REJECTION

I've just recently come to the realization that I've been living with a lot of rejection.  It's not that I've never recognized it before but I guess it's just become more clear. I'm not one of those people who sits around thinking about the past all that much but when I do look back it always hurts a bit to do so. I didn't have a horrible childhood or anything like that. My parents did get divorced when I was five then remarried when I was seven, then divorced again when I was eight or nine. My dad was never really around much. He worked as a chef at lots of fine dining establishments and he worked lots of hours. It actually felt awkward being around him since I wasn't used to it. I liked being around him though. It made me feel special. After my parents divorced for the second time my mom moved my brother and sister and I out of state to live near my grandparents, leaving behind my dad. After a few years there my mom remarried this guy from our church we were a part of. He was different than my dad. A type A personality kind of guy. He stay married to my mom for about four or five years and then he split. No explanation, just up and left. I don't know if it was the burden of raising kids that aren't your own or if he just never loved my mom or if it was all the times I used to hide his stuff. Whatever it was he left. Then there was a girl. She was actually my middle school/high school crush. We dated on and off but she always ended up finding some other guy who was better looking or more muscular than me. We eventually entered a serious relationship. We dated for three years and then I proposed. She said yes. I was ecstatic. In the meantime I had managed to get myself into a heap of trouble financially. I rented an apartment that was way out of my price range and quickly fell behind on my payments. It's still amazing to me that my landlord never threw me out! Well about three months out of our wedding date I broke the news that I was in a bit of a financial fiasco. This did not go over well. She had me explain my situation to her parents who asked, "How could you have done this?" "How can you expect our daughter to have a happy wedding now?" So she broke off our engagement and wrote me out of her life as well as her parents who I had built a strong relationship with. It's funny but I actually looked to her dad more as a father than I did to my own dad. So there it is. I'm sure this isn't all of the things that have caused me to feel rejection but these are the main ones I can think of. I'm not angry about the events that have happened. I wish my dad would have been around more. I wish my mom's second husband wouldn't have abandoned us. I wish my ex-fiance and her family wouldn't have freaked out when I told them about my trouble. But these are things that I cannot change. They have happened and life has moved on. But I still feel the scars from them. I wish I didn't, but I do. And I've come to realize that there's nothing that I can do to heal myself from the rejection that these things have caused me. Only God can restore my heart for the hurt that has been done to it. And God will only do that if I allow Him that privilege. So I've decided to allow Him to restore me. I don't know how long it will take or how He'll do it or how I'll know when He's finished. I choose to not allow rejection to rule my life. Psalm 27:13 I am confident that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.