FREE CHAPTER, Chickens, Rejection, and Pecking Order

I’m not a country girl, so you can understand my shock when I learned from a good friend who raises hens that chickens would peck a newcomer to death. As my friend began to explain to me how she had purchased four new hens to add to her group, she said, “Tekoa I wouldn’t dare just try and add one.” I sat there confused.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because they will peck them to death,” she stated emphatically. “They’ll get up to the new ones and start pecking their beaks and eyeballs, and once they get some blood coming forth, the rest join in a frenzy. There is a pecking order,” she said.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  I started realizing how difficult it is to be a new person at school, a new job, a new family, and other social activity places. While researching this topic, I also discovered that rejection and bullying could cause multiple health issues, neurological disorders, and a host of fears.

Rejection is a word that comes from Latin and means to be “thrown backward.” You’ve heard the cliché, “two steps forward and three steps back.”  It’s the same thing.  You can be rejected due to a weight issue, a congenital disability, your race, or even success. You can also be hated because you are beautiful, intelligent, or unique.  Sometimes, rejection is due to fear or jealousy.  One of the worst rejections to experience is one from family or a family you marry into.  Guess who else was rejected by the ones He loved? “He came to his own people, and even they rejected him” (John 1:11, NLT).

Yeshua was rejected by His twelve disciples when He needed them the most.  The Messiah had to walk people out of His own hometown because He (The Son of God) was not able to heal many due to their unbelief. His own people rejected Him. Yeshua was rejected by men who said they would die for Him (Peter) only to deny they ever knew Him.

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a well-known trauma researcher, explains more in an article at Psychology Today: Connections Between Emotional Stress, Trauma and Physical Pain:

Research has shown that, under ordinary conditions, many traumatized people, including rape victims, battered women, and abused children, have a fairly good psychosocial adjustment.  However, they do not respond to stress the way other people do.  Under pressure, they may feel (or act) as if they were traumatized all over again. [1]

Here is the problem: They are thrown backward! But what happens to our systematic nervous system when we feel threatened, rejected, and shunned?  Or even worse, what happens when we are being henpecked to death?

Jurriaan Plesman, BA writes in her article titled Anxiety and the Autonomic Nervous System:

An overactive SNS (Systematic Nervous System) is likely to open up blood vessels and flood your face, neck and ears in blushing. Other possible symptoms are: dizziness, shaking, trembling, (as when giving a talk in front of people), digestive disorders, swallowing problems, nausea, vomiting, or fear of vomiting or diarrhea, arrhythmia (irregular heartbeats), ticks and restless legs, excessive sweating, depersonalization, incontinence, impotence, repetitive thoughts, ruminations, Anhedonia. It is obvious that these mental and bodily reactions help to prepare the body for strenuous and quick actions in the face of danger. [2]

Wow! A lot is going on in our bodies when we are surrounded by a group of hens fighting for their order.

Perhaps you have experienced being the new chicken in the chicken yard a time or two. I can honestly say it’s not fun. You can get henpecked to death, and yes, once the blood comes, it seems like the other chickens do join in. That is why parents hate bullies.  No one wants to watch their child get hurt at a new school or neighborhood. No spouse wants to watch their husband or wife be rejected by their friends or family members. No young teenager or college student wants to feel like an outcast in the room. Being a new stepmother or father can be difficult. Being a new teacher, a new student or an employee can stir up the chicken yard.

Remember how the word rejection means to be “thrown backwards?” Well, that’s important because it has been shown time and again that the more free throw shots basketball players miss, the worse they will do at the line. Why? Because they are so worried about making the shot, so nervous and on edge about the score, team pressure, and so forth, they miss the net again.

It is like trying to fit in at a new school, in a new family, a new job, or a new leadership spot; if each time you try and reach out for acceptance, you get shunned, eventually, it looks too hard to keep trying, and this is when many of us give up. Why? Because we get thrown backward.

 

Webster defines rejection as “to refuse to accept, consider, submit to, take for some purpose, or use.”  It goes on to say, “to refuse to hear, receive, or admit.” Rejection is one of the worst feelings a person can feel.” Psychologist Jessica Witt at Purdue University explains how our vision can affect us in her article Perceptions Might Often Kick a Player When They are Down:

After a series of missed field goal kicks, players perceived the field post to be taller and narrower than before.  However, after a series of successful kicks, athletes reported the post to appear larger than before. In a previous study, Witt asked golfers after a round of golf to report their scores and estimate the size of a golf hole. She found that those who played better saw the hole as bigger.[3]

Witnessing the power of rejection is heartbreaking. The more we encounter rejection, the more we view our efforts as pointless. The less we try, the farther away our goal seems. It is like the four chickens my friend attempted to add to the bunch; they just weren’t fitting in. I wanted to go further with this devotional and get to the root of why people reject others:

And Yisra’ĕl (Israel) loved Yosĕph (Joseph) more than all his children because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a long robe. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and were not able to speak peaceably to him.

–Genesis 37:3-4, ISR

Jealousy, envy, hatred, and lies can destroy a person’s worth. David said, “Those who hate me without cause outnumber the hairs on my head. Many enemies try to destroy me with lies, demanding that I give back what I didn’t steal” (Psalm 69:4, NLT). Yeshua said the same thing:

If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated Me and My Father as well. “But they have done this to fulfill the word that is written in their Law, ‘They hated me “without a cause.

–John 15:24-25, NASB

Do people hate you without cause?  Do they try and peck you to death? You are in good company. David said, “Malicious witnesses rise up; They ask me of things that I do not know” (Psalm 35:11, NASB). If anyone knows our pain and rejection, it is our Messiah. The prophet Isaiah speaks concerning Him:  “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief ” (Isaiah 53:3, ESV).

Perhaps you are in a new chicken coop, and the players are pecking you to pieces. Remember, they did it to Yeshua, David, Jeremiah, and Joseph. Maybe you are tired of trying to fit in the chicken yard and tired of being thrown backward. I know a man who also had a chicken problem, and now he is famously known worldwide.  Harland David Sanders: Better known as Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken was thrown backward a time or two.  The Colonel had a hard time selling his chicken at first. In fact, his famous secret chicken recipe was rejected 1,009 times before a restaurant accepted it. [4]

Don’t let the chickens peck you to death–chances are you don’t belong in the yard with them. Birds of a feather flock together, but the mighty eagle soars alone.

You can purchase Thirsting for Water HERE. 

[1] The Connections Between Emotional Stress, Trauma and Physical Pain | Psychology Today

[2] http://www.hypoglycemia.asn.au/2011/anxiety-and-the-autonomic-nervous-system/

[3] https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2009/091006WittFootball.html

[4] https://medium.com/@dennisnafte/colonel-sanders-failed-1009-times-before-succeeding-ac5492a5c191