Recently I came across the following from Danny Silk on Instagram:
I can and will choose to love. You have the CHOICE! In John 15:16, Jesus told His disciples, “You did not choose me, but I chose you…” Jesus chose us in the most difficult of circumstances. He chose you while you were in sin, while you were his enemy. Even before the foundations of the earth, He chose you. When Jesus says, “I choose you” He is saying, you will never have to worry about My half of the relationship. I will manage My half of our relationship and My half of the relationship does not depend on your choice, but entirely on My choice. It was His choice to make a way for us to choose Him back. I choose you is the foundation necessary to cultivate an ongoing love relationship.
The simple fact that we get to choose love is so powerful. But choosing love in relationship is not always easy. There are several things that can cause us to want to shut down and build a wall, instead of remaining open to connection. Things like disappointment and unmet expectations can have that affect, but also (for the purposes of this blog post) feelings of rejection, or the fear of rejection and the self-protective measures we impose as a reaction to those feelings and fears.
Rejection can be real or perceived. Whether it’s valid or just our perceptions the emotions are just as powerful. Feelings of rejection are triggered differently in each one of us and result from painful past experiences and wounds. Real experiences of rejection from our past can cause us to view our current circumstances through a distorted lens.
When rejection is triggered, we must remind ourselves that no one can meet our need to be loved, affirmed and cherished like Jesus can. No one other than Jesus can completely fulfill or satisfy our needs. When we put the pressure on another individual to completely meet our needs, we are asking for disappointment. We can’t expect others to come along and heal a wound that someone else left behind or to fulfill a need that someone else left unmet.
We need to acknowledge that our need and desire to be wanted, loved and cherished is legitimate and good! It is important for us to communicate those needs to our loved ones and to teach them our love language. Each one of us has our own individual love language by which our need for love is best met.
Sometimes we shy away from communicating those needs because we feel guilty, silly or stupid for having those desires. We convince ourselves that other needs are more important, like the need to be productive or accomplished for instance. Sometimes we bottle things inside because we feel as though talking about our needs or desires makes us weak, needy or desperate. We feel our desires are too much, that we are too much. Sadly, sometimes we make the assumption that we would be better off without those desires at all. So we do our best to shut them down and wall off our hearts, in an attempt to preserve a false sense of dignity and strength.
Other times, we over-communicate our needs, lacking grace and understanding that our loved ones are in fact human. We hold people against expectations they could never fulfill. Or we don’t give people a chance to meet the needs we have communicated.
I have veered to both extremes when it comes to managing my connections and frustrations in relationships. But however you look at it, choosing not to communicate at all, creates walls. Choosing to shut down our needs and desires imprisons us. And choosing to pretend that our needs don’t exist or that they aren’t important closes us to the possibility of experiencing the love we desire.
My first relationship didn’t end well. I can remember being told that the reasons my needs weren’t being fulfilled in the relationship was because I wasn’t loved enough by the individual to meet them. That although he tried, he couldn’t force himself to love me the way I loved him. And that the next time he pursued something, he would make sure it was with someone he actually loved. Yeah, I know ouch. We all have stories of rejection in our history. When we are not careful, sometimes we project past hurts on current situations. We must choose to deal with our wounds and refuse to view our present circumstances through a broken lens.
By inviting Jesus into the place of my pain and submitting to an ongoing healing process, I have discovered that my natural inclination is to shut down, pull back and engage in self-protective mechanisms, when I am triggered by feelings of fear, hurt and rejection. Whether the feelings are real or imagined, the struggle is the same. This has always been my default safety mode. If I don’t put myself out there, then you can’t hurt me. Last year, I made a choice that I would continuously choose love in my relationships, choose communication over silence, and choose to keep myself open and to refuse to build walls. Although the risk of rejection and pain can be scary and hard, the reward of being truly known and loved far outweighs the risk. In order to remain open to feeling true joy and knowing true love, we must face the realities of pain and challenges as well.
As we navigate the road of continuing to choose love, let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us to be balanced in both our communication and expectations. Let’s allow ourselves to look at life through a lens that knows we are incredibly loved and that all our needs have already been fully met in Jesus. And let’s choose to remember that even when the journey is challenging, He’s always with us.
