RYR 15 “Woman Unloved”

The Bible tells us in this verse, and in the story of the wives of Jacob, that our feeling unloved negatively affects those around us, so much so, that this verse says it causes the earth to quake and not be able to bear! Wow, take just a moment and think of all those dear people who have tried to make you feel loved.

“Now the LORD saw that Leah was unloved, and He opened her womb, but Rachel was barren” (Gen. 29:31).

“Then she conceived again and bore a son and said, ‘Because the LORD has heard that I am unloved, He has therefore given me this son also.’ So she named him Simeon” (Gen. 29:33).

There is no one who understands more of feeling unloved than a woman like me. My first husband walked out, saying he had made a mistake and wasn’t cut out for marriage, when we were married just one month! Even after I found out I was pregnant, which many women use (unsuccessfully) to try to get their man back, my husband wasn’t the least bit interested in either of us. (And for the record, that is not why I became pregnant, though I am not above anything like that.)

Then, when my son was about ten months, I met a man who seemed to love my son like his own, and told me he loved me! Unfortunately, he, like most of us, was not interested in giving love, but was desperate at finding and getting love. Many of the couples you see today who go from marriage to marriage, or lover to lover, are desperately seeking the love they didn’t get as a child. (Again, though this wasn’t me either, it wasn’t due to any merit on my end. I was blessed to have parents who always showed me unconditional love and acceptance.. However, who doesn’t want to be married to a man who loves us, even if we did have loving parents?)

My second husband and I were married just four years when my husband met and slept with a woman while on a business trip (though I didn’t know it at the time). It took another two years for him to find another woman he desired more than me, to simply abandon me with our four small children (including my oldest son, whom he had adopted). Anyone who has had an unfaithful husband knows that there is no better way to feel unloved and worthless than having a husband who finds himself another woman!

Yet, the ultimate rejection is when you stick by your man, do all you can to win him back (with love and without a word), only for him to walk in and tell you he is leaving and filing for divorce, once more, but this time so he can find someone else to marry. The only thing that can top it, is when you find out that he has been seeing that woman longer than you care to know.

Here, ladies, is rejection, and a woman who “apparently” is unloved.

That word apparently is significant and what this chapter, and my whole ministry is about: though it appears that you and I are unloved, we are passionately loved by the Creator and Author of love! To me. it parallels the same lies that we hear about “unwanted” children who are abandoned or worse, aborted. NO child is unwanted! Who has not heard of the agony of so many women, and couples, who are out of their minds because they are unable to find a child to adopt?

Though we have someone who is right now on bended knee proposing eternal love and faithfulness to us, we choose to run after someone who never could love us the way we want to be loved, or the way we were meant to be loved, and who will more than likely leave us if someone better comes along!

I am convinced that when each of us finds and embraces the love that comes from our Beloved, Jesus, to the point that He becomes all we want and all we need, that we will no longer see the kind of abuse and rejection that results in obsessive behavior, some that actually results in death: by suicide or murder.

This is where my ministry has taken me: After years of experiencing rejection first hand, I know that the only cure or immunity to it is to have the full measure of God’s love that comes from seeking Him above all, instead of anyone else.

Unfortunately, just like any obsession or addiction, it is easy to fall into the trap of feeding our flesh with things that are temporary and require us to always need more. The need for love is just as consuming and destructive as a drug or alcohol addiction, and the world is seeing this in our world today.

Once, it was only the devoted wife who suffered abuse, but now young girls choose to stay in abusive situations with boyfriends: men who are not even committed enough to marry the girl he lives with, sleeps with, or who is carrying or has given birth to his child. God told us this day would be coming. “And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, ‘We will eat our own bread and provide our own apparel; only let us be called by your name to take away our reproach [of being unmarried]’” (Isaiah 4:1 AMP).

The only way to stop this with our unmarried daughters, nieces, and the rest of the young women we love is for US to find the only true love ourselves and let our life show the satisfaction and joy only He can give!

“Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). It is when the men see us as women whose needs are more than met but spilling over; women who are truly and passionately loved, that we will be rid of abuse, abandonment, and neglect.

And for the record: This is not about women’s lib, where women foolishly try to promote themselves as self-sufficient or without needs, but when each woman becomes the Lord’s radiant and loved bride!

“They looked to Him and were radiant, and their faces will never be ashamed” (Ps. 34:5).

Practical Help

If you have been rejected and are not sufficiently in the kind of relationship with the Lord that will rid you, once and for all, of all that pain you are feeling, then here is something that may help you in the interim.

My sister, bless her heart, has been rejected all her life. Since she is stuck at the age of 14 mentally, and emotionally is only 4 years old, she has had her share of rejection, mostly due to the fact that she sets herself up by becoming obsessive with the relationships she does form.

There are many components that the Lord may have me share with you because I found that while helping my sister, I became quite convicted that I do many of the same things and fall into the same traps. Let me first start with the advice my son recently shared with me.

My third son is a youth leader, and one of the young men he ministers to has been rejected since birth; he currently lives with his grandmother since no one wants him. As you can imagine, when he finds someone he believes cares for him, he is quick to attach himself to them. Usually, this wears the person out until they too reject him. It is a vicious cycle, the same one my sister is on, and one you may be on too.

My son said that his advice to any of these people is to s-p-r-e-a-d yourself out by finding and meeting as many people as you can, then be sure to only spend a small amount of time with each one. I thought, wow, this is great advice that I need to share with my sister.

Well, God confirmed this when I got a call from her Sunday school table leader. She called to talk to me about my sister, which I thought would happen sooner since I found that this woman was all my sister could ever talk about.

Since my sister has been rejected so much in the past, she is slow to get to know people.  That might be the way it is with you too. It takes her a while to open up, but then when she does, she can’t contain it. She spills out her entire life: everything, including the good, the bad, and the very ugly.

Most people, Christian or not, are not prepared to deal with anyone’s past junk. Only God can clean it up and make you brand new. No counselor can do that either, yet if you think otherwise, then why is the majority of counseling ongoing? God can touch you in an instant, but His main reason for allowing all this junk is so you understand how desperately you need HIM.

Back to the problem: so, when my sister finally gets it all out, and the woman is unsure how to help her, that’s when my sister begins relying on this other person, just as many of you do. The weight of your problems, and the neediness that plagues you, begins to get to the point where the other person breaks under the weight of it all, and has to get away. Christians do it with as much compassion as they can, but the bottom line is—more rejection.

While hoping to explain this to my sister, without her knowing that her table leader called me, she came to the conclusion that it would be better for her to switch tables. We spoke of not doing it unkindly, or being cold with her friend, but just understanding that there is no one who can carry her burdens but Jesus. I tried to encourage her to only talk to Jesus about her past wounds, some that are very deep, because talking about them causes people to pull away, but more importantly, because talking about them keeps the wounds open.

This is the total opposite result of when we are determined to take them to Jesus only; when we take them to the One who promises to carry us when we can no longer go on. It is when we come to Him that He binds up our wounds and pours a healing balm that not only soothes us but empowers us with the love that we can turn around and give to others!

Which brings us to the next remedy, while you are working on your intimacy with the Lord, give what you have left to others. When we are deeply hurt from rejection, we need to focus on the fact that there are so many poor souls who are worse off than we are. When we take the energy that we usually use to beg someone to help or pay attention to us, and instead, give it to someone who is also in need, we will find ourselves being healed from the inside out!

This, I believe is the prescription that the Lord has written for my oldest daughter. She does a lot of volunteer work, but God is about to step it up a bit with a year in Africa. God put a passion in her heart to help at an orphanage where AIDS and abandoned babies come to be brought to health so they can be adopted by European Christian couples. I believe that her work there will keep her eyes focused on helping these poor defenseless orphans while God gets busy healing her from her dad’s rejection and tremendous hurts from her past when she was molested.

When you are too busy to pick at the scab, or to even talk about it all the time, your mind and spirit can rest—and this, dear bride, will help you find the health and healing for your soul that has eluded you all your life.

Simply take everything to the One who truly cares and loves you beyond anything you thought was possible. After being rejected, I know that there is true joy in a deeply intimate relationship with the Lord as your Husband like nothing you have ever longed for or sung about. Just give it a try.

Personal commitment: to allow my Husband to be my Everything. “Based on what I have learned from God’s Word, I commit to allowing my Husband to be my Everything. I understand that weighing someone else with all my needs not only leaves me hurt and rejected again—but crushes the relationships I am trusting God to restore.”