How Do You Handle Rejection

by Olga Hermans

Sooner or later everybody experiences rejection: at home, at your job, at school or at church. We can experience it in different forms; some experience abuse, some go through really hard times. We can experience it when we fail at something that we think we could handle. We can go through a deep sense of rejection when a relationship breaks up. The fact is that everybody, no matter the age experiences rejection.

It doesn’t matter where the rejection is coming from; we have to realize that there can be an important lesson in the rejection. Somebody said once “If we don’t handle rejection the right way, rejection will mishandle us the wrong way”. To deal with rejection properly, we need to gain some truth about this.

My family and I love to play UNO, I think it is a very fun game. So when the cards are dealt there is only ONE purpose in my mind and that is to WIN with the cards that are given to me. You see, life is more or less the same; life can offer us cards of rejection. It is up to us how we handle these cards of rejection in a way that we will win in life.

There is a secret here though, because this is only possible when we tune into God and listen to what He tells us on how to get a grip on rejection. When we tune into His wisdom, He will help us to handle rejection and help us to become a better person. He will help us to get to the other side so to speak.

Rejection is painful, but it also is a wake-up call. God uses it to wake us up to our calling. There was a time in my life that I was involved in a “spiritual development” group. My best friend and people that I thought meant the world to me were in this group. One evening we had one of those visualizations, where the leader of the group told us as story, we closed our eyes and saw the story told in front of us.

The images that I saw in front of me were that I went far beyond the group up on a mountain. The group stopped half-way, but something on the inside of me told me to keep going until the very top, where an old man was waiting.

As I stood there I saw a very narrow ridge going to the other side where a man in a white robe was waving me to come over. As I looked down I saw a river of blood, but I couldn’t see myself go to the other side and the man in the white robe disappeared. I looked at that older man and asked him “what do I have to do?” He said: “You will know, you will know at the right time.” That was it.

As always we were to share what we experienced. I told what I had “seen”, I could sense this tremendous rejection coming towards me. My experience was not received very well and to make a long story short, they asked me to leave the group. So, I stood up and left. I was completely sick to my stomach, everything literally turned upside down on the inside of me.

Much later as I looked back I could see that God allowed this to happen to me because He was calling me to Himself. So, this was an alarm clock that God uses to wake up our “callings”. You and I have a purpose in life. One of the ways that we discover that purpose is through rejection.

We always want to know why we got rejected in the first place. You might want to know why this situation or that person turned you down. Or you want to know why you didn’t make the cut, didn’t get the job or didn’t get an email or somebody unfriended you on facebook. Whichever the case is, the fact remains that we do indeed experience rejection from people. But why?

Here are some reasons why we experience rejection:

1. People reject us when we don’t meet their expectations.
They reject us because they think we do something wrong or might be wrong; we are not what they are looking for, so we are disqualified. We get rejected because we don’t have the looks, the qualifications, education or experience. You simply don’t fit in that particular situation and you get removed from the situation,

2. Another reason that people reject us is when we go beyond their expectations.
You can get rejected for being right or doing right. You might stand out just a little too much for what they stand for. If it is a job situation they might tell you that you are overqualified for the job or they cannot afford to pay you, so they don’t hire you.

3. The third reason why we experience rejection from people is somewhat a combination of the first two.
This is where you get rejected for doing right and wrong at the same time. You might have done the right thing, but at the wrong time. Friends and even family might reject us because we try to plan things with them at the wrong time. In this case, you are rejected because of the timing of what you were trying to do.

In his book “21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership,” Dr. John Maxwell makes a profound comment about timing: “The wrong action at the wrong time leads to disaster; the right action at the wrong time brings resistance; the wrong action at the right time is a mistake; the right action at the right time leads to success.” (Maxwell, 1998, 197)

This information might be something to think about and I would love to hear what you have to say about it. Think about the cards life can bring you, but there is a reason behind it. Like with me it was God calling me out of that group; others might experience rejection because God has another job or another partner for you.

The way we have to learn to deal with rejection and getting our life back is by NOT putting our trust in people, but by putting our trust completely in God. People will always disappoint you, because we are not perfect, we are human. God will never disappoint you, He will show what He has in store for you. When He closes a door for you, He always opens another for you. God is always on your side, He will help you to turn rejection stumbling blocks into stepping stones for success. We can’t control what happens to us, but we can indeed control how we respond to it.

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