Rejection

This past January, I wrote my Love Life Story. It was a novella which describes every single guy I ever had a crush on or a relationship with. I wrote it as a response to my second 54 Day Rosary Novena that I prayed for God to bring my future husband in to my life. 

Now there are many beautiful nuggets of wisdom in this story, but I would like to focus on one in particular, something that has changed how I live my life.

Why am I always rejected?

Rejection is a big part of our lives. Whether you are single or not, you will always face some sort of rejection. Someone else will win the lottery. Someone else will get the treatment as you take the placebo. Someone else will get the job. Someone else will be where we want to be.

We see a life that we want to be a part of, and yet something in the world takes away from that one desire.

My single prayer to God for myself is for my future family to finally be here on Earth. I never ask God for my experiments to work. I never ask Him to take away my colds, my migraines, my failures…nothing. As pathetic as it may sound, I have never asked God for anything else.

Sure, I prayed for my friends, my family, and my peers.

But my family is the only thing I've asked for myself.

I do not want to be in a relationship for the feelings, but rather so that I may some day be able to build a family of witnesses like my parents have done for all of Team Newton. I have seen what my family has done for the Church, and it is my single greatest desire to be a part of that mission.

And yet…

God has yet to allow me to partake in that single grace.

We all have a great desire in our hearts. Whether you are waiting for a relationship like me, or you are waiting for your purpose in life to be made clear to you, or you are trying to fix a problem, or you are experiencing a chronic ailment, there is something in your life Dear Reader, that you are waiting on. 

It seems like we are all being rejected. It feels like the God of the universe has failed us, and it feels like our prayers are a waste of time.

However, it is the reason behind our rejections that makes our lives all the more meaningful.

When I got older, God granted me the opportunity to meet some amazing young men. Some of them were Catholic, others were Christian, still others had lost their faith due to the many tragedies of the world. Whatever their status, these men challenged me to be a better person. They accepted me in my hard times, and they encouraged my abnormal passion for biological research and teaching.

Some of these young men became romantic relationships, but the majority of them became my best friend.

They all left though.

Being the abnormally confident person I am, I would ask them to explain to me why they did not want to be with me romantically. This would trouble them greatly, even when I assured them at great length that I did not care about their answer, nor did I care if they answered in the first place. All I wanted to know was why they did not love me.

From the first up to the last, they all gave a variation on the same answer. However, it was the first one to answer my question that changed my life.

It was one of my best friends. It was fairly late at night during my junior year of college, and I asked him a year after he rejected me why he did not want to be with me. He looked forward, and I could tell that it was very difficult for him to answer, even though he had never had a problem telling me what I could do to improve myself.

“It’s not that I don’t love you Felicity. I love everything about you. You are one of the most amazing people I know, and if there was a problem with you, then I probably would not be your friend. Felicity, I wish I could love you like that. I do not understand why I cannot. I love everything about you; you’re my best friend.”

When I tell people this story, they clutch their hearts and smile. They hear the truth in my friend’s statement.

Love is not defined by our imperfections. When we are rejected, it is not because there is something inherently wrong with who we are. It is not because there is nothing lovable within our hearts.

But this does not answer the question: Why won’t you love me?

The first time I heard this “I love everything about you, but I cannot understand why we cannot be together” statement gave me hope that there would be another soul who would love me. I figured that this was simply God telling my college best friend that I was not the right one for him, but there would be someone great for me in the future.

And still I hold on to that foolish hope that God will some day end my waiting person.

We all hold on to some hope. We all believe that our suffering will end. Even if it is petty as my desire to be a mother some day, or if it is serious as the desire for an illness to end, there is something in our hearts that we cannot let go of.

God is in those dreams, in our hopes, and in our greatest desires.

He resides there, speaking to us in our trials, telling us what it is that we need to do in order to find the life that He has created for us. He knows how to bring us to the life we need, but we do not know how to take that path.

And yet…we reject Him, the One who can lead us Home.

My second 54 Day Rosary Novena did not pan out the way I expected. The day after I finished the Novena, I read over my Love Life Story, desperate to find what I had been missing all along. After all, the first time I prayed this Novena, I found a way to love souls who have made my scientific work all the greater.

I came across another rejection, and I realized that it was much more than a rejection from a boy to me.

These were the same words I used to reject the man who had loved me most.

Let me set the stage. Picture a young man sitting with a young woman. It’s another late night, and the young woman has to make a decision. The man has just told her how much he loves her, and all she has to do is say, “I love you too.”

Instead, she says this:

“I do not know why I do not love you. You have done nothing wrong. You couldn’t have done anything wrong. Jesus, you are perfect. You are the most holy person I know, and You are incredibly kind. You take on so many of our struggles, and You ask for nothing in return. I feel inadequate just knowing how much You have done for me. I wish I could say something, but I do not know what is keeping me from loving You.”

All Jesus wants is for us to love Him back. He carries our crosses, and He smiles at us through the blood dripping down from His Crown of Thorns. He never hurts us, and yet we all decide to choose a life for ourselves.

But why?

We claim not to know why, but  the answer is actually embedded in our confusion.

When it comes to the love of God, we feel inadequate in its presence. We see how perfect He is, and we see how heavy His Cross is, and we decide that we are too weak, that we are too small, that we are too imperfect to love Him back. We do not deserve His love. We do not deserve the life that He has made for us.

We reject Jesus’ love every day because we think our lives should be the way we want it to be.

But what if we said, “I love you too Jesus?”

108 days of my life were dedicated in prayer to the one God made for me. However, if I am not living the life that God made for me, then I would not be able to meet him. In fact, my future family does not exist without God’s love. My entire dream is to create a family like my parents did. God is at the center of our family, and it is His love that makes our lives and mission possible.

But those 108 days were not a waste.

People will tell me that they were, but I know in my heart that they were not.

Those 108 days of deep prayer, these 23.75 years of single-hood, these 6 years as a confirmed Catholic, the 50 men described in my Love Life Story, they are all important. They all taught me how to love. They all showed me that God was there in every moment, constantly whispering of His love and devotion to me.

All I have to do is turn around and say, “I love you too Jesus.”

So I did. It was a Sunday morning, and I praying over the names in my Love Life Story. So many beautiful souls, all carrying God’s love for me in their hearts- I was overwhelmed. I sobbed through Communion. It was almost too difficult for me to look in to the eyes of my Short Course Team members’ faces as they handed me the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

For it was in their hands that I was able to tell Jesus that I loved Him too.

Many more tears fell, but they were not sorrowful. My tears were filled with love for Jesus and His little ones, the souls He gave me.

When we give our entire lives to Christ, when we tell Him that we love Him in our suffering, He bestows many blessings upon us. It is difficult, yes, but it is the most rewarding experience. Do I still desire for God to grant my single grace? Certainly.

But now I know that my life is more than my dreams.

My life is His Dream.

Ever since that Sunday, I have felt more joy in my heart and purpose in my spirit than I have felt in a long time. I smile at those who hate me. I speak of my faith to my advisor who once knew the Catholic faith. I do not fear rejection because I already have the greatest love in Heaven or on Earth in my heart.

I know that by loving Jesus and all of the souls He grants me the opportunity to meet that I will some day live the life that God revealed to me six years ago in the Frassati House Chapel.

I used to not notice when people smiled at me. I used to think that people did not remember me or see me. However, since turning my heart to Jesus and not some mystery man in the distant future, I have noticed more men smiling at me than ever before. Not in lust, but in genuine care for me. I have noticed more children coming up to me in churches and stores.


When we love Jesus, He challenges us to find the life we are made for. Just like any great relationship, it makes us in to the best-version-of-ourselves.

My life, although it is not particularly different since that morning, is more real than it has been in quite some time.

And I feel beautiful because of that.

The next chance you look in the mirror, I invite you to do this one thing: look in to your eyes, the eyes that God gave you, and say, “I love you too Jesus.”

It will change your life.