There is a real pain in your heart, a pain that truly belongs to you.

You know now that you cannot avoid, ignore, or repress it.

It is the pain that reveals to you how you are called to live in solidarity with the broken human race.

You must distinguish carefully, however, between your pain and the pains that have attached themselves to it but are not truly yours.

When you feel rejected, when you think of yourself as a failure and a misfit, you must be careful not to let these feelings and thoughts pierce your heart.

You are not a failure or a misfit.

Therefore, you have to disown these pains as false.

They can paralyze you and prevent you from loving the way you are called to love.

~~~Henry Nouwen~~~