Rejection hurts.
I’d done up my hair, put on my best outfit and double checked myself in the mirror 
several times as the minutes ticked by on the clock. Ten minutes… twenty… half hour… an hour… then longer. It eventually hit me—I was being stood up. It stung, my pride, my self-esteem, and my confidence. The thought of facing my friends the following morning when they asked, “How was your date?” knotted my stomach and sent heat to the tips of my ears. The high school junior who’d asked me out didn’t apologize the next day as we passed in the halls. He acted as if his memory had been wiped of any trace of asking me on a date. In my humiliation, I vowed I was done with dating and men. Thankfully, I reneged on that vow, because now I’m happily married and raising three boys. Funny how those things work out. What at the moment felt like a big deal, now is the faintest blip on my memory’s radar.
Failing stinks.
My son didn’t make the team. He’d showed a lot of promise with baseball. He had a great swing. His coach asked him to try out for a special league, but he got cut. He tried to brush it off like it didn’t matter. My husband and I did our best to encourage him, but the next season his heart wasn’t in it. The following season he decided to try lacrosse and now he’s out there tearing up the field.
Wouldn’t life be simpler if we could just succeed at everything? Actually, no. Chasing failure can take you further than success. Why? Because when we fail, we analyze what happened. We study to figure out where we went wrong. Sometimes the worst thing that can happen to someone is success. With success we give ourselves a pat on the back. We don’t check to see if it could have been a fluke or if we could improve. Success reinforces the behavior and if the behavior wasn’t perfection than perfection won’t be sought.
Maybe we should take ourselves out of the fight before we get hurt? We could remove ourselves from the equation to keep us from feeling any pain, but what life experiences are we passing up in the process? Should we stay in a protective bubble? When does the insulated bubble become a prison of our own making?
Fail trying, don’t fail watching. – Bob Goff author of Love Does
Allowing yourself or others to fail can be hard to do especially when it’s your own children. Standing by as they struggle is heart-wrenching. (My protective mother bear instincts kick into high gear.) But, what if you’re keeping them or yourself from crucial character development. I want to force my kids to study for tests while my husband says let them fail and learn from it. I remind my husband how important grades are for their future and to get into a good college, etc. He reminds me that it’s better for them to learn the importance of studying, by the pain of an F, while we can still be an influence on them. It’s a lot easier than having them flunk out of college later because you’re not there to force them to be responsible. (I hate it when he’s right.)
“Though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again.” – Proverbs 24:16
All of us will deal with failure and rejection, even Jesus was rejected. The same people he came to save nailed him to the cross and crucified him. Jesus forewarned his disciples that some people won’t listen. He told them to “Shake the dust of your feet” and move on. Jesus’s brother James wrote in 1:2-4: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
So whatever failure you may have faced or are facing, pick yourself up, dust off your sandals, and persevere. Use rejection and failure as a launch pad for growth, and realize you’re a great work in the making.
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