One pass, another comes

Rejection. It’s probably one of the worst feelings in the world. It makes us feel unloved, incompetent and incomplete. It hits likes a wound that cut deep in our heart.

Rejection can come in many forms: career, relationships, familial, and spiritual. The scale of rejection can vary – it can be a minor rejection or a major rejection.  Whatever the form or scale, there is one thing in common with every rejection; you were denied something that you thought would make you feel happier. That is why it hurts so much, you thought you found another piece of your puzzle, but It gets knocked out of your hand. At that time, you feel like your life will never be complete now that a piece is gone.

Therefore, the best thing we think we can do is to avoid rejection at all cost. We don’t want to risk the pain that comes from it. We start to limit our friendship circle, we become cautious about who we get close with, we want to make sure that the chance of rejection is minimal. But I think that is the core reason why rejection hurt so bad. We want to be the one in control, we want to be the one to decide which puzzle piece fits us.

I was watching a video on YouTube, and the speaker at the end of the talk asked the audience something that really hit me:

We already know what to do when God say’s yes, we already know what to do when God answers our prayers. But what do we do when God says no?*

We are so fixated on our own perception, on our plan for our own life that when God answers our prayer, we feel so grateful like “high-five God, good choice. Now just continue to follow me and we will be all Gucci”. However, that is not how it works. God wants you to complete the puzzle, that’s right. But God wants you to complete it the right way; He doesn’t want you to gather up all these random pieces and make a jumbo mess. God is the puzzle-maker, He knows which piece goes where and we need to trust in Him when we put our puzzle together.

We will continue to experience rejection in life, no matter how hard you try there is no avoiding it. But if we can start to see rejection as a redirection from God, then there is no need to avoid it. As time passes, we heal by thinking that we were wrong. That the piece was not right for us, we can move on with our lives knowing that we can still complete our puzzle.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life – Steve Jobs, 2005. 

*Tragedy into triumph – Inky Johnson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjJXB2Zkxgo