I couldn’t stop crying. I didn’t think it would hurt this much. I thought I would be used to it by now, but this time the cut felt deep.
She was my friend. We had prayed together during difficult seasons and celebrated at our kids’ birthday parties. But when she decided to leave our church, she didn’t mention it to me. She unfollowed me on Instagram, unfriended me on Facebook, and unsubscribed from everything that connected me to her.
The reason she left had nothing to do with me, and she didn’t want to talk to me about it. But the message was loud and clear: I don’t want you or your church in my life. The weight of rejection slowly began to break me.
But I was the pastor’s wife, so I had to be strong and smile. I didn’t have a place to share my emotions and process the situation. I wanted to look unfazed because this type of rejection is part of ministry. People come and go all the time, but this felt different because the person was actually my friend. She didn’t just leave our church. She left me.
Sometimes people will just walk out with no warning and no resolution. It bothers me to have things left unresolved. We prefer if our conflicts can be wrapped up with a pretty bow, but sometimes there is no closure. When my friend wouldn’t have a conversation to close the chapter on our friendship, I felt a surge of anxiety. My mind raced through possible reasons she couldn’t talk — but I came up empty.
I went through a season of anger because I felt it was unfair. Then weeks of grief left me numb.
Come Sit with Me and Learn Together
We come into the world wanting to be held, loved, and seen. So when we feel rejected, we usually also feel alone and try to protect ourselves. This can lead to mistrust, avoiding vulnerability, and striving to win approval.
In the aftermath of my friend’s rejection, I began to put up my guard in every future relationship. I told myself that as a pastor’s wife, I should hold everyone at arm’s length and never again let anyone close enough to hurt me so deeply.
Immediately after I made this decision, the Holy Spirit impressed these words on my heart: “That is not the way I love you!”
I argued, “If I want to survive in ministry for the long haul, I have to protect myself from people hurting and leaving me.” Then He gently reminded me, “Simi, you hurt Me, you ignore Me, and you have rejected My voice, but I still love you the same. If you want to lead My people, you have to love them like I do — that is what it means to be a shepherd.”
I felt something shift, and I surrendered the pain to Jesus. I released my friend and my unforgiveness to God. That day, I decided to keep my heart soft and my people close. It may be difficult and I may get hurt again, but I will remain vulnerable enough to love God’s people. He will defend and protect my heart.
I decided I would not try to avoid rejection — that would require living as a hermit. Instead I would rest in the finished work of Christ who calls me accepted and approved. When rejection comes, I stand firm in the unchanging truth of God’s Word and continue living authentically without needing to prove my worth to others.
This experience helped me understand that relationships have seasons. People come and go. Our preferences change as we grow, so a person’s choice isn’t necessarily a reflection on us. What if we chose not to take it personally when friendships shift? Sometimes we bear the brunt of another’s unhappiness, but that doesn’t mean we’re the cause.
We have to allow the other person space to process instead of rushing to fix the issue. Relationships will always be risky, but that is true of everything worth our investment. God has called us to relationship with Him and others. God walks with me. I lean on Him for wisdom on how to set boundaries, when to be vulnerable, and how to forgive.
Maybe for you it’s a family member who left, a friend who ghosted you, or a boss who overlooked you. Whatever the source of the rejection, the pain is real. Sometimes there is no solution, but you still have a choice in how you respond.
Paul writes, “Live in harmony with each other… Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone” (Romans 12:16–18 NLT).
While we are responsible for our actions, we aren’t responsible for how others respond. You can behave honorably even when someone treats you unfairly. You may do all you can to live in peace, but they still may not desire a relationship with you. You might not have closure, but you can have internal peace.
Even Jesus was rejected. Many times in the Gospels, we see Him walking away in silence, and He teaches His disciples to “shake off the dust from your feet” when faced with rejection (Matthew 10:14 ESV). To live at peace with those who have rejected us, we have to learn to shake it off.
Friend, if you are hurting today, if you are feeling the sting of rejection or the pain of a broken relationship, be assured of this: God sees you, and He is working through you.
Written by Simi John, adapted from (in)courage’s popular book, Come Sit with Me. Grab your copy for deep encouragement from your favorite (in)courage writers as we learn together How to Delight in Differences, Love through Disagreements, and Live with Discomfort.
Thank you Simi. Thank you for this reminder…”God never leaves” \0/
Dear Simi…..I have had so many people that have rejected me for various reasons. Every single one has hurt me and it felt like my heart is broken. My now ex-husband who has dementia, but denies it and our son believes the lies that my then husband told him and he has denied that his father is sick. He and his wife and my ex refuse to even talk to me and the reason shocked me when I found out. It is because I am a Christian and they say there is no such thing and churches are just money grubbers. I have one grandchild who I am not allowed to even think I will ever talk or see him ever again. He just turned 15 last week and I have not been with him since he was 11. My friends have also just ghosted me. I will tell you about just one of them. We grew up together, as we called it, play pen buddies. Our mothers were best friends and we lived across the street from them. There is much history in between, but she ended up divorcing her first husband, marrying another man who had a lot more money and they moved to Georgia. For awhile we lost touch, but then her husband died and they had no children and her mother and father had passed on. somehow I found an old email that she had sent me many years ago and it had her phone # and address on it. I thought,the way they kept moving around, this email is probably not valid, but I did call the number and she answered the phone. We reconnected and called each other every week. Then over a year ago we were talking one day and something went horribly wrong. This woman felt she was a Bible scholar and had changed churches many times. She told me once that when Jesus returned to the Earth, she would be one of the only ones He would save, not me. I asked her why she would say this as we do not know when Jesus will return and at our age 78 years old, this might not happen for many years. She had no answer and then the conversation changed to what was going on in the world. Bad subject as it was an election year. We didn’t tell each other who we were voting for, but somehow she figured out who I was going to vote for and started yelling at me. I told her calmly that obviously since you have been down South for so long, you did not follow this man’s tactics and how many lives he had ruined. She said, Well you are wrong and she hung up on me. That was the last time I heard from her. I thought since she was this self-proclaimed religion expert that she would call back later and apologize to me. I had forgiven her the next day after the phone call as that is what God wants us to do, but no anything from her. I just thought, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and as what she had told me so many times, you must forgive when you make a mistake. All the things she told me about religion over the years were kind of weird things that I did not believe in. When I talked to me Minister about my confusion about things she was telling me. My Pastor told me, please stay away from her as there are many movements in the South that are not our beliefs. She told me she is a White Nationalist and they have many things we don’t believe in. My then friend kept telling me about wanting to get the churches set up politically as in Democrats and Republicans and certain people would not be allowed in these churches There is more, but I have bored you enough, but there still has been no phone calls. It is a shame as we were best friends for many years, but I don’t want to get involved with the things she would talk about. I never said anything negative to her about her ideas. Strange, Simi, how people completely change over the years. I am really happy that you wrote your devotional and told your story. This has helped me. There is so much more with my family who have rejected me, but that story is really long. I wish you a blessed weekend and I continue to pray and my faith is unshakeable. It has been challenged so many times by the devil, but I just turned and told him. I love God and he ran away. Love to you and your family………….Betsy