One of my earliest memories of friendship is from when I was around four years old. The girl that I wanted to play and be “best friends” with didn’t want to be friends with me. On that day, I kept following her and her best friend so they wouldn’t walk away from me. Even though I did all I could to try to force that friendship, the sad ending was that I was left to play by myself while feeling hurt.
Beyond being an admittedly melodramatic four-year-old, I felt rejected not only by my first potential best friend but also by so many others around me. I spent the first ten years of my life moving a lot, even internationally at times. I was always in new rooms looking for new friends, and feeling left out. Others who have some kind of immigration or migration story may have felt the same as I did.
That first experience as a child continued in middle school, high school, and college where I felt left behind by friends who were not interested in being as close as I wanted to be. Even in the context of church community, losing friendships for various reasons only added to the feeling of rejection.
Ultimately, I came to believe that I was objectively unlikable. I didn’t know what it was about me that made me this way but I believed this fully for a surprisingly long time. I thought perhaps people didn’t like me because I wasn’t funny enough, didn’t dress in the same way as they did, or even because I lacked a “good personality”. I believed I was destined for rejection from those around me.
In recent years, God has challenged the way I view myself and has freed me from feeling unlikeable and trying to make people like me. He has shown me who I really am and what loving friendship looks like. As He has convicted my heart of wrong expectations, He has also shown me His love for me both in my walk with Him and in my experiences in community.
1. Being Loved
In the Bible, to both Jeremiah and David, God declares beautiful words as He says that He knit and knew them in their mothers’ wombs (Psalm 139:13-14). Both Jeremiah and David were used by God to lead His people. Both Jeremiah and David were also rejected by people close to them to the point of almost being killed.
In the Psalms, David uses the language of despair as he describes himself as “a worm and not a man” because of being “despised” by those around him (Psalm 22:6). David is not the only one. When I was thinking about stories of rejection in the Bible, so many kept jumping out at me. From Hagar, a woman who was rejected by the father of her own child, to Joseph, who went from favored son to rejected brother and jailed servant, multiple Bible stories describe rejected people. And yet, the primary identity of even the rejected is that they are loved and chosen by God from their mothers’ wombs. God does not see us how others see us. When we are left alone in a crowded room or left behind by past friendships, God still sees us as His beloved.
This is clear in His Word. After Hagar was rejected, God himself visited to comfort her – the first of any such occurrences in the Bible. Joseph was left for dead by his brothers, but he became the favored deliverer of his people. Just as Tamar, Gomer, and the woman at the well were seen, heard, and loved by God in extraordinary ways when no one else acknowledged them, God continues to love the “unlikeable”.
When our ultimate identity becomes God’s beloved, we are freed from chasing likability. We can let go of hurt from past friendships and instead be secure in God’s love. This security can allow us to stop the cycle of rejected people rejecting others and instead start a cycle of love. I found that I can follow God’s commandment to love others as myself only when I know how much God loves me first. His love then inspires me to give of myself generously in love to those around me regardless of how much they seem to like me.
2. Loving Others
For me, a large part of feeling unlikeable came from a feeling of neediness. I felt like I needed people in my life to like me in order for me to be enough. I felt especially inadequate and unlikeable with others who were different from me. This belief was challenged when I read Ed Welch’s book When People Are Big and God Is Small. I began to question so much of what I was expecting in relationships.
At the core of the book is the idea that we should “need people less and love people more.” Reading those words as a senior in high school made me feel disillusioned about my expectations for friendship. Throughout high school, I had been looking for friendships that would make me feel special and accepted. I had been wondering why God wasn’t answering my prayers for friendship that I thought He cared about too. The book made me consider that I may have been pursuing being liked instead of loving others.
As long as I was allowing my friendships to define me, my expectations for friendship kept growing in ways that did not match the friendships God had blessed me with. For years some of the friendships that God put into my life were sadly not ones I saw as good enough for me. I wanted more. Whether it be more easy conversations or more social media-worthy moments with my friends, my continuous longing for more made me not appreciate my current friendships. Among all the insecurities that social media promotes, the biggest for me was wanting the friendships I saw online that looked unrealistically perfect and more “fun” than mine.
My desires for friendship were really for some sort of perfect standard that I was seeking from imperfect people. As imperfect people, all of us are unable to be perfect friends as we often miss those who are in the corners of the rooms or those who are feeling lonely in our conversations. Instead of growing in love, I was just waiting for those around me to become better at liking me. Until I was secure in God’s love for me, I was unable to stop waiting to be liked and to start loving those around me instead.
In college, I was blessed with sweet friendships but soon found that even those friendships didn’t fit the mold I had created in my mind for the “perfect friend circle”. I realized then that even imperfect community can be a source of joy and can be celebrated. So, even as the same friendships that answered some of my long-time prayers disappointed other prayers in the months to come, I found myself grateful as I didn’t seek to be defined by my friendship status anymore. This contentment allowed me to love others in imperfect community.
As I have felt secure and full in relationships because of knowing God’s love more deeply, I have slowly begun to pursue community again. After graduating college and returning to my home community, I have seen a drastic change from my high school self to now. Now, as I seek intentional friendships, I don’t expect all my friendships to be easy, deep, or fun. Most significantly, I am more willing to face rejection from others because I don’t need them to like me to believe that I am worthy of love.
My past struggles to feel like I belong have also grown my current love for others. Since I have faced loneliness and rejection in both obvious and subtle ways, I hope to be more loving, especially to those who seem to be easily missed. In spaces that I feel comfortable in and in the ones that I don’t, God has blessed me by opening my eyes to people who I can connect with. I know now that I belong wherever God has placed me, not to be liked but to show love even to those who are different from me. My journey of embracing more of God’s love for me has empowered me to be a more loving daughter of Christ to the world around me.
Even as I grow in contentment, I will admit that I still dream of and pursue growth in my community. I’ve realized that every season of life will look different when it comes to relationships. But in every season I know that I will always be loved by Christ. So, I can love others even as He is good to me in the friendships He provides and the ones He does not.
A fun fact about the girl I wanted to be best friends with when I was four is that I am still friends with her! I see her every week in my small group and love teasing her about the beginnings of our friendship. Even if our friendship did not go how little Carissa had planned, God has shown me His love for me in allowing her and others like her to be in my life.
Recently, as friendship bracelets have been trendy again, I have looked back at my friendships. When I was little, I always wanted one of those friendship bracelet pairs with a heart that comes together when the bracelets are brought together. I have really wanted friendships that fit me perfectly and define my identity. But, God has made my heart not as one that fits an advertisement of friendship but as one that grows to mold well with many friendships that together build my community. As Christ took on rejection Himself on the cross, I am so grateful that I can now be loved and have a heart that can love those around me. My prayer is that we all can become loved people who love people well.
This is the final series from the 2023-2024 Young Writers Cohort, with the authors writing about a topic they feel strongly about.
Photo Credit: Tim Gouw