loves to take our rejection and twist it into a raw, irrational fear that God really doesn’t have a good plan for us. This fear is a corrupting companion. It replaces the truths we’ve trusted with hopeless lies. Satan knows what consumes us controls us. Therefore the more consumed we are with rejection, the more he can control our emotions, our thinking, and our actions.

Believing God has purposed our days will save us from the trouble of stepping into plans that aren’t meant for us. I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. (Lamentations 3:24–26)

When several close friends go on a girl’s weekend and neglect to include you, where’s the protection in that? Into that space of not understanding, we simply must state, “God, I don’t understand this situation. But I do understand Your goodness to me. I thank You for the protection that is part of this rejection even when I can’t see it. I trust You.”

You are more susceptible to Satan’s schemes when you are feeling rejected.

We hyper-focus on the lines of Scripture containing the miracles, and we miss the details of the mess. People laughed at Jesus. People rejected Jesus. People misunderstood Jesus.

At any moment when I feel weak and empty and alone, I pray that I won’t let those feelings drag me down into a pit of insecurity. But rather, I want those feelings to be triggers for me to immediately lift those burdensome feelings to You and trade them for the assurance of Your security.

You, the Most High, the name above every rejection, have the final say over me. You know me and love me intimately and personally and fully. Let my reactions to all things make it evident that I spend a lot of time with You. I want my gentleness to be evident to all. I want Your fullness in me to be the atmosphere around me. I want Your love to shine through me. And I want Your peace to be the path I walk.

Lord, I know the enemy has already been defeated. I fight from victory, not for victory. You have already won by defeating death and rendering the enemy a fallen foe. I will tread and trample the enemy by reminding him over and over again that he has no place in my life. No place in my mind. No place in my decision-making process. No place in my heart. No place in my future. All of me is reserved and preserved for life. Your life. No part of me was made for the death of the enemy.

Sometimes it’s hard to wrap my mind around something I can’t wrap my arms around. So I picked up the only piece of God I could physically touch: His Word.

Another thing to consider about the olive tree is how naturally bitter the olive is and what it must go through to be useful. If you were to pick an olive from the tree and try to eat it, its bitterness would make you sick. For the olive to be edible, it has to go through a lengthy process, which includes … washing, breaking, soaking, sometimes salting, and waiting. It is a lengthy process to be cured of bitterness and prepared for usefulness. If we are to escape the natural bitterness of the human heart, we have to go through a long process as well … the process of being cured.

When the sorrowful winds of the east blow, I forget they are necessary. When I’m being processed, I forget it’s for the sake of ridding me of bitterness. And when I’m being crushed, I forget it’s for the sake of my preservation.

The olive tree is such a beautiful reminder that this isn’t how it’s going to be forever. On the other side of the harsh wind is fruit. On the other side of the process of being broken and waiting is a useful heart free of bitterness. On the other side of being pressed and crushed is oil … the most valuable part of me set free to emerge.