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Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Living Beyond Yourself, Week 3: Rejection
Once again, this is mostly lifted from notes I took as I was listening to the session this week, and so it's got a kind of utter lack of coherence stream-of-consciousness flow thing going on. It doesn't help that it's 2:30 AM as I'm posting this. Um, yikes.
I know this is in the middle of the week -- too late for last week and too early for this week. It's my hope that I'll post again on Friday night with things I learn from the homework this week, and this will be a sort of makeup lesson for what I should have done last weekend.
I don't know if I ever made a conscious decision not to open myself up to people. I have noticed throughout my adult life that I have a very hard time getting close to people and making friends in real life, but I have always assumed this is because I am unlikeable, because nobody wants to get close to me. Which is definitely possible; I can be pretty annoying. But maybe part of the issue is that I find it easier to shrug and say "whatever", and avoid making the effort, because I'm afraid of the rejection that could well ensue (see above re: pretty annoying). What Beth said about loving the people we already love without adding any more actually rang quite true for me. Most of the people in my life who are close to me, from my family and my husband to my dearest friends, have known me for ages, in many cases since my childhood. These are the people with whom I feel comfortable, because I know they can't give up on me this late in the game. :) Actually, I'm close to a few people who live far away as well; I have more online friends than real-life ones. I have never tried to deny that this is at least partly because I'm more confident in online settings: I have time to collect myself, I know nobody's looking at my ugly nose or my upper lip that needs waxing or my stupid expressions. It isn't that I'm not myself online; it's just that I'm... maybe a slightly better version of myself. A slightly Photoshopped version, if you will. I'm more at ease, that's for sure. Overall, I have built this little life for myself, with a solid inner circle of people (husband, family, friends) who love me unconditionally, and outside of that there's this small cloud of friendly acquaintances who care about me but with whom I don't have the kind of relationship where I would feel comfortable, say, exchanging embarrassing secrets or letting them see me in a swimsuit, and then there's the rest of the world and I don't let myself be bothered by whether they care about me or not. And that's been the way of things since childhood, when the outside world (school) was a world of torment and the inner circle (home) was... well, not exactly perfect. But full of love and very, very safe. It's not even an effort to maintain this separation anymore. In fact I never even thought hard about it, until just now.
Beth talks about "taking off our rejection," as if it were a garment or (in her illustration) a pair of sunglasses. The thing is, rejection formed so much of the foundation of my life, I don't think I can "take it off". Hmm. I know Someone who can. But I don't know if I can let Him do that. Which reminds me of Eustace the dragon in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, even though that's a picture of sin and salvation. (sooner or later it all comes back to literature, doesn't it, Rachel.)
re: Rejection leaving a vacancy that we'll allow undesirable stuff in to fill: That is the story of my high-school love life. Do we need to go into more detail than that? I don't think so. Praise God for sending me this wonderful man early in my life before I had time to give myself any more regrettable memories in this department.
Beth talked at length about being rejected by people whom we have loved. I couldn't think of a situation where I've truly loved someone and they've rejected me, other than the traumatic-at-the-time-but-somewhat-silly-in-retrospect breakups with boyfriends when I was a teen. And I can honestly say that (probably thanks to the fact that I have such an amazing marriage and I know that this marriage and not those relationships was God's will for my life) I've never carried those around the same way I carry around the pain of the daily cruelty at the hands of my peers in elementary school and junior high. At first this inability to think of a rejection from a loved one sounds like I must be very lucky. But then when I really think about it, I think maybe it means that I shut people out before they can get that close. Thus far and no further; I can like you and you can like me, we can enjoy each other, but let's not go so far as love, I say to most people -- not that I ever have to say it out loud, because honestly not that many people want to come close. Which comes back to that unlikeable bit. But anyway. I think about attempting to let more people in -- about making the effort, about, I don't know, what do people in real life do? call up that other mom from the nursery and see about getting together for lunch? -- and my first reaction is, why would I want to do that? I have enough people who love me. Then I scratch a little below the surface and realize that the real reasons behind that thought are that a) I'm clueless as to how you do things like that and b) I'm scared stiff. Lord help me, I'm petrified.
Something to ponder: I had never thought about my painful childhood memories as a way to empathize with Christ's sufferings. It's not that I sit around dwelling on the awful stuff that people did to me at school -- well, not much of the time anyway, although it is something that affects many of my decisions and passions -- but in the future when I feel compelled to relive some of the more painful moments (hmm, would this be the dog biscuits in the lunch bag? The Rachel Germs on the playground? No, I know, it'll be the Xerox copies of the embarrassing crush letter -- with the picture I drew of the two of us dancing -- posted on every vertical surface at the junior high), I can remember: This, and so much more -- so AWFULLY much more, He endured, for me. And maybe that's part of why He allowed all that painful stuff to happen. Which, honestly, helps a lot.
 | ||
| Addie | Heather* | Carol |
| M | Rach | Jeana |
| Jenn | Amanda | MamaB |
| GiBee | Boomama | Maria |
| Blair | Heather | Nancy |
| Janna | Flipflop | Robin |
| Sherry | Patricia | Tara |
| Lauren | HolyMama! | Faith |
| Christy | Eph2810 | Karin |
| Leann | Rachel | Janice |
| This is a list of the women participating in the study and the links to their blogs. New postings on the study will be published for the next ten weeks, between Friday 8pm - Saturday 8am. Please feel free to visit each of us and comment. Everyone is welcome to participate in this discussion as we seek to live beyond ourselves. May God bless you richly from the hearing of His word. | ||
Comments
Wow. Just wow. That sounds exactly like me, except i am not so eloquent (and also without the high school love life). I mean, we've lived here for how long? 3 years? And still no friends? I certainly have what you call friendly acquaintances, at work and at my activities, but like you said no one close. I will have to think hard on this one and work on changing it. Thanks for such a good post.
Posted by: mary at April 18, 2006 05:10 AM
I too could not find to much rejection from those that I love, but could remember it from those I was acquainted with. Maybe that is why it's hard to let new people in. Because it is those that we don't know very well that have been hurtful.
I LOVE your reference to Eustace as the Dragon in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader! That is such a perfect picture of how we can't possible take off those old rejections on our own. And sometimes it hurts to work through them...just like it hurt for Aslan to take them off of Eustace!
Beautiful post Rachel!
Posted by: Addie at April 18, 2006 10:16 AM
Rachel, this was a good post. It is challenging sometimes to open up to people, especially if we've been hurt before in the past. This video really got to me too. I think just this past year I've wanted to not let anyone new into my life because I feel that I'd gotten burned. But living that way isn't very fun to me either so I'll take my chances.
Take a step of faith sometime and reach out to another lady that God has put in your path. I bet both of you will be glad you did.
Posted by: Janna at April 18, 2006 01:31 PM
I love you, I love you, I LOVE YOU. God I feel so, HONORED that you love yourself enough to let me love you. I am one of those people who you'd share a little secret with and let see you in a bathing suit and I'm so GRATEFUL for that because whether you can believe this or not, you are an amazing, funny, smart, kind, FUN woman and I am blessed, blessed, BLESSED to be able to say you are more than a friend, you are like my sister.
We need to talk more on this later, I better leave now before I write a blovel.
Posted by: jenn at April 19, 2006 11:40 AM
"I don't know if I ever made a conscious decision not to open myself up to people. "
I dont think you do. I know I have a hard time opening up to people. even family. but I think that is just me..
Posted by: debi at April 20, 2006 12:13 PM
I have a lot of horrible memories, too, and it's taken a long time to let go of them, "give the to God". Much hurt and pain that is finally healing.
My oldest son is very conscientious (sp?) of his deafness and cochlear implant, probably doesn't work hard to make friends because he's afraid of rejection, too. Reading your post made me think a lot of him.
Very deep thoughts you have. Isn't it cool to see how God is working on our hearts through this study? ;)
Posted by: Chaotic Mom at April 22, 2006 07:41 AM
