We all have times in our lives when we are rejected by someone. It doesn’t matter how beautiful, rich or powerful you are. Rejection at one time or another touches everyone.

Emotional maturity is getting to the point in our life journey that we are able to not take it personally. We then can move on with our lives and not spend a lot of time feeling sorry for ourselves or wallowing in depression. 

It helps to know that even the Son of God suffered rejection. He was mocked and spit upon. Before we came to know Him we probably rejected him also. “There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day.” (John 12:48) 

Writers know the feeling of rejection first hand. A writer may have an article rejected many times before, or if, it is actually accepted. The smart writer learns to just accept that as a part of every day life. 

Being rejected by a person is not pleasant and it hurts our feelings. We tend to delve into self-pity. We wonder what we did or what we didn’t do. It is normal at those times to become a bit paranoid. Like any other roadblock to success we need to learn to deal with our feelings by accepting them and then letting them go.

When you suffer from rejection it’s helpful to remember the following: you can be a peach, and you can be the most succulent ripe peach on the tree, but some people just don’t like peaches.

Think of rejection in that way and it helps you drop the victim mentality. People are all different. They each have different tastes in furniture and different tastes in friends. Just because you have been rejected doesn’t mean there is anything at all wrong with you.

We get into deep trouble when we obsess about rejection of one sort or another. People who stalk other people are often suffering from root feelings of rejection. They can’t stand the fact that this person rejected them, whether real or perceived as real, so they decide to stalk them. This is also true for people who will not let go of the object of their desire once they have been told that the other person is just not interested in them. 

Rejection in its worse form can lead to someone being killed. The news is full of reports of missing and murdered women. In a majority of cases they are killed at a time when they are leaving a relationship. The murderer has the “If I can’t have them, no one will,” mentality. These are just several examples of how being rejected can affect an unstable person.

So, as sane folk, how do we handle rejection? Like any other unpleasant experience in life, we need to keep it in context and not make more of it then it is.

When you have suffered any type of rejection you need to tell yourself that as much as it hurt you, this person or this job is just not the will of God for you at this time. You need to understand that God has a plan for your life and this just isn’t a part of His plan. Yes, it may be painful and it may hurt but when something so much better for you comes along you will look back and say, “I am so glad it turned out the way it did.”

You may be confused because you have prayed about this situation and you thought that this was the way God was going to bless you. God says His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. If doors are closing it simply means that God knows something we don’t and we need to trust His judgment in the matter.

Revenge thoughts over rejection are common, but they aren’t productive. You waste too much energy in negative thoughts about the person who rejected you. Step back and realize that it’s time to use your positive thoughts to move on to something else. It helps to pray for the person that rejected you even though it’s the last thing you feel like doing at the time. Praying about things and releasing them opens doors in the supernatural world of God’s blessings.

Don’t waste time fretting over why the person rejected you. It usually is not your problem, but their own. In job rejection situations there may be many dynamics going on that you have no way of knowing. Acceptance of not being hired and then looking for another position where you will be valued is a much better use of your time.

We live in a world that is imperfect with people, like ourselves, who are imperfect. When we accept rejection as just a part of life that we all will go through, we can accept it for what it is and move on in good mental and spiritual health.

By Cathie Miller
A retired psychologist and ordained womens minister who loves to write and is interested in article writing of varied content. Her real love is writing in order to uplift, encourage and edify hurting women. She has been an online inspirational writer for eight years and has published over 200 inspirational articles.

She is also a freelance researcher and profiler. She currently makes her home in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado outside of a small Victorian town. The mountains, the Arkansas river, and the solitude of nature make it the ideal place for a writer to work and live.