Rejection - I'd Rather Ignore Honesty - 225

Rejection's invisible wounds cut deeper than we often recognize. This powerful opening episode in our three-part series on Rejection examines how today's rejections act as precision-targeted stealth bombs, unearthing our past hurts with excruciating intensity.

Through a personal airport story, we discover how negative self-talk becomes the most insidious form of rejection. When an unexpected encounter with an airport employee halted self-deprecating comments with the powerful statement "Not here in front of me will you talk that way about yourself," it revealed a profound truth—we often permit ourselves to speak about ourselves in ways we would never tolerate from others.

The episode unpacks how rejection operates: an initial comment like "I don't want you" transforms into the label "you aren't accepted," evolves into the lie "you aren't worthy," and ultimately becomes a script of self-rejection running in the background of our lives. This transformation creates significant barriers in our relationships, causing us to project past rejections onto new connections and misinterpret innocent interactions through rejection-colored lenses.

Most damaging is how this pattern extends to our relationship with God, leading us to question whether He shares the negative opinions others have expressed about us. The truth emerges clearly—we'll never experience enough human love to permanently free us from insecurity and rejection fears. Only God's love possesses that transformative power.

This raw, honest exploration doesn't promise tidy answers but offers something better: understanding and a path toward healing. By examining rejection's roots and mechanisms, we begin dismantling its power and reclaiming our authentic identities.

Chapters

• 0:40 Introduction to Rejection Series
• 1:58 Honesty as a Piercing Suitor
• 5:44 Airport Story: Self-Talk Revelation
• 12:12 How Self-Rejection Opens Doors
• 16:19 Rejection's Deep Impact on Identity
• 21:54 God's Love as Ultimate Resolution
• 24:33 Episode Closing and Next Week Preview

Transcript

Daniel Moore: 0:09

The rejections we face today, whether overt or discreet, act as a stealth bombs that are directly targeted at our innermost core, unearthing past wounds and causing them to resurface with excruciating intensity. These rejections have the uncanny ability to pinpoint the hurts from our past, bringing them vividly back to the present. They disrupt the carefully constructed coping mechanisms we have developed to maintain stability in our lives. In this episode of Connecting the Gap, we start a three-part series on rejection. We'll be back to get that started right after this. Welcome to Connecting the Gap.

Daniel Moore: 1:27

This is a podcast about marriage, bible and book studies, and we interview people that have a story. I'm Daniel Moore, your host. Thank you, guys for joining us this week. If not familiar with our ministry and our show, you can check us out on our website at wwwconnectingthegapnet or marriagelifeandmorecom. There you'll find our platforms. Our YouTube and Rumble links are there. We're also on the Christian Podcasting app, edify. We're also on your Google smart devices and your Alexa smart devices as well. You can also visit us on social, on Instagram and Facebook at ctgaponline. If you're a fan of our show, please subscribe. Feel free to leave a comment on our platforms. Give us a thumbs up or a five-star review on Apple Podcast and we'd be grateful to you for doing that. Well, hopefully you guys have enjoyed the last several months of our marriage series that my wife and I put together for you and we really enjoyed bringing that your way. We have lots more marriage stuff coming your way as well.

Daniel Moore: 2:22

But, as I've been telling you, we're going to also continue with some book studies and just other things underneath the Connecting the Gap podcast label, and this is one of those mini-series that I'm going to be doing, and this one is on rejection. A lot of us go through moments in life when we feel rejected and sometimes it's hard to deal with that rejection in our life. So we're going to kind of dig into that a little bit this week, and this week we're going to talk about I'd Rather Ignore Honesty In the quiet of the early morning. Honesty seeks me out. It whispers through a gap in my being, urging the truest version of myself to come out. Come out wherever you are, not the perfected facade I present to the world, but the raw, unfiltered essence of who I am, the unkempt, unvarnished soul that can't be glossed over with grooming and trendy accessories.

Daniel Moore: 3:33

Honesty is a suitor with piercing vision because, like a suitor who carefully observes and evaluates their surroundings. Honesty sees through facades and illusions. It penetrates through any pretense or positioning, cutting through the layers of deceit to reveal the truth beneath. Just as a suitor is steadfast in their purpose and is not easily swayed by distractions, honesty remains unwavering in its commitment to truth, regardless of any attempts to deceive or manipulate. Honesty's sharp insight and unwavering dedication make it a powerful force that cannot be underestimated or disregarded. No matter how hard you try to make things appear better than they actually are, honesty will not be deceived. Better than they actually are, honesty will not be deceived. It sees past the embellishments and facades that you may try to use to cover up the truth. While you may attempt to paint a rosier picture or distort the reality of a situation, honesty remains steadfast in its commitment to uncovering the unvarnished truth. No amount of manipulation or exaggeration can sway honesty as it cuts through the illusions and reveals the raw, unfiltered reality that lies beneath the surface. In the face of honesty, attempts to distort or improve upon the truth are futile, as it stands as a steadfast guardian of the unadulterated reality.

Daniel Moore: 5:08

So I throw on my hat, splash some water on my face I don't suck in my gut or splash on any cologne. I just appear. I step out from behind the facade of a carefully constructed identity. From behind the facade of a carefully constructed identity, tentatively reaching out my hand to greet honesty. Uncertain of how honesty will respond, I am prepared for either a harsh rebuke or a welcoming embrace. While I typically wouldn't choose conflict, in my case a direct confrontation may be the safer choice. I'm not typically a hugger. Sometimes in my awkwardness it's even a stretch to shake hands. As a guy, you never know if the other person you are talking to is comfortable with a hug or the more distant option of a handshake. So rather than take the chance on the awkwardness, I usually choose neither. I didn't want to hug honesty.

Daniel Moore: 6:08

In the past, I have never been eager to fully embrace honesty. Though I have become more adept at facing it now than ever before, I still hesitate, aware of the potential risk involved. As long as I perceive honesty as a threat with the intention to uncover and potentially harm me, it will always feel like a perilous endeavor. It is simpler for me to create a more appealing narrative of my life where I can connect each past hurt with the subsequent healing I have undergone, rather than confronting the unfiltered truth. I find comfort in neatly aligning with the challenging chapter of my story with the moments of peace I discovered, amidst God's grace, forgiveness and restoration, using it as evidence that I am now living in a state of freedom, which really I am most of the time. But honesty doesn't want me to talk about that.

Daniel Moore: 7:12

Honesty urged me to present the essence of who I perceive myself to be and examine it against the reality of what truly exists. In doing so, I realized that there is no individual in this world who will find a flawless match between their self-perception and the actual truth. Not one. Regardless of how spiritually advanced, refined, mature or liberated we may believe ourselves to be, there are inherent misalignments ingrained within our beings. This is the issue that honesty aimed to discuss with me. The truth reveals itself. The root cause of these misalignments is something we typically wish had remained confined to our middle school locker room, and that is the subject of rejection.

Daniel Moore: 8:01

When someone intentionally crafts rejection tailored to exploit my most vulnerable aspects, it has the power to penetrate the core of my being. While maturity in my faith can aid me in processing and responding to such rejection, guiding me in extracting the arrow and tending to the wound. It does not serve as an impenetrable shield from the pain of rejection. It does not serve as an impenetrable shield from the pain of rejection. The rejections we face today, whether overt or discreet, act as the stealth bombs that are directly targeted at our innermost core, unearthing past wounds and causing them to resurface with excruciating intensity. These rejections have the uncanny ability to pinpoint the hurts from our past, bringing them vividly back to the present. They disrupt the carefully constructed coping mechanisms we have developed to maintain stability in our lives.

Daniel Moore: 8:59

In the midst of these challenges, the voices of doubt and insecurity speak softly but persistently, echoing the belief that we are a disappointment. These voices do not need to shout. The pain itself resonates in deafening echoes. As honesty stares at me, I give a nod in agreement. I acknowledge that there is progress yet to be made. Eventually, I understand that honesty's intent is not to harm, but it's trying to heal me. If you want to know what's really inside of a person, listen to the words they speak. Years ago, the Lord made sure that I had an acute awareness of what some of my own words would reveal.

Daniel Moore: 9:44

Hints of the misalignment between what is true and what I believe about myself leaked out one day at the airport, I had been visiting a girl I was dating at the time in Bakersfield, california, and it was time to get to the airport in LA. We jumped in the car several hours early and headed toward my flight. Halfway into the journey we ended up in a traffic jam. Halfway into the journey, we ended up in a traffic jam. We sat and waited and waited and crept slowly towards my destination. I was getting more anxious and worried as the time slipped by that we were still on the freeway when we should have been turning into the airport parking lot. Finally, an hour later into the trip than was intended, we saw the airport looming in the distance. We finally made it to the terminal.

Daniel Moore: 10:34

I leaped out, grabbed my luggage and started running to my gate. As I approached the check-in, I saw the last few people trickle into the passageway to board the plane. My luggage was checked and down the conveyor it went. I ran over to the attendant standing at the boarding lane and, with one line spoken, my heart sank. I heard the airport worker say something to the effect that the doors had already shut. My luggage made it on the plane, but I would not. I had arrived a few minutes too late, my mind started racing. I had to go back to work the next day.

Daniel Moore: 11:14

I'm in one of the biggest multi-floor airports in the USA. Stuck in the waiting room because I got held up in a traffic jam, I looked at the worker and asked the obvious question how do I get on a flight to go home now, since I missed mine? Well, I was advised that I would have to wait until a seat was open on a future flight. I could jump on as an extra passenger if a seat was open for me to do so. All day long, flights came and went and my panic was setting in. I had no idea how long I was going to be stuck there in that waiting room. Bummer, big, huge, stinking bummer. Eventually, after about six to seven hours of waiting for that empty jump seat, I walked back up to the counter and asked if there were any favors they could do to get me on a plane, to which they replied Nope, we just have to wait.

Daniel Moore: 12:13

And then I started doing what I do sometimes when life doesn't cooperate with me. I started talking to myself. Impatient frustration lifted my nerves right up through my body and right out of my mouth. I am such an idiot. I knew we should have left sooner. Why does this kind of stuff always have to happen to me? I mean, seriously, if I had a brain, I wouldn't even know how to use it.

Daniel Moore: 12:40

The desk attendant spun around and held up her hand for me to stop. Not here in front of me. She said Not here in front of me. Will you talk that way about yourself? Absolutely not. As she wagged a finger at me. Her defiant outburst startled me. It also stopped me Suddenly. I felt like I was talking to the angel. Gabriel Spit happens, only Gabriel Spit happens. Only she didn't say spit, she said well, you know I'm thinking great. I have an angel with a language problem. So maybe she wasn't really a heavenly being. But the words she said sure were divine. They stuck to me. You know, like everyone's experience. You've had at least once in your lifetime where you were chewing a piece of bubble gum and it got stuck in your hair. The only way to get it out was with scissors. You know, that kind of stuck A very serious problem. And this was a serious problem also. Those words not here in front of me, will you talk that way about yourself? Stuck to me. They don't brush off that easily.

Daniel Moore: 13:57

Sometimes, a particular phrase or set of words can resonate so deeply with us that it leaves a lasting impact on our soul. These words may hold significant meaning or truth that speaks directly to our innermost thoughts and emotions. Such phrases have the power to evoke strong feelings or trigger a huge sense of realization or understanding within us, leaving an imprint on our soul that we carry with us long after we first hear them. Those are the phrases you want to collect in your memory bank, like you might collect hot wheels or Barbie dolls. Those words that can move you are treasures. I wanted to write it down, but my luggage was somewhere between California and Missouri. Maybe it can never be seen again. The airport terminal provided an unlikely backdrop for such a deep lesson to be learned. I then realized why those words were so necessary for me.

Daniel Moore: 14:54

Negative self-talk was a rejection from my past that reared its head from time to time. I had let it settle into the very core of who I was. I would later come to realize that I permitted myself to talk about me in ways I would never let anyone else do so. In some ways, self-rejection and words that would poison myself scrambled my thoughts more than I would ever care to admit. When we reject ourselves, we essentially create an open runway for external rejection to come in and take hold within us. The self-criticism and negative beliefs that we hold about ourselves act as a magnet for similar criticisms from others to land on the already vulnerable grounds of our hearts. This is why it stings so much when others say or do things that make us feel rejected, because it often mirrors the same vulnerabilities and insecurities we have already inflicted upon ourselves. It's like adding insult to injury, as the external rejection exacerbates the pain of the internal self-rejection we are already grappling with. The convergence of both internal and external rejection can intensify the emotional impact and compound the hurt we feel, making it even more challenging to heal and move forward. I mean it's kind of like getting kicked in the shin where you were just kicked not even five minutes ago.

Daniel Moore: 16:27

It hurts when someone doesn't invite you to their event. It can trigger a cascade of negative thoughts and self-doubt. You may find yourself revisiting all the criticisms and vulnerabilities you have expressed about yourself recently and in that moment you start associating those negative thoughts with the person who didn't invite you. It's as if you project your own insecurities onto them and hear their words echoing your self-criticism. This can lead to a sense of being labeled, judged and ultimately rejected by that person, even if they may not have intended to hurt you. If they may not have intended to hurt you, the convergence of your own internal struggles and external events can amplify feelings of rejection and inadequacy, making it difficult to separate your own self-perceptions from the actions of others. This can create a cycle of self-blame and emotional distress, highlighting the impact that external actions can have on our inner thoughts and feelings of worthlessness. Or maybe your spouse makes a comment about something that you're already sensitive about and it triggers a heightened emotional response that may seem disproportionate to the situation. This could be due to the fact that you interpret their words and actions through the lens of your own insecurities and vulnerabilities, magnifying their impact and intensifying your emotional reaction. As a result, you may perceive their comments as more hurtful or critical than they intended, leading to feelings of rejection and emotional distress, leading to feelings of rejection and emotional distress. This can then create a strain in the relationship, as your partner may be left confused and unaware of the underlying issues that are influencing your reactions.

Daniel Moore: 18:19

Perhaps a situation you were deeply invested in doesn't pan out as planned. You attempt to encourage yourself, acknowledging that it was a result of unexpected events. Yet a sense of rejection lingers within you. You strive not to internalize it, but the disappointment leaves you feeling slightly unsettled for the remainder of the day, unable to fully shake off the letdown. Or when one of your adult children intentionally goes against the advice you provided the more you insist, the further they withdraw. You start to see yourself as the parent you vowed you would never become intrusive and domineering. In response, they become reserved and distant, leaving you with a deep sense of heartache. Or when someone outright rejects you, whether it's your idea, invitation, children, project or anything else, it impacts you more deeply than you expect.

Daniel Moore: 19:23

As relationships become more uncertain and opportunities seem riskier, life can feel like a series of obstacles that are difficult to navigate. Despite these challenges, we persist because perseverance is ingrained in us. That's just what we do. However, the constant feeling of rejection, whether real or imagined it, takes a toll on our security. It undermines our self-worth and amplifies the negative messages we have internalized about ourselves. In this way, rejection not only affects our external circumstances, but also chips away at our self-confidence and identity, overshadowing the best parts of who we are with the lingering echoes of past hurts. Rejection steals the best of who we are by reinforcing the worst of what's been said to us.

Daniel Moore: 20:19

Rejection is not merely an emotional response. It serves as a powerful message that penetrates deep into our inner being, shaping our beliefs about ourselves, others and even our faith in God. When we experience rejection, it triggers memories of past hurts and critical words spoken by others. These words can become internalized, forming labels that we subconsciously attach to ourselves. Over time, these labels morph into damaging lies that we start to believe about our worth and capabilities. As these falsehoods take root in our minds, they influence how we perceive ourselves and impact our interactions with others in every new relationship we form. The cycle continues as we carry the burden of these perceived liabilities, affecting our self-esteem and the way we engage with the world around us.

Daniel Moore: 21:18

Let's look at an example of this process. The line is I don't want you becomes the label you aren't accepted. The label you aren't accepted becomes the lie you aren't worthy. The lie you aren't worthy becomes the script of self-rejection. Believing that we are unworthy can trigger a cascade of negative emotions and behaviors that act as barriers in current relationships. This mindset can lead to suspicion, doubt and hesitancy, creating obstacles to forming meaningful connections with others. We may unknowingly project past instances of rejection onto new relationships, unfairly attributing words and actions to others that they never expressed. This cycle of self-doubt and mistrust can extend to our relationship with God, of self-doubt and mistrust can extend to our relationship with God. We may find ourselves questioning if God shares the same negative opinions about us as those who have caused us pain in the past. These doubts can breed insecurity and further isolate us from the possibility of healing and growth within ourselves and our interactions with others.

Daniel Moore: 22:33

And you may be asking why did you pick this topic of rejection? No, it isn't because I've mastered it. I chose it because I think we need to dig deep inside the very core of ourselves and expose and hopefully finally heal rejection's deep wounds. There is a warning that I must issue with this journey that we're going to be taking over the next couple of weeks. It won't be tidy, but it will be honest and it will be good. I also may still not be ready to give hugs, but I am willing to shake hands and walk forward from here.

Daniel Moore: 23:11

Oh, by the way, I did finally get on a plane. I made it home to lost luggage and worked my next day at work. My luggage finally made it back home about three weeks later. I'm still not real sure where it was lost. To be honest, I never could find anyone that could give me a straight answer.

Daniel Moore: 23:32

But the fear of rejection is an anxiety that runs deep inside of us. Often we're not even aware of how significantly it is influencing and affecting us. When the fear of rejection dominates us, we make lots of bad decisions. When we're insecure on the inside, we miss some of the best that God has for us some of the best that God has for us. You will never experience enough love from people to successfully and perpetually free you from insecurity and the fear of rejection. The only love that can and will do this is God's love. That's going to wrap it up for this week.

Daniel Moore: 24:14

Next week we're going to come back with the second episode in this mini series on rejection. Please subscribe to be sure that you don't miss that episode. I'm Daniel Moore. Thank you for joining us this week on Connecting the Gap podcast. This show really wouldn't be possible without you. If you're a fan of the show, please leave a review on Apple podcast. Or if you'd like to help us out. Just give us a few seconds to give us a five-star click, and please subscribe to us on your favorite platform. The links for those are in the show notes. Well, that's all for this week, and we believe that God's Word never fails us. God's Word has stood the test of time and through Jesus' death on the cross, he has connected the gap.

Aria: 24:55

You've been listening to Connecting the Gap podcast. In this world, there are many disconnects that cause chaos in our lives. This podcast is birthed from the desire to share hope and restoration of the power of the gospel by being transparent and open in our biblical walk with God. Each week, we take a few moments as we navigate God's word and peer into other people's testimonies and encourage each other to connect the gap. We upload a new audio podcast every Thursday and a video version of it on YouTube and Rumble. We are also on the Christian podcasting app Edify. You can subscribe to our podcast on many of the available podcasting platforms, including Apple Podcast, spotify, amazon Music, iheart Radio, tunein Radio and more. We are also available on your Alexa-enabled devices. If you would like to contact our ministry for any reason, visit our contact page and send us a message. We hope you are blessed by this ministry. This is a production of Connecting the Gap Ministries.