Rejection by those who know you is the worst. I can handle the being rejected by those who don’t know me. Being judged by the stories they hear. Being thought of as something that other people’s characterizations have made of me. But to be rejected by those who know me. That is a deep pain.

You knew it. I read it today that you knew it.

John 1: 10,11 “He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. He came to his own people, and even they rejected him.”

And why wouldn’t you? It seems anything I face or feel you know. You know this has been an intense pain in past seasons of life and exists yet again in this season, except some of the players have different faces.

What is it Father that builds wedges between hearts that you desire to love and yet resist the love that you offer? There are times I want to change. Become what I think they want in order to win their love. But that would be such a fractured, temporal result. Tried it once. Didn’t work. And worked too hard to discover my heart again to ever live the lie of being something different in order to win someone else’s affections or approval.

And you didn’t model this. You didn’t model the “adopt a palatable personality” approach. You just did it the way you did it. And now today we are left with the choice of whether to accept you as you are, create our own version of you that we desire, or to reject you altogether. So still today, millennia’s after you experienced that rejection on earth you continue to experience it. And yet there remains no shadow of turning in you. You are the same “Yesterday, Today and Forever.”

Father, on my best days rejection still hurts. On my worst days…it sends me to my closet in tears. And yet, in the continuing battle to keep my heart alive, and connected and authentic, I refuse to live in hiding. I refuse to live something different then the way you created me. Because to live any other way would be a disgrace to the care you took in crafting me.

So as I fast, and as I know that until the change of heart that I continue to pray for and believe will one day come, there may be many more days or years of this down the road, I ask that you keep my heart soft. That it wouldn’t grow hard to those who would reject it. That it wouldn’t grow bitter because of the days that turn into months that have turned into years. But that it would be very aware that you have been there, and that you have created a way of escape for me underneath any burden or temptation I may bear.

You came into this world knowing you would be rejected. And yet you chose to come anyway. Thank you for coming…Thank you for staying.