I have experience with rejection. We probably all do...at some point someone told us we were not good enough or smart enough or too sinful to be around. This caused pain and fear about the next time it might happen. if this has not happened to you, I'm glad, if it has happened, i truly sorry.
In my early twenties, i had a very good friend, who decided in the midst of very difficult season in my life that I was too much. My tongue piercing, a relapse of my eating disorder, and the choice of the wrong man to spend time with, made me too much. I still have dreams about the loss of this friendship. It has colored my ability to trust and believe that in seasons of darkness in my own life that someone will tell me again that i am too much and that they do not want to be around me.
The other side of rejection is being the one who rejects. It is easy to forget that you have been rejected when someone, an especially broken person, comes across your path and you want to reject them because ultimately they will reveal your brokenness and sin.
this week, one of our ladies husband's died of HIV. We have known him and been his friend for years, but honestly we have not been good friends to this man. He is one who I know I have rejected at different times for reasons that i could legitimize but will not. About a year ago, I finally recognized his humanity...I FINALLY SAW HIM, his heart, his personhood, I saw Jesus in him waiting for our community to respond with love. In recognizing his humanity, i found that i could no longer reject but only be broken over the sin in my life and see that it was his brokeness that brought him to the place that he was and the reasons for why he was where he was and acted the way that he acted. His humanness and my recognition of his humanity lead me to repentance and a place where i could no longer reject him but felt the need instead to embrace him. the embrace was not easy and has remained mostly tentative, trying to forgive him and forgive myself for not loving him as Jesus. He counted himself part of our community because of the connection through his wife and i am thankful that he called on us and asked for help even when should have been the ones to offer before he had to ask. In the wake of his death, all of the women at Sari Bari came to his funeral and mourned his loss. the ripples of love in community extend when we let them to those we would rather cast aside. I am thankful for those ripples that touched Nareem and that he knew he cared for him before he died. But I remain sorry that i did not extend love more fully and more completely to this man that God created and called his child.
I keep thinking of Jesus words: they that have been forgiven much, love much and they that have been forgiven little, love little. i think that it is not so much a matter of the difference in how much we sin but how much we are willing to acknowledge before God and others of our brokenness and how much we are willing to receive the forgiveness that has been offered to us.
I struggle to be broken before others and sometimes that means that brokenness in others in hard to handle. in my own struggle, i do not confess my sin before God and others and struggle to allow it to be taken from me in order to receive forgiveness for myself so i can love better, more freely. I would rather be angry then tell some one that i am sad and that they have disappointed me or that they have hurt someone i love and that it breaks my heart, i would rather self protect and reject than fall apart and lay my soul bare for all to see. I have much to learn and my friend Nareem has given me a harsh lesson in humility and i hope that God in his great mercy has received Nareem into the ARMS of love and that Nareem and Jesus will forgive me for not loving Nareem as if he was Jesus himself. His brokenness revealed my own and it shames me, as it should. i am broken and asking for forgiveness that i may be one who has been forgiven much so that i can let God love much through me.
May God have mercy on us and on the whole world.
No comments:
Post a Comment