Rejected, But Not Forsaken

Walking Home: A Series for Veterans Carrying Wounds the World Can’t See — Part 1

(All Scripture quotations are from the New Living Translation, NLT.)

I want to start this series with the wound underneath all the other wounds.

For many of the veterans I have sat with over the years, the deepest injury didn’t happen on the battlefield. It happened afterward. It happened in the airport, in the living room, in the church pew, in the VA waiting room. It happened when they came home to a country that didn’t understand, a family that couldn’t relate, and a church that didn’t know what to say. Some felt rejected by the nation they bled for. Some felt rejected by friends who pulled away when the nightmares and the anger surfaced. And some — in the quietest hours of the night — felt rejected by God Himself.

That is the wound I want to talk about first, because I have watched what it does to a person.

And I need you to know something before we go any further: I am not writing about this rejection from a safe distance. I understand it because I have lived it. I have carried the rejection, and I have carried the PTSD that came with it. And I will be honest with you — God is not finished with me yet. He is still healing me of my own rejection and my own PTSD, even now. So nothing in these pages is theory to me. This is my story too. I am simply a fellow traveler, a little further down the road, turning around to tell you what I have found there.

The Lie That Rejection Tells

PTSD doesn’t just bring nightmares and hypervigilance. It brings a voice. And the voice whispers a lie that sounds like the truth: You are damaged. You are dangerous. No one wants who you’ve become.

And when people believe they are unwanted, they do the most human thing imaginable. They reject others first.

Pushing people away becomes armor. If I leave before you can leave me, I never have to feel that pain again. So the veteran isolates. They lash out. They refuse the help that’s offered and abandon the community that’s reaching for them — not because they don’t long for connection, but because rejection taught them that connection is dangerous.

Hurt people hurt people. Rejected people reject people. I have seen the cycle a hundred times, and maybe you are living in it right now.

But the Bible tells a different story — one where rejection is not the end of the road. It is the very place where God meets us.

A Warrior Who Knew 

Scripture gives us a combat veteran who put words to this exact pain. David was not a Sunday school figure in a robe. He was a soldier who fought in close combat, who lived on the run, who lost comrades-in-arms, who was betrayed by his king, hunted by his own son, and abandoned by those he had bled beside.

Listen to him: “Even if my father and mother abandon me, the Lord will hold me close” (Psalm 27:10, NLT).

David knew abandonment at the deepest human level — and notice what he does with it. He doesn’t pretend it away. He names it. The Psalms are full of David telling God exactly how rejected, hunted, and alone he feels. And God didn’t strike him down for his honesty. God put those raw words in the Bible so that people like us would know we’re allowed to pray them.

David’s answer to rejection was not to build thicker walls. It was to run toward the One who would not leave. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed” (Psalm 34:18, NLT). A crushed spirit is not a disqualification in God’s kingdom. It is an address He knows by heart.

The Savior Who Was Rejected First

Here is the truth that changes everything: when you bring your rejection to Jesus, you are not bringing it to someone who read about it in a book.

Isaiah said of the coming Messiah, “He was despised and rejected — a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief” (Isaiah 53:3, NLT). Jesus was rejected by His hometown. Rejected by the religious leaders. Abandoned by His closest friends on the worst night of His life. And on the cross He cried out the very words every rejected veteran has felt in their bones: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Matthew 27:46, NLT).

He has been where you are. He carried rejection further than any of us ever will — and He carried it for you, so that rejection would never get the final word over you.

That means the lie can be answered. You are not damaged goods to God. “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (2 Corinthians 5:17, NLT). The voice says no one wants who you’ve become. The cross says God wanted you enough to die for you — exactly as you are, wounds and all.

Breaking the Cycle

So how does the cycle break? Not all at once, my friend. I won’t lie to you. But it breaks the same way it formed — one choice at a time.

The cycle formed every time rejection taught you to pull back. It breaks every time grace teaches you to lean in. It breaks when you let one trusted friend see the real you and they don’t flinch. It breaks when you tell God the honest, ugly truth in prayer and discover He was never the one who walked away. It breaks when you stop rehearsing who rejected you and start rehearsing who received you: “For God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you. He is your example, and you must follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21, NLT).

I’m not writing this from the far side of suffering, looking back from a safe distance. I’m 71 years old and still on this road myself — still learning, still being healed. But I can tell you from the middle of the journey: the God who met David in the cave, and who met me in my own dark hours, has not rejected you.

You may have been rejected by people. You have not been forsaken by God. “For God has said, ‘I will never fail you. I will never abandon you’” (Hebrews 13:5, NLT).

Stop running, soldier. The door is open. And the One on the other side of it already knows everything — and He is not turning you away.

— Brother Bill

Next in the series: The Watchman Who Can’t Stand Down — when your mind never leaves the wall, and the God who keeps watch so you can finally rest.