Human approval is a fickle goddess. Sometimes she’ll embrace you, and sometimes she’ll eviscerate you. Eventually she’ll inflict so much emotional damage that you’ll doubt whether you’re worthy of taking up space on this planet, much less strutting your stuff across the lawn of life.
Someone important in my life made a decision to throw me away. It was not a necessary loss; it was a determined event, a moment when someone rejected my very essence…my entire being. That is a broken bond, an excruciating rejection that produced shame. When I am abandoned, I become a shameful reject.
I want to gently say, we’ve all been left, one way or another, by someone somewhere. Every one of us endures abandonment events, beginning with birth. We lose our first close bond when we leave the womb, a place of safety and security for nine wonderful months. But after that, the lease is up, and baby is faced with unfamiliar lights and noise. Interestingly enough that first abandonment imprints the young soul. When we lose our physical or emotional connectedness, it’s like losing our anchor. We were created for connectedness, and disconnectedness can create panic. We were never created for isolation.
We want to matter to the people we think matter. We want the people we think matter to single us out. We want them to want to spend time with us. We want them to want to share bits of themselves with us that they don’t share with anyone else. We want them to invite us in. We want in.
The truth is, our desire for security from abandonment and rejection is as old as Adam and Eve.
God has clearly stated certain promises in the Bible that He means to be security producers in spite of circumstances. For example, Psalm 9:10 states, “Those who know your name trust in you, for you, O Lord, have never abandoned anyone who searches for you.”
But feeling abandoned is just that: a feeling. It feels like abandonment, and when something feels like abandonment…we think it must be abandonment.
However, here’s the reassuring and exciting news: even though we have all been left, and even though we all occasionally exhibit strange feelings and behaviors tracing back to that experience, there’s great hope for our future. The God of the universe pushes back the darkness, restores broken lives, and ties our hearts to His with inseparable bonds of love.
We will never be abandoned by Him. We will never be a throwaway from Him. We will never be rejected by Him. We will never be ditched by Him. We didn’t get left by Him. He chose us. He loves us and will never leave us.
The TRUTH is: we can rest in God’s great affection—even when our fat jeans are too tight and when it looks like we are in last place on the world’s scoreboard—because He views us through rose-colored glasses, tinted by the blood of Jesus.
To all my brave and beautiful friends. You are all tangible reminders of God’s kindness, and I love you with all my heart.
God don’t make junk.
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We leave Banos, Ecuador tonight at 10PM and head for Peru by bus. It will be a 50-60 hour bus ride. Prayers are greatly appreciated as we enter into our longest travel day(s) yet.
