When Your Child Gets Rejected

Several years ago, my son tried out for the middle school basketball team. Having come from a basketball family myself, I began dreaming big dreams for him. Surely, I thought, we were witnessing the start of something great.

Game after game, however, my son sat the bench. I kept my cool for a while. The coach was a veteran; surely he knew what he was doing. I told myself that my son needed development; he was growing in perseverance. One night, though, we were ahead by 30 points and the coach started playing the few remaining players with about two minutes left on the clock. My son, however, stayed on the bench until the last few seconds of the game. 

There’s a special brand of gall that can arise from deep within a mother’s body when the child she loves is rejected. Whether that child is a perpetual benchwarmer, an understudy, a member of the B-team, on the wrong side of a breakup, or on the “cut list” of a tryout, it’s hard to parse through the mess of maternal emotions that can erupt as a result. Often, the knee-jerk reaction is to act out of those emotions, giving the coach or the director or the ex-boyfriend a piece of her mind with that famous gusto only a hot mama can produce.

And yet, these rejections are an anvil on which the Lord can melt and shape a mother’s heart—and the child’s—to become more like his. The hotter the fire, the more malleable the will. So, how do we take all the unbridled energy and hurtful offense we feel and direct it towards godliness?

1. Be honest with the Father: We can take the raw and un-tempered emotion (and all the tears and anger that accompany it) directly to our Father, asking him to soften our hearts and keep us from sinful responses. Don’t be afraid to pound on his chest with the pain (and perhaps even injustice) of the situation. Remember that he himself has watched a Child be unfairly rejected.[1] And when we are honest about what’s going on inside our own hearts, we offer God some fabulous raw material with which to work. Only he is fully capable of using this situation for our sanctification and for his own glory. He is sovereign. He sees things we cannot. He knows things we do not. And there may come a day when we even look back and feel glad for the anvil.[2]

2. Be open with a friend: Many of us need to work through our emotions aloud, with someone who loves us by listening and responding with both kindness and honesty. This may be a close believing friend or our spouse (depending upon his own emotional need to work through the situation). After we’ve gone to God and invited him to work (and checked our hearts for temptations towards gossip and slander), consider letting another trusted person listen to what’s going on inside. Then, extend the honor of listening back, offering them the opportunity to point us toward truth we may not be able to see in the heat of the moment.[3]

3. Be present with your child: With these outlets for our own emotions, we can thoughtfully listen as our child processes the situation. He or she may be approaching the details from an altogether different perspective. Often, these rejections are harder for us moms than they are for our kids, who are remarkably resilient. Regardless, we can ask God to help us be the adult in the room and point our kids to gospel truth. He promises both a spirit of endurance and a way out of temptation, whether that be the temptation to badmouth the offending party or lead our child to handle the situation unwisely.[4] While rejection can feel terrible in the moment, in God’s hands, it has the power to produce all sorts of good things in the life of a young person.

4. Be intentional with your “enemy”: Proverbs 16:7 says, “When a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.” As moms, we can meditate on this verse, asking the Lord to reveal sin in our own lives and make the peace only he can between our family and the offending party. It’s worth asking the friend from step 2 to pray and offer wise feedback on if it’s appropriate to broach a conversation, and, if so, what we might say. If the situation is particularly complex, we might consider fasting as we ask for the Lord’s clear direction. Any steps we initiate should come after much prayer and with a posture of grace.

5. Be prepared to forgive (and then forgive again): As a junior, my son now stands at 6’8” and is currently the tallest kid in his school. He holds a spot on the varsity basketball team and had his first slam dunk in a game last week. To this day, however, I can get surprisingly hot-and-bothered when I bump into the coach who treated my son unfairly in middle school. As believers, we are called to forgive seventy times seven,[5] which means even when that same old offense comes to mind years later, we forgive again the same way God forgives us. One very useful heart posture I have learned through this basketball journey is to ask the Lord to make my own sin—which I often brush aside with any number of excuses—as offensive to me as that old coach. When this happens, God’s costly grace, bought with the blood of his own rejected Son, becomes remarkably tangible to me. 

Nearly every mother will, at some point, watch her child experience rejection. For many of us, the visceral response is more intense than we imagined it would be. But when the human heart is engaged to such a degree, we need not fear. In the hands of our loving Father, the hot anvil of rejection always serves his purposes—resulting in both my good, my child’s growth, and God’s wonderful glory.[5] 

[1] Isaiah 53:3

[2] Genesis 50:20; Romans 8:28

[3] Galatians 6:2

[4] 1 Corinthians 10:13

[5] Matthew 18:22

[5] Romans 5:1-5; Romans 8:28; Colossians 3:13