Coping with being misjudged by others

Lately, I have been going through a season of feeling misjudged, and I have struggled for some time to come to terms with not only the ways I have been misjudged but also my emotions about it.

In the beginning, it was very painful. My feelings were very hurt and I was angry. Then after some time went by, my hurt feelings started to diminished but my anger remained.

Now, I was not angry out of a sense of unfairness. I know life is not fair and fairness really only applies to the weather. No, I was angry because the misjudgments about me were not only wrong but actually off by a mile.  

On some days, my anger was just slightly simmering inside me, and I could set it aside and ignore it. Other days, my anger impatiently tapped its foot waiting to bust out into my soul. And when it did it gnawed at me and took up full time residence in my thoughts and feelings and all the chambers of my heart until I felt small and black like a speck of pepper.

So, I would go before the Lord, and search my heart and repent over my anger and wrongdoings and surrender it all to Him and pray that He would show me how to forgive.

Nonetheless, I found myself still angry. Not necessarily right after I finished praying, but a day later I was right back where I started. Mad.

So my unhealthy brooding would begin again, in a most self-indulgent manner causing a rather unpleasant moodiness in my interior life.

Until one day I could not take anymore how all the anger and emotion and frustration filled me with so much turmoil. I hated it and knew I had to surrender it all or I was never going to be able to let go and move on.

So I begged God to make sense of things for me. I asked Him to show me how I ended up in this exhausting emotional predicament, as well as what it was that I was missing and not seeing. I pleaded with Him to give me His thoughts and mind on the whole matter. I prayed He would make sense of the whole mess for me, because I could not make sense of anything. And although God did not give me all the answers I wanted, He did immediately show me what I was missing.

The reality is that even though we may sincerely mean well and even do well, to the best of our ability and with the best of intentions, we are still going to frequently be misjudged by others just as Christ was misjudged. The only perfect man to ever walk on earth, the Son of God, was misjudged and even scorned by both friends and foes. As His followers, we will be scorned and misjudged as well. It is part of our walk with Him.

That is not to say that we can just ignore how we may have caused others to misjudge us. Often, we have severe blind spots about how our demeanor, personality, and lifestyle impacts others and as a result leads to misjudgments about who we are. Only God can reveal our blind spots to us, and help us to change, and He will do so when we ask Him. 

It will always be discouraging when we learn that others may be against us, but we can truly only worry about the state of our own heart before God. Thankfully, neither praise nor blame from others adds or subtracts from who we are in God's sight. God looks at our hearts and motives, and not at our often imperfect deeds. While others may give us little credit and think and even speak poorly of us, we have the advantage of being able to surrender it all to God. He will at times vindicate us, but He will always do what is best for us and give us a place of secure rest in His arms as we trust and follow Him with our whole hearts.