by Jacob Ninan
Has it ever happened to us that we got disappointed when God closed some door through which we were eagerly hoping to enter? With our limited knowledge we could not figure out why God would do that! We may think about how much we had prayed for it and how we had been dreaming about it. But the disappointment is certainly because our knowledge of God is limited. His plans for us are always for our good and never for calamity (Jer.29:11). Our problem is our inability to see into the future and understand how this particular door would have led us away from the plan He had for us. But we can possibly understand it when we look back after many years and see how the 'other' path through which we had to go was the better one, after all!
It is a somewhat similar lack of understanding when some people imagine they have been rejected and then get hurt. Rejection is one of the most hurting experiences we can have, especially when we are children, but unfortunately it is also one of the most common experiences. We all want to feel loved, accepted and 'wanted' by others around us, especially by people close to us such as our parents in our childhood. If we receive such an experience from others, we feel 'secure' in our life, and we also get a stability in life that helps us to progress in our life in all the different directions. On the contrary, if we feel insecure because we are not able to receive love and affection sufficiently in our early life, we will possibly grow up with certain wrong attitudes towards people.
Let me illustrate this with a couple of examples. Think of a teenage boy who is the only child to his parents. His parents had grown up under tough economic conditions and were now desirous that their son should not have to go through that kind of a life. So, they were both working very hard to earn enough money to provide for him in the best possible way. As a result, they were both so much occupied with their work, and even when they came home, they were too tired to do anything other than relax, eat and go to bed. What their son thought about the whole situation was that his parents cared only about their jobs and did not really care about him! Finally he concluded that he hated them!
Of course, the mistake the parents made was to think that providing enough money to their son was the high priority in their relationship with him. Spending time with him, talking to him, listening to him, understanding his dreams and challenges, etc., were missing, and it was only natural that the son felt left out. But, at the same time, the son failed to recognise the intention that his parents had behind all their hard work! The son felt rejected by the parents, while the parents had absolutely no idea what was going on.
In another case, a 34 year old woman was filled with hatred for her father. She thought that her father did not love her at all and was only bothered about her younger sister. This sister was born when she was eight years old, and till then she was the centre of attraction in the home. The sister's arrival upset the situation completely in the home, and everyone fussed over the baby, totally neglecting the older sister. On the top of that, soon it turned out that it became her responsibility to help her mother with the sister! Even now, when she was at the age of 34, her father only wanted her to help her sister to choose her career, get married, etc., and it looked like her family did not care about her own happiness and did not even show her any appreciation.
It is probably easy, from an outsider point of view, to see what had happened and how this woman had misread her family's reaction to the new baby. All it needed to counsel her was to point out that it was only natural to pay so much attention to a baby compared to an eight year old girl because the baby was totally helpless without that care. Even now, the parents were looking for her help because they were aware of her ability to help her sister at this time. Immediately she understood that she had misread the situation completely!
In conclusion, while there are so many sad cases of rejection, we need to check if the rejection we assume we have gone through was real or the result of our misreading of the situation!