Rejected and Alone
By Jenny Gilpin
After moving from Australia to England with her husband Dave to start Hope City Church, Jenny Gilpin found out about the tragic truth behind her adoption at only a few weeks old. Jenny looks back on her life and recalls her journey from rejection to a new found peace.
Virginia was her name. Little Miss Popular. The girl everybody wanted to know. I always thought she was talking about me and making curious comments about how uncool I was behind my back. That was when we were ten years old. Twenty years later I ran into Virginia and it was one of the most interesting conversations I have ever had in my life.
She proceeded to tell me that she always wondered what I had gone on and done with my life, because back then in 1976 she thought I was the most likely to succeed out of all the girls in my class. That amazed me, but that is the nature of rejection. I had created a world around me in which I thought no-one liked me when the real issue was that I didn’t like myself.
In the thirty years since my classroom encounter with Virginia I have had a lot of time to deal with the rejection that stifled my life for so long. Finally I have been able to overcome that hurdle and become someone who can help others to do the same.
My story started with being adopted as a baby of ten days old. I became part of a wonderful family with a big brother Robert who was also adopted. Our childhood nicknames were skinny fireman and fat fairy. The fat fairy was me as it took a while for that puppy fat to drop off. We had a great childhood climbing trees and riding bikes in the suburbs of Brisbane, Australia. I grew up excelling in sports, particularly athletics and did well at my schooling as well. I looked to everyone as the golden girl. The all star academic and champion athlete, but deep inside me there was a girl suffering painfully from a sense of rejection and needing to be loved. I lost my wonderful adopted Dad to cancer at 16 years old, and this just fuelled in me my need for a Father figure and a deep wanting to feel accepted.
At twenty five years old, married now and having had my son Ryan I discovered the real reason for all these rejection and insecurity problems. I found my birth Mother that year and discovered the awful truth. At 19 years old she had been brutally attacked by a group of men and I had been conceived as a result of that attack. To say that information didn’t help was the understatement of the century. But on the same account, the revelation was the beginning of the unfolding of the greatest victory of my life.
From that point on I began the journey to discovering who I really was. I began to overcome my insecurities, and to realise that although conceived in such a horrible way, my life and destiny were planned and secured. There is incredible security in knowing that there is a heavenly Father, a God who really loves me and who knew about my life before it even began. Before I was even born He knew me and planned my paths. Understanding the Fatherhood of God really started the journey for me. It was awesome to begin to understand that although I would never know who my real Dad was, there was a Dad in heaven who was cheering my life on and who values me completely and totally.
I also began to realise that my life was all about choices, and I had to decide not to be a victim of my beginnings. My choice was instead to be a woman who reached out to others who suffer painfully from rejection, and to offer them the knowledge that there is a way out for them as well.
I think I have finally found my place. My old friend Virginia would not be surprised and neither would God. The only surprised one is me. Good surprised!
Jenny Gilpin is the beautiful half of Mr and Mrs Gilpin! Together, Dave and Jenny are the Senior Pastors of Hope City Church. They have one 15 year old and very creative son called Ryan. Jenny has become a pillar to many women across the UK as a result of her confidence in God as a restorer of the broken. Jenny has recently seen a dream come true after opening the City Hearts Project for women with life controlling issues. Check put the 'About Hope City Church' pages for more information on Senior Pastors Dave and Jenny Gilpin.