Today I realized I still deal with rejection in my older years. From childhood, this remains while I understand it happened through my counseling sessions. Never to this degree that I knew it had ahold on me, still.
While the rejection was not really directed at me, I assumed the feeling and just about lost it.
Working on a tax issue at work, I was given the information and amounts involved. I went to the Clerk’s office to make payment of such. Usually, this trip is speedily but today, the clerk made it her main job to check off and inform me that the numbers were not right, the amounts were wrong, the total payment was incorrect. All I could hear was Reject Reject Reject.
Thinking to myself and getting irritated, I did not just pick this information out of thin air but given it like all other tax bills payable from my office.
The slow motion and precise job that she was portraying was grating on my last nerve. I could feel my emotions changing, the fear of rejection rise within me, embarrassment if I made the costly mistake and failure within was booming in my head. The root of rejection was taking hold, in full force.
When she finally would not accept the payment because it was wrong, handing me the check and paperwork, I said I just want to get out of here. A task that normally would take a few minutes turned into a half hour.
What she did not know and I realized once I left and calmed down to think through, my amount is correct. Tomorrow, I will once again go and deliver the tax check.
With all that, we do not know what another is going through or experiencing in life. Have grace. Not just with another but also yourself.
We all need Grace.