Romans 8:26-27: God understands your pain even when you can’t pray.

Meaning: As a believer, you are not left to your own resources to cope with problems. Even when you don’t know the right words to pray. the Holy Spirit prays with and for you, and God answers. With God helping you pray, you don’t need to be afraid to come before him. Ask the Holy Spirit to intercede for you “in accordance with the will of God.” Then, when you bring your requests to God, trust that he will always do what is best.

Reflection: What feelings do I struggle to put into words?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself, it’s that I carry a whole galaxy of emotions but barely have the language for any of them. I walk around with storms in my chest, but when it’s time to speak, everything turns into static. My emotional wiring is… complicated. Twisted. Half-built by people who didn’t teach me a damn thing about navigating feelings — only about surviving them.

I wasn’t raised to understand softness or name my emotions. I was raised to endure them. Swallow them. Hide them. Pretend they didn’t exist.

So now as an adult, when big feelings rise up, I glitch. I either:

a) go quiet and disappear inside myself — like shutting down a whole city and turning off every single light just to stay safe

or

b) I explode — even when the thing happening in the moment isn’t the real thing that hurt me.

And it’s wild because anger is the only emotion that comes naturally. Not because I’m angry at the world, but because anger is the only language my childhood ever spoke. It’s familiar. It’s safe. It’s loud enough to drown out the things I don’t know how to feel.

But the one emotion that absolutely paralyzes me… The one that leaves me speechless, breathless, hollow… The one I can’t look at without flinching?

Rejection.

Rejection hits me like a punch straight to the soul. It’s not a simple hurt — it’s a layered one. It feels like someone peeled open an old scar and reminded me it never healed right in the first place.

It feels like being a kid again, waiting at a window for someone who promised to show up. It feels like shrinking — like my body folds into itself trying to take up less space. It feels like a spotlight on every insecurity I’ve ever tried to hide.

It’s a mix of shame, fear, confusion, and self-blame that all hit at once. It makes my stomach twist. My chest tighten. My throat close up like it’s trying to swallow the truth before I can say it out loud.

Rejection from strangers? Yeah, that stings a little. Rejection from friends? That one bruises. But rejection from family… that’s different. That’s the kind that hits places nobody ever apologized for damaging. That’s the kind that feels like being abandoned twice — once in childhood, and again in adulthood, just to remind you it wasn’t a phase.

It makes me feel defective, like there’s something about me that pushes people away without me even knowing what I did wrong. It makes me feel like I’m constantly standing at the edge of people’s lives, hoping to be invited in but never fully belonging. It makes me feel like love is something I have to earn, beg for, over-explain… like I’m always about five seconds away from being unwanted again.

And the worst part? I can’t ever seem to say any of this in the moment.

The words “you made me feel unwanted” get stuck behind my teeth. The pain turns into silence or anger, because that’s all I know how to do. That’s the only armor I’ve ever worn.

Rejection makes me feel hollow. It makes me feel unworthy. It makes me feel like the version of me that’s “too much” and the version of me that’s “not enough” are both fighting to exist at the same time. It makes me question my value in rooms full of people who don’t even realize they hurt me.

It makes me feel like I’m auditioning for roles in people’s lives — but they’ve already cast someone else and just forgot to tell me.

These are the feelings I’ve never been able to articulate. The feelings I’ve buried and sugarcoated and masked with anger. But I’m naming them now — even if the words feel sharp in my mouth. Even if my voice shakes.

Because naming it is the first step to healing it. And I’m done pretending rejection doesn’t break something in me every single time.

XOXO, The Healing Wildflower