Live Invited Even When You Feel Left Out

Have you ever walked into a room, and felt immediately awkward? In your mind, it appears as though everyone else knows the drill, but you stand there not knowing where to stand, where to sit, what to say, who to talk to, or even what to do with your hands. It looks like everyone else has a friend, but you stand there alone, feeling left out. When you finally manage the nerve to join a group, you still stand there on the edges, listening to the conversation, but never joining in. You awkwardly wait for an invitation, a welcome into the conversation. But you are not one to draw attention to yourself or to speak over other people’s words, so you remain hidden on the sidelines, feeling stuck in the shadows.

Maybe you leave feeling like you attended a party that you were not invited to. You were there in attendance, but you felt like you didn’t belong there.

If you’ve experienced this before, you know the feelings don’t stop when the event is finished. These negative thoughts can linger for days. The awkwardness and discomfort you felt while at the gathering morph into feeling rejected, invisible, overlooked, and lonely. These feelings can even color our future interactions with others. Every unanswered text, photo on social media, or conversation around you becomes a way that others are leaving you out. Your not enough-ness that you felt at the event must mean you are not enough for friendship.

What does it mean to live invited?

If you are someone who feels uninvited (even when you did actually receive an invitation or no invitation was required), who shows up to group events to feel more involved (only to leave feeling more lonely than before), can you daydream with me for a minute? Or maybe you can remember a place where you did feel welcomed. Just close your eyes and imagine…

What would it be like to walk into a room as if you belonged there?

Who would notice you?

What friend would walk up to you and say hello?

Who would look you in the eye, ask you how are you doing, and stay to listen to your answer?

What person would give you a hug and remember that you had something hard going on in your life and ask you how you are holding up?

Who would invite you to come sit by them and then include you in the conversation? What would you talk about?

As you imagine others welcoming you in, how do you feel? Is it warmth and comfort? Do you feel settled and peaceful? Some other words might be welcomed, embraced, wanted, loved, and cared for. In the scenario you imagined, do you move like you belong there, as if your presence matters? Are you happy and confident?

When we feel welcomed and included, we are given the courage to show up as our real selves.

This is what it means to live invited—we know we are loved, we know we belong, and we can confidently show ourselves to others. So the question becomes:  How can we carry over those feelings of invitation and belonging even when we don’t feel it?

On a side note:  I’m not saying you should stay at a place where others have intentionally made you feel unwelcome. But if you’re like me, you have a hard time feeling as if you belong anywhere. This is for you if you struggle with feeling included, even among friends.

So, my friend, how do we change the negative messages in our heads into something that gives us more courage to move towards others? Because the trouble with this fear and insecurity around relationships is that they only cause us to pull away. We feel left out, therefore, we stay away and isolate ourselves even more, when community is what we actually need.

A Birthday Story…

I had a birthday recently. And birthdays are a time when loneliness can come on strong. I wrote about it here. I’ve seen other authors write about it too, so I know this is a universal feeling. The funny thing about birthdays is that we should be enjoying them. Each year we get a whole day to celebrate who we are, but unfortunately the messages in our heads can change our perspectives.

So, it was my 43rd birthday, and my mom came to visit for the weekend. That Saturday we took my son to celebrate his own birthday with friends because his birthday was a couple weeks earlier. Then for my actual birthday, that Sunday, we attended church, ate at the restaurant of my choice (Taziki’s, if you’d like to know), then went home to enjoy cake and ice cream, and opened presents!

It was a wonderful, restful, a-little-fun-in-the-right-places, kind of weekend. It was a great birthday. I even took some pictures that I decided to share on social media. And that’s where the insecurities kicked in.

I had photos of family, and that’s it. No dinner parties with friends. No large celebration to share. No extravagant gifts. No out of town getaway.

Hear me when I say, I didn’t want those things. But when it came to sharing my private photos in a public place, my celebration felt…small. I loved my sweet photos of my mom, my kids, my husband, and my cake. Hesitation came when I looked at them through the eyes of others.

I shared my photos anyway, but first I had to fight through the comparison and decide that even my small celebration deserved a place in my own social media feed. I felt those feelings, but I tapped post anyway. We can have feelings that tell us to be quiet and keep living life in the shadows—but we still show up and live invited anyway.

Lysa TerKeurst has a book called Uninvited, Living Loved When You Feel Less Than, Left Out, and Lonely. In it she writes about her own battles with insecurity and her fight to find belonging even when she didn’t feel it. And she says this:

“The voices of condemnation, shame, and rejection can come at you, but they don’t have to reside in you.”

Here is what really matters:  You are invited. You are invited to a feast where you belong. Everyone and each one belongs, and it is life-changing if you choose to join. Even though we long for connection and invitations to every table, unfortunately, that cannot be. But the good thing is, you are invited to feast with Jesus. This invitation is personal:

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me” (Revelation 3:20, NIV).

And this invitation is for everyone:

“On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine—the best of meats and the finest of wines” (Isaiah 25:6, NIV).

Jesus is always waiting at the door. Waiting to be welcomed into your life, so that you can experience welcome at the grandest of feasts. And the greatest of rests. In Matthew 11, Jesus says:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (verses 28-30).

This is not a relationship you must be your most perfect self for. Jesus doesn’t want you to hide anything from him. You can accept His invitation and live as your most free self. No more hiding in the shadows. Jesus calls the dead to life. The darkness to light. The prisoner to freedom. The lowly to the exalted. The grieving to celebration. The lonely into a community.

What is holding you back from living invited?

What keeps you in the corners of the room, instead of allowing yourself to be enveloped by community? Could it be fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, fear of showing who you are and being rejected? These fears only keep us hidden.

God wants you to love openly and wholly. He wants you to celebrate and grieve with others—no matter how awkward it is. He wants you to share your life, no matter how small or how insignificant you may feel that your life is.

Through the life of Jesus, we can see God continually lean in towards others. He started conversations, he made invitations, and he accepted invitations knowing that he would ultimately be rejected by so many around him. We cannot model Jesus when we continually move away from others. And not coincidentally, the more I move away from others, the more distant I feel from God.

God welcomes you. God is preparing a feast for you, a home for the future. But God allows us to live in this world, to do our part to bring light and love and hope. We can’t do that if we’re hiding in a corner. We cannot pour out the love that God puts in us if we are staring awkwardly at our phones.

How to Live Invited Even When You Feel Left Out

When you feel alone and left out, let God’s love be the first thing you reach for. There will be invitations you will not receive, gatherings you are left out of, friends that decide you are no longer their friend. But God never revokes His invitation.

This doesn’t mean human relationships are not important to us. We just can’t make them the most important.

What if Everyone Lived Invited?

There are some depressing statistics on loneliness, and how many of us actual feel alone and left out in today’s world. And the reality is we are all (mostly) waiting on others to invite us, to welcome us in to their lives.

This is where we pray to our Father for courage. We need courage to be the one to go first. We need courage to be uncomfortable because human relationships can come with all kinds of conflict—but we know connection is better than isolation.

What if we all lived as if we were invited? We would give others the benefit of the doubt instead of feeling rejected at every perceived offense. We would show up confidently using our gifts, and not looking at others comparing our gifts to theirs. Instead of searching for approval in the eyes of our friends, we would walk into the room asking, “What does God want me to do here?” And we would do it without worrying about what someone else will think.

I’ll close with some more words from Lysa TerKeurst’s book Uninvited:

“It’s time we prepare ourselves, right now, with the fullness of God. Before that next party. Before that next difficult discussion with our husbands or friends or neighbors. Before that next step we take in pursuing our dreams. Before that next hurt, hurdle, or heartbreak. We must get this settled in our hearts, minds, and souls.

In light of God’s deep affection, we no longer have to live in fear of rejection.

The more fully we invite God in, the less we will feel uninvited by others.”