started dealing with my personal short comings and it’s not even officially
started yet. Looking back, it’s almost breath taking the lengths I have gone to
in my life to avoid rejection, not submitting my transcript to UCLA when they
requested it to finish processing my application. Not telling my high school
best friend I was crushing on him the WHOLE time. From my point of view most of
my life has been lived settling for the safe bet and on occasion throwing the
metaphorical dice and taking whatever came with that.
In becoming a Christian I faced some pretty hard rejection
from someone very dear to me, but standing up for Christ felt easy, knowing
what he had done for me. Evangelizing to my non believing friends was too
important to worry about possible rejection so I do that too. When it came to fundraising however all that
fear of rejection came rushing back. Who would want to send me? Why do I
deserve to go?
I go to a very large
church that does not allow individual fundraising activities, strike 1. My choir director was awesome enough to allow
me to make an announcement during practice. A bunch of people took information but one
woman sent me an email telling me to call her. Having seen the email at 10pm I
thought it better to wait until the next day. The following day on my daily
walk to the local college I had a conversation with the Lord about the fact I
had no idea where the money was going to come from but I was going to trust
Him. When I got home I nervously called the woman who sent the email wondering
what questions or comments she had for me.
Me:”Hello Lucy, I got your email…”
Lucy: “Oh yeah, so how much do you need to fundraise?”
Me: “14,000”
Lucy: “How much do you have?”
Me: “$250…::sigh::”
Lucy: “How’d you like to sell pies?”
responded “sure, like a bake sale?”. Lucy however is a lot smarter than I am
and she suggested I make order forms and would gift me as many frozen pies as I
could sell. I had friends take them to work but being out of work myself I didn’t
think I had anyone to sell to. I went door to door in my neighborhood with
little success. My mother asked me why didn’t I order a bunch of pies and sell
them outside church or a supermarket, and I told he because they wouldn’t let
me. “Did you ask” she said, to which I replied “they will just tell me no and I
don’t like rejection”. I won’t recount
the entire scolding for you but the part that hit home was “Christ was
rejected, do you think you are better that him”. With Easter coming I decided it was do or die
and I was going to take a chance and ordered 200+ pies with the idea of selling
them directly on Good Friday. Only problem was I still didn’t have a place to
sell them. A call to my church got me a
quick no. A call to my cousin’s church got me a slower no and a really amazing
prayer that I am sure made the subsequent seven no’s from churches and stores bearable
to my rejection avoiding ego. In fact not only were they bearable but each “no”
made me feel better because I had dared to ask, and because in being rejected I
was in the best of company.
without any further questions, having never laid eyes on me before that moment,
I stared at him with my mouth open for a minute before I could speak. I was surprised
he said yes, but I think also a little sad because my adventure with the
disempowered no’s was over. Every single
“no” was worth it weight in gold. This week I’m approaching local pastors about
doing a short presentation, what’s the worst they can say? “Yes”? 🙂
