I don’t trust much. It doesn’t come easy for me. I’m more of a hedge your bets kind of person.
If I’m talking to someone, and they are being friendly and the conversation is going well, in the back of my mind, I’m usually thinking that they are being disingenuous and would really prefer to be someplace else. When they compliment me, I don’t believe them. When they have to cancel plans, I assume it’s because the friendship is over.
I don’t trust people to stay.
If I look at my bank account and I see a ton of money in there (haha like that ever happens!) I don’t trust that it will stay. I will know what is coming in and what is going out, but I don’t trust that something won’t implode overnight. Numbers lie. I don’t trust them.
And I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust my thoughts to be pure or accurate or informed. I don’t trust my judgments. I don’t trust my intellect. I trust the sound of my words but not always their merit. I try to be transparent, but then I wonder at my own truth.
And I don’t trust life. I worry around every corner I will find the cold hand of fate waiting to stop me and shuffle me up and throw me to the ground, discarded.
And so you might find it odd that as I was going through a Bible Study selection today that I thought I trusted God. If someone asked me if I did, I would probably get a look that’s all deep and meaningful and I would say something like,
“You have to trust in God. He is the only one who has the final say in anything. He loves us and our families more than we ever possibly could. He knows better. We must trust God.”
And in my naiveté (or willful blindness,) I might have then gone home and double checked everything and accounted for every possibility and analyzed every angle, not realizing that all I was really doing in those acts was trying to wrestle control away from God by clinging to whatever semblance of control I think I have.
As I came to this question in my text today about how I trust God and what about God is trustworthy, I basically just froze because I realized that I do not trust God any more than I trust myself or anyone or anything else.
I don’t trust. I hedge my bets. I worry. Worry is really the only way control freaks can pretend to control what they can’t.
Anyway, all of this makes me wonder if I’m alone in this. Is this something that I’m in the minority for? Are most people able to surrender their lives over to God and trust that He will make something beautiful of them?
Maybe most people can’t. But I wonder if the truly beautiful people can. The people who live lives of simplicity and peace. Those who ask God what His will is. Those who don’t follow the whims or the trends or what anyone else thinks or says. Those who recognize their own weaknesses and fallibility.
My oldest daughter and I went to go see a movie about Mother Teresa a week or two ago. There was so much in the movie they showed about her that was admirable. But her humility and her joy were the two things that stood out the most to me.
But where does that humility come from? Can we be humble and still try to hold on to control? Or does humility require of us a complete abandonment to the will of God? Does it ask of us a complete trust?
I’m thinking of these things as I sit in my living room at the end of a long but rather joyful day, and in my mind, I know what I need to do. I need to learn to surrender. I need to tell God I trust Him and then I need to trust Him enough to let go of that control. I have to accept what comes without trying to maneuver everything just right.
It’s only when we do this that we can experience lives of peace. It’s only then that our worries can settle for a bit. It’s only then that we can allow ourselves to be children to a Being far greater than ourselves. It’s only then that we can have a Lord.
But it’s so hard.