Trust

Trust is a frequently used word in silly situations that, if you spend even a minute thinking about it, you realize just how dumb it is. Don't ask me why but the example of Aladdin comes to mind for me, as he asks Jasmine, "Do you trust me" a mystery boy prince who shows up to her bedroom in the middle of the night on a magic flying carpet, and of course, as a naive teenager, she says "yes." So she goes whisking off into the night air with this stranger. Yes, I know, it's very romantic, or so I am told. But if you ask me, it's pretty dang dumb. I realize it's meant to be magical and all that, but I don't think it's magical.

As open with this silly example, I also want to consider the idea of faith as a synonym for trust. The idea of taking a leap of faith is simply; to take a leap beyond the bounds of our trust. An idea I have always struggled with in my life. Because I'm very much a logic-oriented person, I need someone to show and prove things to me before I feel I can trust them. I think it's something we all struggle with to different degrees as we face life and its inevitable disappointments. We all learn to trust less little by little, whether in people or God. Those disappointments tilt the scales by which we judge the level of trust we will allow. I have recently found myself wrestling with trust. Due to this, I have been meditating on where this lack of trust originated in my own life, and maybe "originated" is the wrong word here, as I know many factors play into it how deeply we trust and whom we trust in our lives. But I think there is healthy meditation that can be done on the experiences of lives so we can address those issues to be capable of growing.

I grew up the oldest of six, with three brothers and two sisters, and our childhood was unique and different. When I was seven, my family lived among the Amish in Kentucky, and then after three years, we moved away from the Amish community, though we continued to live in Kentucky. In Kentucky, we lived very isolated lives, and we had no family or friends most of our time in Kentucky. Because of the Mennonite culture I was born into, my family largely avoided involvement with anyone outside the Mennonite community. This meant my friends were my siblings, and my social life was at home with them. During this time in Kentucky, my Dad was mentally ill and placed in a mental ward on two occasions. His illness created an environment that was often very tense. As his meds changed, so did the atmosphere of the home. There were times when it was good, and we would all live and laugh together, playing video games together as a family. Other times when his meds changed, he would become suicidal and angry. I would hear my parents arguing, and as a child of eleven, I remember having visceral visions in my mind of walking into my parent's bedroom to find my Dad having killed my mother and my Dad having hung himself. 

I thank God it never happened, but I remember fearing that if that happened, I would have to find a way to protect and provide for my siblings, me being the oldest and the youngest being two or three years old. This birthed variety of trust issues in my life. But the fear of lack of provision became a dominant fear. 

I want to be clear that not all my memories from those years of my life were that dark. During those seasons, I remember feeling a weight of responsibility to provide for and protect my siblings and mother. I remember feeling like it was up to ME, and I had to find a way. 

Eventually, we moved back to Texas when I was fourteen, where we had family to support and help us. My Dad's physical and mental health was still not great, so our family did not have the financial support we needed. He was able to work a little sometimes, but it was not enough to provide for my siblings and my mother. My Mom did what she could, getting jobs as she could, but due to her limited education, she had minimal employment opportunities, so my thirteen-year-old brother and I both got full-time jobs working for our uncle. 

I share this to lean into the idea of trust; through these experiences, I learned to trust my ability and depend on myself and my strength. I can look back today and see how God was ultimately there providing, and He gave my brother and me the ability to help our family. But that wasn't the message I learned during those years. In those years, the message I learned was it's all up to me, it's up to me to make it happen, and if I wanted it, I would have to fight for it, I was my provider, and I could trust only in myself. Now I think there is a healthy level of self-sufficiency we all should learn, but we can also learn to only depend on ourselves and trust no one else. For me, at least, that included God for many years, and even today, I struggle to trust in God's provision. Because in the back of my mind, there's a voice that tells me, "if you don't make it happen, it will never happen."

This idea does not align with the truth of God. Because, through those years, God provided for my family and me in so many ways. One powerful example of His provision that I will never forget is when God provided and answered the prayer of a boy literally overnight. 

So as I mentioned, I got a full-time job at fourteen. This provided very little chance for me to ever interact with anyone in my age demographic as I often put in fifty to sixty hours a week working. So I remember one night lying in bed, emotionally broken and lonely. That night I knelt in bed with tears running down my face; I asked God for one thing. "God, would You bring me friends because I am so tired of being alone." With that simple prayer, I rolled over in my bed and fell asleep. The following morning I went to work once again. I worked as a storefront clerk, where I would attend to the customers coming in for any of their supply needs. On this particular day, a guy I had never met came to buy some garden hoses for a church as they needed to water their property. 

As I was getting this guy what he came in for, I somehow found myself sharing with him the current state of affairs in my life and how I didn't have any friends. After sharing my story with him, I remember a brief moment of silence. Then, with a smile, he asked, "would you like to go to youth camp?" At that moment, unsure how to respond, I stammered, "I would love to, but when?" I asked. He replied, "today." My heart sank, "I can't," I told him, "I don't have any money, and I have to work." continuing to smile, he said, "Don't worry about the money. Can you get off work?" My mind was racing, and I was unsure how to respond I replied. "Let me ask my uncle."  

In two hours, my brother and I were both signed up to go to Youth camp, a camp where I made friends who became some of my best friends for many, many years. Through that moment, God provided me with friends and a church home for myself and my siblings for many years. God heard the tear-soaked prayer of a boy begging God for friends, and He answered it overnight. There was nothing I did at the moment, God brought that man to where I worked, and he led him there to answer my prayer! 

God has worked in my life so many times. He has answered my prayers often in powerful ways. Yet here I sit today, and still, I struggle to trust Him. Still, I often forget how much He has done for me and how much He has loved me. Through childhood trauma, I learned to trust in myself and my ability. I fail to trust Him because He hasn't answered all my prayers, or He hasn't responded to them in the way I feel he should have. It amazes me how short our memory can often be and how quickly we forget the miracles He works in our lives. 

I have found in my life that God often stretches my trust. He is always taking me beyond where I feel comfortable, but isn't that precisely what it is to truly trust? Isn't it to step into the unknown without knowing the results? But here's the difference: with God, our trust can be given with assurance that He will lead us through everything He leads us into, no matter the final result. No matter what happens, we can rest; we can trust in the fact that even if the outcome doesn't look like what we expected or wanted that God is at work. We may never know the "why" of the final result on this earth, but there is blessed assurance that He is always at work on our behalf. We have an assurance that the work He has begun He will finish. 

My challenge today is to stretch your trust in God and allow Him to test you, to stretch your trust, to stretch your faith. Be bold and dare to ask God to stretch your trust, as scary as that may be. I know, for me, it is terrifying. Even though I know He won't fail me in my mind, my heart and soul are still learning that. Because my heart has been molded and broken by a fallen world, God comes in and takes all those broken pieces with grace and patience. He puts it back together, and in the process, He reforms and reshapes us into something better, with a deeper ability to trust Him when the storms of life buffet us. We simply have to remember what He has done on our behalf and how He has provided for us.