When you're pretty sure you are a disappointment.

I always thought the worst thing was not getting chosen. Being overlooked, left out, not being picked for the team or the party or the date.

Do you remember that happening and how bad it felt? Realizing that someone purposefully didn’t choose you, that in someone’s mind they would be better off without you even being there. I remember getting stung a couple times and rubbing the spot for quite awhile.

But it turns out there’s something much worse: Getting chosen and then it becoming glaringly obvious that you were not as expected. That you are a disappointment. That perhaps you’re kept because of mercy, pity, or dutiful obligation, but the unspoken truth is that if the whole thing was done over, they wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. You’d be out.

Perhaps you were chosen for the team but reality is you’ve never seen a minute in a game. Or, like poor Skeeter from The Help, you’re set up on a date and upon arrival Mr. Wonderful’s face is painfully clear: You’re not quite what he’d hoped for.

That is, perhaps you were chosen, but had they really known you you’d never have been chosen after all. 

Yup, this takes the cake.

This goes far beyond the surface scratch of being merely overlooked. One can easily explain that away. Perhaps they don’t know your hidden talent, or you were having a bad day, or maybe your beauty isn’t outward but if they knew your amazing personality things would be different. Being initially un-chosen is rejection at arm’s length. Not big deal.

But the second kind is another beast altogether. That is, rejection at our core. That is, rejected for who we really are. After we’ve been known. After we’ve been proven. After we’d washed off our makeup and slipped off our clothes, so to speak. Rejection that whispers, “Had I known, I never would have chosen …”

Do we wonder why divorce is so diabolical? 

To be known and then rejected is eternally worse than never being chosen in the first place.

Why the dark thoughts, you ask?

This darkness (That yes, I have felt in my brief 31 years), this sting, this ache that strips us bare and leaves us raw and oozing pain, it helps us see the glory of the gospel.

The ravaging love that revolutionizes our souls. 

Yes, it arrests our hearts to realize that “In Him, we were also chosen” (Eph. 1:11). We ARE chosen, picked, singled out, by the love of God in Christ. But this! But this is what should bring us to our knees in thanks and stand us on our feet in confidence:

“For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them…” Rom. 8:29

Known and chosen. Chosen and known. We have been chosen by God even though He knew everything we would ever do.  He knew what was under the clothes, the makeup, the masks. He knew the blunders we’d make and the limits we have.

He knows that really, we’re not that put together. 

He says, “I have known, and I have chosen.”

I don’t know who this is for, but some sister needs to know it today: You are not a disappointment to God. He has never regretted his choice in you. He has never thought, “Had I known…”

You were already known, and chosen.

So you can be free to slip down those layers we clutch fearfully in front, and be bare before Him. He already knows and loves it all. You’re not a disappointment after all. 

Oh amazing grace! {Thanks for reading.}