If I heard it once, I heard it a thousand times, “What looks like rejection is God’s protection.”  Groan.  Sigh.  Gag.  “Mom!” I would say (in all my teenage maturity, I might add), “Stop saying that!!!”  But she was right (good ol’ mom ended up being right about lots of things).  What looked like rejection time and time and time again actually ended up being, well, God’s protection.  But for a long time, before I could see the protection, all I could feel was the rejection.  And boy did it sting!

Simply put, your average junior high, high school and college boy is not interested in dating someone intent on purity of heart, mind, or body.  So…from never being asked to high school formals, to never being asked to dance once I was at the formal (I got oh so good at the “sideline shuffle”), to never having a boyfriend with the exception of one three month period in the midst of a very long four year famine, to always being passed up for the more popular, more beautiful, more flirty “girls-just-want-to-have-fun” type, I was truly convinced that marriage was never going to be in the picture for me, or if it was, the man God would choose for me to marry would be so unattractive, I would have to say “I do” with my eyes closed (I’m just being honest here).

But rather than seeing the rejection for what it was – God’s gracious Hand of protection – I often kicked, screamed, and fought against it, demanding answers and wondering why in the WORLD God made me so ugly, so unattractive, so undesirable, so…fill in the blank.  And many times, I focused so much on the “rejection” side of the equation that I missed the blessing of resting and trusting in the “protection” side of the equation.

But I did have my moments of sanity.  In between longings for a date, I was able to take the time that I would have been investing in guys and dating and sexual temptation and invest it into the Kingdom of God and becoming a woman after God’s own heart.  I was able to minister on my college campus, study abroad, go away for a semester, teach, write, invest, and pour out into the lives of other women.  Looking back, I wouldn’t trade one of those experiences for myriad of dates or dances.  At some point during my senior year of high school or my freshman year of college, I found this quote from Elisabeth Elliot in her book Passion and Purity, wrote it on a note card, and stuck it in my daily planner….and it’s still there: “I wanted to marry a man prepared to swim against the tide.  I took it for granted that there must be a few men left in the world who had that kind of strength.  I assumed that those men would also be looking for women of principle.  I did not want to be among the marked-down goods on the bargain table, cheap because they’d been pawed over.  Crowds collect there.  It is only the few who will pay full price.  ‘You get what you pay for.’”  Harsh?  Maybe.  True?  Absolutely. 

So when Jason Baker appeared in my life, I shouldn’t have been surprised.  After all, Elisabeth Elliot had prepared me years before that men like him actually existed.  But I was surprised – surprised that a Godly, handsome, purposeful, pure-of-heart man like him was looking for an average, ordinary girl like me.  And to be honest, eight years into marriage, his love still takes me by surprise when I think back upon the long wilderness of waiting and rejection. 

So did God redeem my rejection?  In ways that I could not even ask or imagine.  Am I thankful for His protection?  Every single day of my life.  Every day that I look at my husband and thank God for the man that he is, I am thankful for the protection I had from other men.  Every day that I wrap my arms around my two little girls, I thankful for the protection of purity and the legacy that I have to hand down to them.  And one day, I know that I will be able to encourage my daughters the same way my mom encouraged me: “Girls, I know you are not being asked out.  I know, at times, you feel like chopped liver.  BUT look at your father, and remember: What looks like rejection is God’s protection!”  And they can groan, sigh, and gag all they want to.