Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Why would you try to make us believe that rejection
is a gift? Like, what is wrong with you? Let's
get right into the nitty gritty, like I'm gonna ask
you the questions they're not going to ask you on
Good Morning America.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I'm a professional. Why would you try.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
To make us believe that rejection is a gift when
all it does is make us nervous and secure, anxious.
Now we're people pleasing because I don't want to experience rejection,
And here you come with your book telling me that
rejection is actually a gift.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
No, it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
And when God gave me the revelation, I was so confused.
But I'm gonna tell you the story that led to
the revelations. So when I was in high school, first
of all, I was like, I was the chunky girl
for most of my childhood, right, so I was never
the girl that guys wanted. But when I got into
high school, I lost some wede and this guy who
(00:55):
I really liked he liked me too, and so he
asked me to be his girlfriend.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
And I was just over the moon.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
So anyway, he was smart, he was handsome, he was
all the things, and one summer, he went away to
do an internship at a state senator's office about five
hours away, and he called me and was like, hey,
I'm coming back in a week. I want to take
you to the movies. And I was so excited. I
got my hair done, my nails done, like I was
ready okay, But an hour before we were supposed to go,
(01:24):
he was supposed to pick me up, he called me.
It was just like, hey, I had a family emergency.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I'm going to have to reschedule.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
And I was just like what. Of course, I was bummed,
but I was like, look, it's a family emergency.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
What are you gonna do?
Speaker 4 (01:35):
So anyway, I called some of my friends and I
was like, hey, y'all, y'all want to go to the movies?
And so they were like sure. So we go to
this movie theater and I'm standing in line and I
look over and I see my boyfriend holding hands with
another girl. Now, at the moment that I saw him,
he looked back and saw me and like the color
(01:57):
drained from his face. Right, So, as you can imagine,
I was so crushed. It's like I felt abandoned, I
felt discarded. I felt humiliated, like, my friends knew I
was in this relationship, and so you know the guy.
The next day he was calling me trying to apologize.
I wouldn't take his call. I said, forget it. So anyway,
fast forward, this is maybe fifteen years I'm working at
(02:20):
Meta Well, the company formerly known as Facebook, and a
pastor friend of mine reached out to me and was like, hey,
I need your help with something, and I said sure,
what's up?
Speaker 3 (02:28):
He said, I need.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
You to help me take down one of my mentees
Facebook pages, which was crazy to me because I was like,
I've had people ask me to help them get their
page back up after it was taken down. I've never
had anyone ask me to take it down. So I
was like, I don't know if I can help you
with that. That's really weird. What's going on. He said, Look,
this is one of my sons in the ministry. People
are saying really mean things on his page. I need
(02:51):
you to help me take it down. And I said, well,
I don't know if I can help with that, but
send me the link and I'll see what I can do.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
I'll escalate it.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
So I click on the link that he text me,
staring back at me is a picture of.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
My ex boyfriend.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
And I scrolled down on the page and I see
comments from people basically being like, you know, cheaters get
what they deserve. You know, this is this was he
had it coming.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
You know.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
I hope his wife is okay. All this stuff right,
And I'm like, what happened? Well, So I don't normally
watch television. I'm just not a big television watcher. So
I apparently missed the news that he was murdered by.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
His mistress, who also tried to kill his wife, and
it caused.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Not the direction that I thought the story was good.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Listen, I so I go, I click on news articles
right because I'm like, this can't this can't be real.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
I click on news articles. It is absolutely true.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Not only was he murdered by his mistress, but he
had been cheating on his wife with many women who
came out of the world works after the fact. His
wife is the woman he was at the movie theater
with that night. And so in that moment, it's like
twilight zone, right, like the way you feel right now,
like multiply times like fifty. I was in a twilight
(04:19):
zone because what I realized was I had thought he
was cheating on me with her. Maybe he was cheating
on her with me, and I could have ended up on.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Either side of that situation.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
And so when I prayed about it, I was like, Lord,
thank you for protecting me, because those fifteen years Sarah
I had been angry, bitter. I was so upset by
what he did to me. But in that moment, the
Holy Spirit said, Nona, you've been looking at rejection all
wrong because you're so focused on the pain of it
(04:53):
that you missed the purpose of it. And that's when
he said, rejection is actually a gift in my hands.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
I said, WHOA.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
But I started to actually think about all of the
rejection experiences I had experienced in my life, and I
realized that in every single situation, pain was its wrapping paper,
but there was a lesson on the inside of it
that either shaped my character or propelled me into purpose.
There was something in it that ended up being a gift.
(05:24):
And so that's where it came from, was just recognizing
that God can use it for your good and his
glory even when it hurts.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
You said, pain was its wrapping paper. I feel like
that is worth marinating going because some of us don't
get past the wrapping paper.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I've never had.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
A gift that I thought was so beautiful that I
don't want to open it. But I have had some
issues in my life that felt so painful that it
felt like there was nothing that could come from the
inside of it.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
But the paradigm of.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Pain being wrapping paper, and it's daring to do the
work to navigate the pain, to figure out what's inside
of it feels like a journey that each of us
should be willing to take. But tearing that wrapping paper
over open is almost more painful than the incident itself.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
How do you get to a space.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Where you're willing to say, okay, if pain is a
wrapping paper, how do I carefully? My husband always when
he opens Presence, he never rips it open because when
he was growing up, they reused wrapping paper, and so
like he opens it very carefully so that you can
preserve the wrapping paper. I feel like that is kind
of how we're going to have to navigate pain being
(06:37):
the wrapping paper. How do we gently begin to tear
open that pain so that we can figure out the
purpose connected to it.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
I think it starts with I mean Honestly, the reason
why I wrote the book is because just the awareness
that rejection is a gift in and of itself is
a paradigm shift, because what that does is it puts
you in a different posture from where at first you
would see yourself as I'm a victim. This thing happened
to me. I'll never get through it, I'll never get
(07:07):
over it. But now that you recognize, oh wait, there's
a gift in this, it places you in the posture
of a student, which is, Okay, what can this teach
me about myself? What can this teach me about other people?
What is it that God may want to work through
this situation for my good I believe that rejection is
(07:29):
a gift that will make you better if you open it,
or bitter if you don't. And many people are walking
around bitter because, like you said, we stop at the
wrapping paper, and I think having that just thought like, Okay,
this hurts, and there's also something.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
That I need to learn from this. What is the lesson?
Speaker 4 (07:48):
That's how you start to slowly peel it back and
begin to explore what it wants to teach you.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Okay, So I have a question for you, because I
think when we think about rejection, we're generally thinking about
as being on the receiving end of rejection.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
But I want to.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Talk a little bit about the reality that in order
for us to have boundaries, in order for us to lead,
in order for us to have self care, we have
to reject as certain people, certain things that to me
is another gift of rejection is what you get to
hang on to when you dare to reject other people's expectations,
other people's needs, and an effort to protect yourself. Has
(08:24):
this paradigm changed the way that you handle the reality
of rejecting other people? Do you think it's fair to
say that when we set boundaries, we're rejecting other people?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Let me start there.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
I think that's actually a really important insight, which is, yes,
rejection is ultimately what we do when we say no
to the demand that somebody places on us, and sometimes
rejection is necessary. It's a gift to us, but it's
also a gift to the other person. And I'll frame
it this way. I'm sure you understand this. There are
(08:58):
people who see your success, my success, somebody else's success
as an opportunity to build their empire on what God
has built through you. Now, once you become aware of that,
it is important that you place a boundary between you
and that person because otherwise that person will actually kind
(09:22):
of absorb the glory that God has for your life
for their self and that will actually damage their character.
And I think as leaders, one of the responsibilities that
we have is to help people grow in character. So
if somebody is like, I believe that I'm more qualified
than you know they are, it's important to say no
because there's some learning and growth and development they have
to do. Now for the other person who's experiencing that,
(09:45):
of course, that's painful, right, Like it's painful to have
somebody close the door for you, But they're closing the
door because they know that there's more growth needed. And
so there's a gift in that rejection for you as
an individual, to have somebody close the door because you're
not ready to walk through it. Yet, there's a gift
in that. And so again having that as like the
thought paradigm, it becomes a learning opportunity on both sides
(10:07):
of the experience.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Man, Okay, so this makes me think about all of
the ways that I have betrayed myself in order to
avoid rejecting someone else. What do you think we have
to do as people who are in relationships, parenting, friendships
(10:30):
in order to reconcile the or normalizing I'm gonna use
the word normalizing rejection because I do feel like if
you've gone through trauma, if you've had some insecurities, rejection
feels like a retriggering. But do you think that we
have to normalize rejection in order to both understand it
(10:50):
reconcile it for ourselves, but also to be okay with
rejecting other people? Or does it it feels like a
wound every time?
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Of course, because in order to even experience rejection, we
have to first have had the hope that we were accepted. So, like,
you don't feel rejected because you didn't get a job
that you didn't apply for. And you don't feel rejected
because somebody you're not interested in isn't interested in you.
As a matter of fact, you're like, thank you, you know,
Like you don't feel rejected because somebody else's parents don't
(11:20):
view you as their child. No, you feel rejected because
you applied for the job and didn't get it, because
you gave the best years of your life to someone
and they walked away because your mother or your father,
they abandoned you. And so when we experience rejection, it
doesn't just jure our pride, it actually shatters our hope,
which breaks our heart. That's what makes it hurtful, is
(11:40):
because you have to have first had the hope of
acceptance to experience rejection. That said, it's important to know
that when rejection happens, it can teach you so much
about yourself or about other people. As an example, you know,
growing up in my career professionally, one of the things
that used to hurt me so much because I've been
an executive since I was twenty three, So I would
(12:00):
be you know, my colleagues would be in their forties
and their fifties, and they would get together and have
all types of social gatherings, and I would find out
about it after the fact, right like I would find
out that I wasn't invited, and that became a very
primitive rejection wound for me professionally. But the lesson in
that that I had to learn later is that's not
(12:21):
my tribe. And I want to sit with that for
a minute, because I think some of us we've been
left out, we've been overlooked, we haven't been included, and
we take that so personally like something's wrong with me,
when in fact, all that's revealing is that's not your tribe.
Don't take it personally. Just recognize those aren't your people,
(12:43):
so that you can actually move on and not become
a perpetrator of the hurt that you experienced. And I
think that's why a lot of times people become what
they experience. You become the bully, You become the one
who leaves people out because you're trying to get back
at people for a pain that you haven't addressed yet.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Okay, So like I have so many light bulbs going
off right now. First of all, the only way that
we experience rejection is if we first had the hope
for acceptance.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Is like that's chef's kiss.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
That's a beautiful realization, because I think we focus so
much on the rejection that we don't do the work
of recognizing like there was some hope connected to this.
I think that as you were talking, because I've definitely
experienced like the rejection from tribes, and I feel like
sometimes I feel like kind of like an island in
my own little space in my own little world because
(13:31):
I never really found like the group the groups, Like
everyone's got these little groups, right, and I like have
my business, and me and my business are my groups.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yes, me and my family and.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
All of the business that the delegation leeds me mind,
that is my tribe. But I do feel like what
I have come to learn about myself is that like
my hope for acceptance into some of those groups were
also hopes that it would some way increase my value
or addressing insecurity. And so the hope for acceptance was
(14:05):
even rooted in something toxic, because like, if I'm one
of them, then that will make me smart. If I'm
one of them, then that will make me beautiful or
intelligent or spiritual or whatever it is. And so that
hope is actually rooted in in insecurity, and so recognizing
like where does that hope come from, so that I
can acknowledge whether or not I should have even had
that hope in the first place, Like maybe that hope
(14:26):
needed to be broken, Maybe my heart needed to be
broken in that way so that I could address that
this hope was rooted in something that wasn't sustainable.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
What you said gets to really the root of the message,
which is rejection, is often what we experience when our
hope is misplaced. Because here's the thing. When your hope
is rooted in Jesus, when your hope is rooted in
who he says you are without qualification. Like I often
(14:58):
think about how we who was Jeremiah chapter one and
five to talk about the sanctity of life, right, we
say life begins at conception, and it's like, no, Jeremiah
one in five said, before I formed you in the womb,
I knew you, right before the sperm met the egg.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
I set you apart, before your mother knew your father.
I called you. And so the God of the universe
decided you were necessary.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
And because of that, it really doesn't matter if we're
accepted or included by man, because God decided that you
were necessary. And so when we place our hope in
that fundamental, unchanging truth, it's like, Okay, yeah, I wasn't
invited to the thing. I wasn't included in the thing.
It hurts because it hurts my humanity, but it doesn't
(15:40):
affect my hope because my hope is in Jesus and
what he.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Says, Oh, I feel like that's gonna bless so many
people right there. So can you tell me a little
bit like in the book, like what is the journey
we go on? Like where do you meet us and
where do you leave us?
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Yeah, so I start with a really formative rejection experience.
And I'm a vulnerable person anyway, because vulnerability is my ministry.
But one of the things I talk about is my
formative mother wound.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
I'm an only child.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
I was born to a mom who did not want
to have children, and so her living boyfriend started abusing
me at the age of five, and I told my
mom what he was doing to me. I told her
around the age of seven. She had him arrested and
I thought it was over. But on the day of
his release from jail, she took me with her to
pick him up and brought him back home, and the
(16:34):
abuse resumed from that point, and she became physically and
verbally abusive, and my childhood was marked by incredible trauma
and dysfunction and pain. I tried to end my life
at the ages of nine and eleven. And I share
this with people because I think when you walk into
the chapter that my life is on right now, you
might assume, oh, my gosh, her story must be great.
(16:57):
She had a loving family she came from. It's like know,
like I am a statistically improbable product of God's grace.
And so I share that because I do believe that
so much of the rejection that we experienced in our
adult years is because our identity is resting on a
foundation that was cracked in our formative years. So I
talk about that because one of the things that happened
(17:20):
to me that was really, really, I think damaging is
when I got older, I tried to have a conversation
with my mom about what happened in my childhood because
I actually wanted us to have a healthy relationship. We've
never had a healthy relationship. And what she said to
me is she said, well, it would have happened if
you would have just kept your legs closed. And so
that's how she explained everything. And so it's rejection after rejection,
(17:44):
layered with all types of rejection that I carried into relationships,
I carried into my profession. I have a chapter where
I talk about the expressions of rejection, and one of
the ways that rejection gets expressed is what I call
explosion into ambition. And that was my experience. It's like
I need to matter, I need to get the awards,
(18:05):
I need to be the best.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
I need to I.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Remember, there's not a student organization I was a part
of that. I wasn't president of. I was captain of
the dance team, captain of the track team, captain of
the Tennessee Like I had to be the best and
the first and the youngest because I was trying to
fill a rejection black hole. I didn't have language for it,
but that's what it was. And so I help readers
(18:26):
through this story really see Number one, I don't care
what it looks like. I am quite literally just a
product of God's grace. But number two, all the insights
that I received when God helped me to unpack my
own rejection experiences. I'm just hoping we'll help people see
it from a new light because God can truly use
that pain to propel your purpose.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
So our thing for week twenty four is surrender. And
that's not just conference like literally, it is our theme
for the year.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I am wondering in order.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
To get to a place where your hope was rooted
in Jesus, where your identity was no longer connected to
those series of rejections. What did you have to surrender
it in order to get there?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Oh? Man, this is going to sound trite, but it's true.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
Like I had to surrender the pain of my rejection
because I did not realize. I literally did not realize
until I started to do the work. I didn't realize
how much it has shaped me, how much my personality
was a derivative of the pain. Like I didn't know
that so much of who I am today is because
(19:40):
of the pain I experienced in the past.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
So I literally had to take all of that.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
And lay it at the foot of the cross and
just say, God, I'm going to believe what you have
said about me.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
I'm no longer going to strive. It's funny.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
I don't normally have a word for the year, but
in December of last year, the Lord gave me surrender
for this year.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
That is my word for the year.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
And what happened was I was, you know, at the
chief executive level at you Version, which is the maker
of the Bible, app loved what I was doing, and
the Lord said that the assignment was over.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
He said, I've called you to be a light in
dark places. This is a light lit places and I
was like, but I like what I'm doing. I like
what I'm doing.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
He said, no, You're gonna have to surrender this because
your rejection has caused you to seek your identity in
roles and titles. So I literally had to surrender that
pain to God and be like, you know what, Lord,
I'm giving this up. And so now I've been in
full time ministry, full time consulting, just doing what God's
(20:44):
called me to do. And I remember when God told
me to step away from that role. The first question that.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Popped in my mind was, but if I'm not an executive,
what am I?
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Wow? You know.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
So I had to.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Surrender that and just trust that God can do something
powerful with and through it.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
I love what you said about like, I had to
be willing to lay that pain of rejection down and
truly believe a lot of times when people are like,
I don't know how to surrender, and I pray. I'm
praying we're recording this before conference, but I'm pretty sure
it's airing after conference, But one of my prayers for
WE twenty four is.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
That I will be able to advocate for surrender being
in exchange of.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Beliefs, Yes and it is. It's a it's an extra
system that you have to be willing to let go of,
that my life needs to look this way, that I
should have had, this I should have had that I
should be here, I should be there, And to surrender,
to receive the acceptance of like, this is what my
life is, and this is all my life needs to be,
(21:50):
Like to accept that not from a place of grief
and reluctance and giving up and resignation, but hope that
where I am and what I have is all that
I need.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Like that is my greatest prayer.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
I love that so much.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
And even when I learned about the theme of the conference,
what struck me is when we surrender, we.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Surrender under one of two circumstances. We either surrender in
fear because there's something that's more powerful than us and
it's threatening us that if you don't surrender, I'm going
to harm you. Or we surrender in faith.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Which is I trust that you have my best interest
in heart, and I trust that where you lead me
will be better than where I lead myself. And I
think we have to come to that fork in the road,
which is which type of surrender?
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Because when I think about even like marriage.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Right when I said those vows with my husband, I
wasn't surrendering in fear.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
I was surrendering in faith that I.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Believe that what we're going to build together is better
than what I could build on my own.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
And so, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
There's so many of us that are protecting parts of
us because that's all we know.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
But when you know that God is for you, you can
surrender everything to him because you know he has your
best interest at heart, and he'll always love you better
than you can love yourself.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Man, I feel like that's the greatest opportunity that we
have right now as leaders, as women in ministry, is
to express the love of God to others, not just women,
but to others in such a way that they can trust. Again,
I feel like life has been so scary and unpredictable
(23:42):
and uncertain that it's difficult to believe this whole God's
in control and everything's gonna be good. Like trying to
express that you're gonna be okay, That good is not
a situation, That good is not in a bank account,
good is in my soul. I can find a way
to good no matter what, because I can find the
presence of God, and he'll lead me, and he'll talk
(24:04):
with me, you know, guide me, and he'll comfort me.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I'm going to be good.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Like. I feel like that's just the greatest opportunity. And
I think to the point of the book is how
we be able to begin to see rejection as a gift.
We had Viola Davis's book for conference this year, and
then she had something changed with her production schedule and
she couldn't come. And my immediate response was like, that's okay,
we want what God wants for conference like and then
(24:28):
my three weeks later I was like, it's not okay.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Actually, well let me let me.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Tell you what's so funny about that.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
So there's so many reason why I'm grateful for you,
but one of them I will say is, as I'm
releasing a book about rejection, I have been experiencing so
much it has been And it's funny because I remember
saying to God, I was like, Lord, I walked this
message out to write it.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Why am I walking it out? You get to release
it like I listen.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
But what was funny was one day, in particular, I
had got some news about something that I really had
my heart set on and it wasn't gonna work out.
And I remember just being like, Lord, like, I was
so hurt by the whole thing, and.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
So I went and I like ugly cried, right, I
was just like and ugly cried.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
But after I got done crying and just telling God
just how hopeless I felt and how hurt I felt,
and I just kind of, you know, I sniffled, and
I felt better because I released it.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
No Lie. About an hour and a half later, you
sent me a voice memo, no Lie, and you were like, girl,
we gonna get you on this podcast.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
It was one of those things where I felt like
I felt God wink at me, and he was like,
he was like, you have to understand, I hold it
all in my hands. I hold it all in my hands,
and so just trust me. I am a good father.
And he was just so encouraging to me to know
that even in what may seem like a small thing,
(26:05):
God sees and he hears. And so that's part of
surrender is knowing who God is. And yeah, that whole
thing about what is I know. He was like, oh Lord, yes, Father.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
And sometimes we're so spiritual we'd be like, well, Lord,
whatever you allow. But at the end of the day, you'd.
Speaker 4 (26:19):
Be like, wait a minute, God, wait a minute, Jesus now.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
But even that, he hears, and he honors.
Speaker 4 (26:27):
He honors our disappointments and our discouragements and the things
that we had our heart set on, because He's a good.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Father, and that is who we surrender to, not our circumstance.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
We don't like the circumstance, but I surrendered to the
God who controls the circumstance.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, I have a feeling too, because I don't know
what's going to happen this year, but I have a
feeling that I'm going to be standing in the moment
and I'm want to be like, everyone who's supposed to
be here is here, and everything that was supposed to
happen has happened, and my plan was better than your plan,
and this would not have happened had your plan, Like
(26:59):
I Yeah, that's what I trust about God, is that, Like,
though I am discouraged and maybe disappointed right now, and
I'm willing to tell you that I am also waiting
with much anticipation and expectation for the moment where.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
I see that it had to be this way.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
That's I think that part of experiencing God's faithfulness is
staying in the tension of disappointment so that you get
to the other side and realize that what I was
calling disappointment was actually this setup, It was actually construction.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
It was actually how I was.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Being built to experience the greatest version of myself and
to experience a new wave of God's glory.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I do believe that, like wholeheartedly.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
Well, because God, God sees like one of the through
lines in the book I was reading in First Stanuel
chapter sixteen, when this was like a year and a
half ago, and I was going through a really painful
rejection experience. But I was reading it and I saw
in the text, how you know, after David was anointed
the next king, it says that the spirit of the
(28:01):
Lord departed from Saul, and it says it was replaced
by a tormenting spirit. And the text then said that,
you know, Saul was being tormented. So his attendants were like, hey,
we should find somebody who can play the liar. You
know they'll play and it'll soothe you and whenever the
evil spirit comes on you, you know you'll feel more calm.
And the king was like, okay, cool, Like who and
(28:24):
it said that a servant in the king's court said,
I have seen the son of Jesse of Bethlehem. He
plays the liar, he's fine looking, and God is with him.
And Saul was like, okay, bring him to me. What
caught me in that text when I read it is,
of course the son is named David. David wasn't in
the room. Saul didn't know who David was. But a
(28:47):
servant who was in the king's court knew who David
was and placed David's name in the room. And the
reason why I bring that up is so many times
we feel discouraged because the king, the person with the platform,
they didn't choose us, right.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
But God will use a servant in the king's court
to place your name in rooms that you don't even
have access to. This is the God that.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
We serve, the one who's like, I know that door
closed in your face, I know that windows slammed shut
and you had your heart set on it. But He's like,
I've set up a servant to be in the room
who's gonna place your name in it, and you can
take your courage from that. Like God, he's just faithful.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
And so that's where I take my courage from When
things don't work out, I'm like, Okay, God, I know
you're faithful. I won't believe that you're faithful because if
you could do it for David, you could do it
for me.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
How has it embracing this gift of rejection changed the
way that you pursue your dreams? Because don't you think
that so many more of us would be fearless in
the pursuit of our purpose and dreams if we weren't
looking for the hope of acceptance.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Like, wouldn't we be more obedient if.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
We weren't hoping to also be accepted in our obedient.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Listen when I say you hit the nail on the head.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
So much of what we don't do is because of
a fear, a preemptive fear of being rejected. I know
people right now who have business ideas, book ideas, people
who want to leave relationships that are no longer serving them,
But they don't do what they need to do because
they're afraid of what somebody will say. They're afraid of
(30:26):
being discarded, they're afraid of not being chosen. And it's like,
if you can just recognize that whatever happens if rejection happens,
there's a gift in it. If you can recognize that, yes,
you will literally take the breaks off, because it's like,
what's the worst that can happen?
Speaker 3 (30:43):
I get rejected? Yeah, okay, moving on?
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Yeah absolutely, Oh man, that is so good to me.
I feel like I know your book is already going
to help so many people because then you preach a
message that kind of went crazy viral.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Yes, yeah, it's yeah, and it's amazing.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
I've actually had people of other faiths see the message
and convert to Christianity because of the message.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
And like, what's funny though, is.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
I remember when we uploaded the Gift of Rejection message
about a year and a half ago.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
You know, we just uploaded it.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
I didn't think anything about it at all, and I
remember people started to text me, like just random people
that I haven't talked to in years, were like, I
just saw this message.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Oh my gosh, it blessed my life.
Speaker 4 (31:28):
And I was like really, And so I went to
YouTube and I saw I was like, how a few
hundred thousand people seen this thing in like a week?
Speaker 3 (31:36):
How how are YouTube? But God has been using it
to heal people, and that's what let me know.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
Okay, I need to write this in a book because
you can only say so much in a forty minute message.
But there's so many layers to it that I decided, then, okay,
this is the message I think God wants me to write.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
What do you think you're most proud of as it
relates to the book.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
And I am most proud of my honesty in the
book because you know, there's a temptation to curate yourself,
right and like yeah, yeah, to like present yourself in
the best light. But I'm really proud of my honesty
because as people have started to read, even like the
manuscript and the sample chapters, they have already said, this
(32:22):
has set me free from things I didn't even know
I was still wrestling with. This has given me language
for pain that I could not even articulate. And I mean, look,
you cannot address a pain that you can't name.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
You just can't.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
So once you have the language for it, now we
can address it. So yeah, the vulnerability and I you know,
I've done a few interviews. One of the stories I
tell in the book, I won't go into it the
two dzel now, but years ago I had a procedure done,
because let me describe it this way. My father had
(32:56):
a flat chest and a booty. My mom had the breast,
but she had no booty. I got my dad's chest
in my mom's booty, So just flat flat, okay, and
you don't like never mind. As a black woman, I
got made fun of so bad because I didn't have
(33:17):
a booty. So some years ago I decided to get
that procedure to try to get me a booty, and
that mug burned off.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
In six months, it was gone.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
What do you mean I burned off?
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Listen. So it's a fat transfer procedure. Okay.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
Yeah, so they take fat from one place or multiple
places and they put in your booty. Well, I work
out a lot, and the doctor told me, he said,
look after you get this procedure, you cannot work out
as hard as you do because you'll burn the fat.
I was like, child, I'm not gonna have a booty
and be unhealthy. So I started working out and in
six months it was gone. And through that experience, I
(33:56):
learned a lot about insecurity. But I share that because
I've done some interviews about that procedure and I've had
people be like, I can't believe she's telling people that
she's supposed to be a woman of God?
Speaker 3 (34:07):
How could she say?
Speaker 4 (34:09):
And I smile when that happens because I'm like, well,
this message isn't for you, because I've had other women
reach out to me and say I was planning to
get that procedure and after hearing your story, I'm canceling it.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
And so that is what I'm proud of. It's just
the honesty so that it could be a mechanism of
awareness and insight for people.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
So I know, Okay, just remind us when it comes
out all of the things, like, are there any other
ways that we can connect with you while you're sharing
this message. I know people are probably going to go
and watch the message for sure, that went viral on YouTube,
but how else can you get connected with the book? Sure?
Speaker 3 (34:44):
So it comes out October the first, and it's available on.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
All the online platforms. You can connect with me on
all my social media. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube
at Nona not Nora, you.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Can connect with me there.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
But yeah, I'm just I'm excited for people to get
the message, and whatever God decides to do with it,
I will rejoice because I know that he's going to
get the glory.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Hey Man, thank you, Thank you so much for sitting
down and chatting with me.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Thank you for having me. I appreciate you.
Why would you try to make us believe that rejection
is a gift? Like, what is wrong with you? Let's
get right into the nitty gritty, like I'm gonna ask
you the questions they're not going to ask you on
Good Morning America.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I'm a professional. Why would you try.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
To make us believe that rejection is a gift when
all it does is make us nervous and secure, anxious.
Now we're people pleasing because I don't want to experience rejection,
And here you come with your book telling me that
rejection is actually a gift.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
No, it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
And when God gave me the revelation, I was so confused.
But I'm gonna tell you the story that led to
the revelations. So when I was in high school, first
of all, I was like, I was the chunky girl
for most of my childhood, right, so I was never
the girl that guys wanted. But when I got into
high school, I lost some wede and this guy who
(00:55):
I really liked he liked me too, and so he
asked me to be his girlfriend.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
And I was just over the moon.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
So anyway, he was smart, he was handsome, he was
all the things, and one summer, he went away to
do an internship at a state senator's office about five
hours away, and he called me and was like, hey,
I'm coming back in a week. I want to take
you to the movies. And I was so excited. I
got my hair done, my nails done, like I was
ready okay, But an hour before we were supposed to go,
(01:24):
he was supposed to pick me up, he called me.
It was just like, hey, I had a family emergency.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I'm going to have to reschedule.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
And I was just like what. Of course, I was bummed,
but I was like, look, it's a family emergency.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
What are you gonna do?
Speaker 4 (01:35):
So anyway, I called some of my friends and I
was like, hey, y'all, y'all want to go to the movies?
And so they were like sure. So we go to
this movie theater and I'm standing in line and I
look over and I see my boyfriend holding hands with
another girl. Now, at the moment that I saw him,
he looked back and saw me and like the color
(01:57):
drained from his face. Right, So, as you can imagine,
I was so crushed. It's like I felt abandoned, I
felt discarded. I felt humiliated, like, my friends knew I
was in this relationship, and so you know the guy.
The next day he was calling me trying to apologize.
I wouldn't take his call. I said, forget it. So anyway,
fast forward, this is maybe fifteen years I'm working at
(02:20):
Meta Well, the company formerly known as Facebook, and a
pastor friend of mine reached out to me and was like, hey,
I need your help with something, and I said sure,
what's up?
Speaker 3 (02:28):
He said, I need.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
You to help me take down one of my mentees
Facebook pages, which was crazy to me because I was like,
I've had people ask me to help them get their
page back up after it was taken down. I've never
had anyone ask me to take it down. So I
was like, I don't know if I can help you
with that. That's really weird. What's going on. He said, Look,
this is one of my sons in the ministry. People
are saying really mean things on his page. I need
(02:51):
you to help me take it down. And I said, well,
I don't know if I can help with that, but
send me the link and I'll see what I can do.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
I'll escalate it.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
So I click on the link that he text me,
staring back at me is a picture of.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
My ex boyfriend.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
And I scrolled down on the page and I see
comments from people basically being like, you know, cheaters get
what they deserve. You know, this is this was he
had it coming.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
You know.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
I hope his wife is okay. All this stuff right,
And I'm like, what happened? Well, So I don't normally
watch television. I'm just not a big television watcher. So
I apparently missed the news that he was murdered by.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
His mistress, who also tried to kill his wife, and
it caused.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Not the direction that I thought the story was good.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Listen, I so I go, I click on news articles
right because I'm like, this can't this can't be real.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
I click on news articles. It is absolutely true.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Not only was he murdered by his mistress, but he
had been cheating on his wife with many women who
came out of the world works after the fact. His
wife is the woman he was at the movie theater
with that night. And so in that moment, it's like
twilight zone, right, like the way you feel right now,
like multiply times like fifty. I was in a twilight
(04:19):
zone because what I realized was I had thought he
was cheating on me with her. Maybe he was cheating
on her with me, and I could have ended up on.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Either side of that situation.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
And so when I prayed about it, I was like, Lord,
thank you for protecting me, because those fifteen years Sarah
I had been angry, bitter. I was so upset by
what he did to me. But in that moment, the
Holy Spirit said, Nona, you've been looking at rejection all
wrong because you're so focused on the pain of it
(04:53):
that you missed the purpose of it. And that's when
he said, rejection is actually a gift in my hands.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
I said, WHOA.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
But I started to actually think about all of the
rejection experiences I had experienced in my life, and I
realized that in every single situation, pain was its wrapping paper,
but there was a lesson on the inside of it
that either shaped my character or propelled me into purpose.
There was something in it that ended up being a gift.
(05:24):
And so that's where it came from, was just recognizing
that God can use it for your good and his
glory even when it hurts.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
You said, pain was its wrapping paper. I feel like
that is worth marinating going because some of us don't
get past the wrapping paper.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I've never had.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
A gift that I thought was so beautiful that I
don't want to open it. But I have had some
issues in my life that felt so painful that it
felt like there was nothing that could come from the
inside of it.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
But the paradigm of.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Pain being wrapping paper, and it's daring to do the
work to navigate the pain, to figure out what's inside
of it feels like a journey that each of us
should be willing to take. But tearing that wrapping paper
over open is almost more painful than the incident itself.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
How do you get to a space.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Where you're willing to say, okay, if pain is a
wrapping paper, how do I carefully? My husband always when
he opens Presence, he never rips it open because when
he was growing up, they reused wrapping paper, and so
like he opens it very carefully so that you can
preserve the wrapping paper. I feel like that is kind
of how we're going to have to navigate pain being
(06:37):
the wrapping paper. How do we gently begin to tear
open that pain so that we can figure out the
purpose connected to it.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
I think it starts with I mean Honestly, the reason
why I wrote the book is because just the awareness
that rejection is a gift in and of itself is
a paradigm shift, because what that does is it puts
you in a different posture from where at first you
would see yourself as I'm a victim. This thing happened
to me. I'll never get through it, I'll never get
(07:07):
over it. But now that you recognize, oh wait, there's
a gift in this, it places you in the posture
of a student, which is, Okay, what can this teach
me about myself? What can this teach me about other people?
What is it that God may want to work through
this situation for my good I believe that rejection is
(07:29):
a gift that will make you better if you open it,
or bitter if you don't. And many people are walking
around bitter because, like you said, we stop at the
wrapping paper, and I think having that just thought like, Okay,
this hurts, and there's also something.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
That I need to learn from this. What is the lesson?
Speaker 4 (07:48):
That's how you start to slowly peel it back and
begin to explore what it wants to teach you.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Okay, So I have a question for you, because I
think when we think about rejection, we're generally thinking about
as being on the receiving end of rejection.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
But I want to.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Talk a little bit about the reality that in order
for us to have boundaries, in order for us to lead,
in order for us to have self care, we have
to reject as certain people, certain things that to me
is another gift of rejection is what you get to
hang on to when you dare to reject other people's expectations,
other people's needs, and an effort to protect yourself. Has
(08:24):
this paradigm changed the way that you handle the reality
of rejecting other people? Do you think it's fair to
say that when we set boundaries, we're rejecting other people?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Let me start there.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
I think that's actually a really important insight, which is, yes,
rejection is ultimately what we do when we say no
to the demand that somebody places on us, and sometimes
rejection is necessary. It's a gift to us, but it's
also a gift to the other person. And I'll frame
it this way. I'm sure you understand this. There are
(08:58):
people who see your success, my success, somebody else's success
as an opportunity to build their empire on what God
has built through you. Now, once you become aware of that,
it is important that you place a boundary between you
and that person because otherwise that person will actually kind
(09:22):
of absorb the glory that God has for your life
for their self and that will actually damage their character.
And I think as leaders, one of the responsibilities that
we have is to help people grow in character. So
if somebody is like, I believe that I'm more qualified
than you know they are, it's important to say no
because there's some learning and growth and development they have
to do. Now for the other person who's experiencing that,
(09:45):
of course, that's painful, right, Like it's painful to have
somebody close the door for you, But they're closing the
door because they know that there's more growth needed. And
so there's a gift in that rejection for you as
an individual, to have somebody close the door because you're
not ready to walk through it. Yet, there's a gift
in that. And so again having that as like the
thought paradigm, it becomes a learning opportunity on both sides
(10:07):
of the experience.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Man, Okay, so this makes me think about all of
the ways that I have betrayed myself in order to
avoid rejecting someone else. What do you think we have
to do as people who are in relationships, parenting, friendships
(10:30):
in order to reconcile the or normalizing I'm gonna use
the word normalizing rejection because I do feel like if
you've gone through trauma, if you've had some insecurities, rejection
feels like a retriggering. But do you think that we
have to normalize rejection in order to both understand it
(10:50):
reconcile it for ourselves, but also to be okay with
rejecting other people? Or does it it feels like a
wound every time?
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Of course, because in order to even experience rejection, we
have to first have had the hope that we were accepted. So, like,
you don't feel rejected because you didn't get a job
that you didn't apply for. And you don't feel rejected
because somebody you're not interested in isn't interested in you.
As a matter of fact, you're like, thank you, you know,
Like you don't feel rejected because somebody else's parents don't
(11:20):
view you as their child. No, you feel rejected because
you applied for the job and didn't get it, because
you gave the best years of your life to someone
and they walked away because your mother or your father,
they abandoned you. And so when we experience rejection, it
doesn't just jure our pride, it actually shatters our hope,
which breaks our heart. That's what makes it hurtful, is
(11:40):
because you have to have first had the hope of
acceptance to experience rejection. That said, it's important to know
that when rejection happens, it can teach you so much
about yourself or about other people. As an example, you know,
growing up in my career professionally, one of the things
that used to hurt me so much because I've been
an executive since I was twenty three, So I would
(12:00):
be you know, my colleagues would be in their forties
and their fifties, and they would get together and have
all types of social gatherings, and I would find out
about it after the fact, right like I would find
out that I wasn't invited, and that became a very
primitive rejection wound for me professionally. But the lesson in
that that I had to learn later is that's not
(12:21):
my tribe. And I want to sit with that for
a minute, because I think some of us we've been
left out, we've been overlooked, we haven't been included, and
we take that so personally like something's wrong with me,
when in fact, all that's revealing is that's not your tribe.
Don't take it personally. Just recognize those aren't your people,
(12:43):
so that you can actually move on and not become
a perpetrator of the hurt that you experienced. And I
think that's why a lot of times people become what
they experience. You become the bully, You become the one
who leaves people out because you're trying to get back
at people for a pain that you haven't addressed yet.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Okay, So like I have so many light bulbs going
off right now. First of all, the only way that
we experience rejection is if we first had the hope
for acceptance.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Is like that's chef's kiss.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
That's a beautiful realization, because I think we focus so
much on the rejection that we don't do the work
of recognizing like there was some hope connected to this.
I think that as you were talking, because I've definitely
experienced like the rejection from tribes, and I feel like
sometimes I feel like kind of like an island in
my own little space in my own little world because
(13:31):
I never really found like the group the groups, Like
everyone's got these little groups, right, and I like have
my business, and me and my business are my groups.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yes, me and my family and.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
All of the business that the delegation leeds me mind,
that is my tribe. But I do feel like what
I have come to learn about myself is that like
my hope for acceptance into some of those groups were
also hopes that it would some way increase my value
or addressing insecurity. And so the hope for acceptance was
(14:05):
even rooted in something toxic, because like, if I'm one
of them, then that will make me smart. If I'm
one of them, then that will make me beautiful or
intelligent or spiritual or whatever it is. And so that
hope is actually rooted in in insecurity, and so recognizing
like where does that hope come from, so that I
can acknowledge whether or not I should have even had
that hope in the first place, Like maybe that hope
(14:26):
needed to be broken, Maybe my heart needed to be
broken in that way so that I could address that
this hope was rooted in something that wasn't sustainable.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
What you said gets to really the root of the message,
which is rejection, is often what we experience when our
hope is misplaced. Because here's the thing. When your hope
is rooted in Jesus, when your hope is rooted in
who he says you are without qualification. Like I often
(14:58):
think about how we who was Jeremiah chapter one and
five to talk about the sanctity of life, right, we
say life begins at conception, and it's like, no, Jeremiah
one in five said, before I formed you in the womb,
I knew you, right before the sperm met the egg.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
I set you apart, before your mother knew your father.
I called you. And so the God of the universe
decided you were necessary.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
And because of that, it really doesn't matter if we're
accepted or included by man, because God decided that you
were necessary. And so when we place our hope in
that fundamental, unchanging truth, it's like, Okay, yeah, I wasn't
invited to the thing. I wasn't included in the thing.
It hurts because it hurts my humanity, but it doesn't
(15:40):
affect my hope because my hope is in Jesus and
what he.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Says, Oh, I feel like that's gonna bless so many
people right there. So can you tell me a little
bit like in the book, like what is the journey
we go on? Like where do you meet us and
where do you leave us?
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Yeah, so I start with a really formative rejection experience.
And I'm a vulnerable person anyway, because vulnerability is my ministry.
But one of the things I talk about is my
formative mother wound.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
I'm an only child.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
I was born to a mom who did not want
to have children, and so her living boyfriend started abusing
me at the age of five, and I told my
mom what he was doing to me. I told her
around the age of seven. She had him arrested and
I thought it was over. But on the day of
his release from jail, she took me with her to
pick him up and brought him back home, and the
(16:34):
abuse resumed from that point, and she became physically and
verbally abusive, and my childhood was marked by incredible trauma
and dysfunction and pain. I tried to end my life
at the ages of nine and eleven. And I share
this with people because I think when you walk into
the chapter that my life is on right now, you
might assume, oh, my gosh, her story must be great.
(16:57):
She had a loving family she came from. It's like know,
like I am a statistically improbable product of God's grace.
And so I share that because I do believe that
so much of the rejection that we experienced in our
adult years is because our identity is resting on a
foundation that was cracked in our formative years. So I
talk about that because one of the things that happened
(17:20):
to me that was really, really, I think damaging is
when I got older, I tried to have a conversation
with my mom about what happened in my childhood because
I actually wanted us to have a healthy relationship. We've
never had a healthy relationship. And what she said to
me is she said, well, it would have happened if
you would have just kept your legs closed. And so
that's how she explained everything. And so it's rejection after rejection,
(17:44):
layered with all types of rejection that I carried into relationships,
I carried into my profession. I have a chapter where
I talk about the expressions of rejection, and one of
the ways that rejection gets expressed is what I call
explosion into ambition. And that was my experience. It's like
I need to matter, I need to get the awards,
(18:05):
I need to be the best.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
I need to I.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Remember, there's not a student organization I was a part
of that. I wasn't president of. I was captain of
the dance team, captain of the track team, captain of
the Tennessee Like I had to be the best and
the first and the youngest because I was trying to
fill a rejection black hole. I didn't have language for it,
but that's what it was. And so I help readers
(18:26):
through this story really see Number one, I don't care
what it looks like. I am quite literally just a
product of God's grace. But number two, all the insights
that I received when God helped me to unpack my
own rejection experiences. I'm just hoping we'll help people see
it from a new light because God can truly use
that pain to propel your purpose.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
So our thing for week twenty four is surrender. And
that's not just conference like literally, it is our theme
for the year.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I am wondering in order.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
To get to a place where your hope was rooted
in Jesus, where your identity was no longer connected to
those series of rejections. What did you have to surrender
it in order to get there?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Oh? Man, this is going to sound trite, but it's true.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
Like I had to surrender the pain of my rejection
because I did not realize. I literally did not realize
until I started to do the work. I didn't realize
how much it has shaped me, how much my personality
was a derivative of the pain. Like I didn't know
that so much of who I am today is because
(19:40):
of the pain I experienced in the past.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
So I literally had to take all of that.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
And lay it at the foot of the cross and
just say, God, I'm going to believe what you have
said about me.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
I'm no longer going to strive. It's funny.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
I don't normally have a word for the year, but
in December of last year, the Lord gave me surrender
for this year.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
That is my word for the year.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
And what happened was I was, you know, at the
chief executive level at you Version, which is the maker
of the Bible, app loved what I was doing, and
the Lord said that the assignment was over.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
He said, I've called you to be a light in
dark places. This is a light lit places and I
was like, but I like what I'm doing. I like
what I'm doing.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
He said, no, You're gonna have to surrender this because
your rejection has caused you to seek your identity in
roles and titles. So I literally had to surrender that
pain to God and be like, you know what, Lord,
I'm giving this up. And so now I've been in
full time ministry, full time consulting, just doing what God's
(20:44):
called me to do. And I remember when God told
me to step away from that role. The first question that.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Popped in my mind was, but if I'm not an executive,
what am I?
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Wow? You know.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
So I had to.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Surrender that and just trust that God can do something
powerful with and through it.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
I love what you said about like, I had to
be willing to lay that pain of rejection down and
truly believe a lot of times when people are like,
I don't know how to surrender, and I pray. I'm
praying we're recording this before conference, but I'm pretty sure
it's airing after conference, But one of my prayers for
WE twenty four is.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
That I will be able to advocate for surrender being
in exchange of.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Beliefs, Yes and it is. It's a it's an extra
system that you have to be willing to let go of,
that my life needs to look this way, that I
should have had, this I should have had that I
should be here, I should be there, And to surrender,
to receive the acceptance of like, this is what my
life is, and this is all my life needs to be,
(21:50):
Like to accept that not from a place of grief
and reluctance and giving up and resignation, but hope that
where I am and what I have is all that
I need.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Like that is my greatest prayer.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
I love that so much.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
And even when I learned about the theme of the conference,
what struck me is when we surrender, we.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Surrender under one of two circumstances. We either surrender in
fear because there's something that's more powerful than us and
it's threatening us that if you don't surrender, I'm going
to harm you. Or we surrender in faith.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Which is I trust that you have my best interest
in heart, and I trust that where you lead me
will be better than where I lead myself. And I
think we have to come to that fork in the road,
which is which type of surrender?
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Because when I think about even like marriage.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Right when I said those vows with my husband, I
wasn't surrendering in fear.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
I was surrendering in faith that I.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Believe that what we're going to build together is better
than what I could build on my own.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
And so, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
There's so many of us that are protecting parts of
us because that's all we know.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
But when you know that God is for you, you can
surrender everything to him because you know he has your
best interest at heart, and he'll always love you better
than you can love yourself.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Man, I feel like that's the greatest opportunity that we
have right now as leaders, as women in ministry, is
to express the love of God to others, not just women,
but to others in such a way that they can trust. Again,
I feel like life has been so scary and unpredictable
(23:42):
and uncertain that it's difficult to believe this whole God's
in control and everything's gonna be good. Like trying to
express that you're gonna be okay, That good is not
a situation, That good is not in a bank account,
good is in my soul. I can find a way
to good no matter what, because I can find the
presence of God, and he'll lead me, and he'll talk
(24:04):
with me, you know, guide me, and he'll comfort me.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I'm going to be good.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Like. I feel like that's just the greatest opportunity. And
I think to the point of the book is how
we be able to begin to see rejection as a gift.
We had Viola Davis's book for conference this year, and
then she had something changed with her production schedule and
she couldn't come. And my immediate response was like, that's okay,
we want what God wants for conference like and then
(24:28):
my three weeks later I was like, it's not okay.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Actually, well let me let me.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Tell you what's so funny about that.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
So there's so many reason why I'm grateful for you,
but one of them I will say is, as I'm
releasing a book about rejection, I have been experiencing so
much it has been And it's funny because I remember
saying to God, I was like, Lord, I walked this
message out to write it.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Why am I walking it out? You get to release
it like I listen.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
But what was funny was one day, in particular, I
had got some news about something that I really had
my heart set on and it wasn't gonna work out.
And I remember just being like, Lord, like, I was
so hurt by the whole thing, and.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
So I went and I like ugly cried, right, I
was just like and ugly cried.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
But after I got done crying and just telling God
just how hopeless I felt and how hurt I felt,
and I just kind of, you know, I sniffled, and
I felt better because I released it.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
No Lie. About an hour and a half later, you
sent me a voice memo, no Lie, and you were like, girl,
we gonna get you on this podcast.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
It was one of those things where I felt like
I felt God wink at me, and he was like,
he was like, you have to understand, I hold it
all in my hands. I hold it all in my hands,
and so just trust me. I am a good father.
And he was just so encouraging to me to know
that even in what may seem like a small thing,
(26:05):
God sees and he hears. And so that's part of
surrender is knowing who God is. And yeah, that whole
thing about what is I know. He was like, oh Lord, yes, Father.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
And sometimes we're so spiritual we'd be like, well, Lord,
whatever you allow. But at the end of the day, you'd.
Speaker 4 (26:19):
Be like, wait a minute, God, wait a minute, Jesus now.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
But even that, he hears, and he honors.
Speaker 4 (26:27):
He honors our disappointments and our discouragements and the things
that we had our heart set on, because He's a good.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Father, and that is who we surrender to, not our circumstance.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
We don't like the circumstance, but I surrendered to the
God who controls the circumstance.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, I have a feeling too, because I don't know
what's going to happen this year, but I have a
feeling that I'm going to be standing in the moment
and I'm want to be like, everyone who's supposed to
be here is here, and everything that was supposed to
happen has happened, and my plan was better than your plan,
and this would not have happened had your plan, Like
(26:59):
I Yeah, that's what I trust about God, is that, Like,
though I am discouraged and maybe disappointed right now, and
I'm willing to tell you that I am also waiting
with much anticipation and expectation for the moment where.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
I see that it had to be this way.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
That's I think that part of experiencing God's faithfulness is
staying in the tension of disappointment so that you get
to the other side and realize that what I was
calling disappointment was actually this setup, It was actually construction.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
It was actually how I was.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Being built to experience the greatest version of myself and
to experience a new wave of God's glory.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I do believe that, like wholeheartedly.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
Well, because God, God sees like one of the through
lines in the book I was reading in First Stanuel
chapter sixteen, when this was like a year and a
half ago, and I was going through a really painful
rejection experience. But I was reading it and I saw
in the text, how you know, after David was anointed
the next king, it says that the spirit of the
(28:01):
Lord departed from Saul, and it says it was replaced
by a tormenting spirit. And the text then said that,
you know, Saul was being tormented. So his attendants were like, hey,
we should find somebody who can play the liar. You
know they'll play and it'll soothe you and whenever the
evil spirit comes on you, you know you'll feel more calm.
And the king was like, okay, cool, Like who and
(28:24):
it said that a servant in the king's court said,
I have seen the son of Jesse of Bethlehem. He
plays the liar, he's fine looking, and God is with him.
And Saul was like, okay, bring him to me. What
caught me in that text when I read it is,
of course the son is named David. David wasn't in
the room. Saul didn't know who David was. But a
(28:47):
servant who was in the king's court knew who David
was and placed David's name in the room. And the
reason why I bring that up is so many times
we feel discouraged because the king, the person with the platform,
they didn't choose us, right.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
But God will use a servant in the king's court
to place your name in rooms that you don't even
have access to. This is the God that.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
We serve, the one who's like, I know that door
closed in your face, I know that windows slammed shut
and you had your heart set on it. But He's like,
I've set up a servant to be in the room
who's gonna place your name in it, and you can
take your courage from that. Like God, he's just faithful.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
And so that's where I take my courage from When
things don't work out, I'm like, Okay, God, I know
you're faithful. I won't believe that you're faithful because if
you could do it for David, you could do it
for me.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
How has it embracing this gift of rejection changed the
way that you pursue your dreams? Because don't you think
that so many more of us would be fearless in
the pursuit of our purpose and dreams if we weren't
looking for the hope of acceptance.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Like, wouldn't we be more obedient if.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
We weren't hoping to also be accepted in our obedient.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Listen when I say you hit the nail on the head.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
So much of what we don't do is because of
a fear, a preemptive fear of being rejected. I know
people right now who have business ideas, book ideas, people
who want to leave relationships that are no longer serving them,
But they don't do what they need to do because
they're afraid of what somebody will say. They're afraid of
(30:26):
being discarded, they're afraid of not being chosen. And it's like,
if you can just recognize that whatever happens if rejection happens,
there's a gift in it. If you can recognize that, yes,
you will literally take the breaks off, because it's like,
what's the worst that can happen?
Speaker 3 (30:43):
I get rejected? Yeah, okay, moving on?
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Yeah absolutely, Oh man, that is so good to me.
I feel like I know your book is already going
to help so many people because then you preach a
message that kind of went crazy viral.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Yes, yeah, it's yeah, and it's amazing.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
I've actually had people of other faiths see the message
and convert to Christianity because of the message.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
And like, what's funny though, is.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
I remember when we uploaded the Gift of Rejection message
about a year and a half ago.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
You know, we just uploaded it.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
I didn't think anything about it at all, and I
remember people started to text me, like just random people
that I haven't talked to in years, were like, I
just saw this message.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Oh my gosh, it blessed my life.
Speaker 4 (31:28):
And I was like really, And so I went to
YouTube and I saw I was like, how a few
hundred thousand people seen this thing in like a week?
Speaker 3 (31:36):
How how are YouTube? But God has been using it
to heal people, and that's what let me know.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
Okay, I need to write this in a book because
you can only say so much in a forty minute message.
But there's so many layers to it that I decided, then, okay,
this is the message I think God wants me to write.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
What do you think you're most proud of as it
relates to the book.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
And I am most proud of my honesty in the
book because you know, there's a temptation to curate yourself,
right and like yeah, yeah, to like present yourself in
the best light. But I'm really proud of my honesty
because as people have started to read, even like the
manuscript and the sample chapters, they have already said, this
(32:22):
has set me free from things I didn't even know
I was still wrestling with. This has given me language
for pain that I could not even articulate. And I mean, look,
you cannot address a pain that you can't name.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
You just can't.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
So once you have the language for it, now we
can address it. So yeah, the vulnerability and I you know,
I've done a few interviews. One of the stories I
tell in the book, I won't go into it the
two dzel now, but years ago I had a procedure done,
because let me describe it this way. My father had
(32:56):
a flat chest and a booty. My mom had the breast,
but she had no booty. I got my dad's chest
in my mom's booty, So just flat flat, okay, and
you don't like never mind. As a black woman, I
got made fun of so bad because I didn't have
(33:17):
a booty. So some years ago I decided to get
that procedure to try to get me a booty, and
that mug burned off.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
In six months, it was gone.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
What do you mean I burned off?
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Listen. So it's a fat transfer procedure. Okay.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
Yeah, so they take fat from one place or multiple
places and they put in your booty. Well, I work
out a lot, and the doctor told me, he said,
look after you get this procedure, you cannot work out
as hard as you do because you'll burn the fat.
I was like, child, I'm not gonna have a booty
and be unhealthy. So I started working out and in
six months it was gone. And through that experience, I
(33:56):
learned a lot about insecurity. But I share that because
I've done some interviews about that procedure and I've had
people be like, I can't believe she's telling people that
she's supposed to be a woman of God?
Speaker 3 (34:07):
How could she say?
Speaker 4 (34:09):
And I smile when that happens because I'm like, well,
this message isn't for you, because I've had other women
reach out to me and say I was planning to
get that procedure and after hearing your story, I'm canceling it.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
And so that is what I'm proud of. It's just
the honesty so that it could be a mechanism of
awareness and insight for people.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
So I know, Okay, just remind us when it comes
out all of the things, like, are there any other
ways that we can connect with you while you're sharing
this message. I know people are probably going to go
and watch the message for sure, that went viral on YouTube,
but how else can you get connected with the book? Sure?
Speaker 3 (34:44):
So it comes out October the first, and it's available on.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
All the online platforms. You can connect with me on
all my social media. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube
at Nona not Nora, you.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Can connect with me there.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
But yeah, I'm just I'm excited for people to get
the message, and whatever God decides to do with it,
I will rejoice because I know that he's going to
get the glory.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Hey Man, thank you, Thank you so much for sitting
down and chatting with me.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Thank you for having me. I appreciate you.
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