Trust Issues

I have a post I have been working on since June. It is still not ready. I pull it out, revisit it, and tweak it every now and then, but I just can’t get to the heart of my message.

The post is about fear: fear of the unknown, fear of failing, and fear of wrong choices. The post is also about faith: faith in the unknown, faith in a bigger plan, and faith in a mapped-out destiny.

I have written the post in a lyrical story form in an effort to lead my readers to a place of surrender. A place where the message is not stated but understood—God has got this.

Which is why I haven’t completed the post—I have trust issues.

It’s difficult to convince someone else to surrender if you haven’t completely surrendered yourself. Surrendering requires trust. And trust is at the heart of faith. But not just any trust—a blind, confident trust that believes good will come from even the most painful, unexplainable events.

I cling tightly to my belief that I need to control things. In some ways this is good, because I get list upon list of items done. In other ways this is bad, because I can’t actually control life.

Life has a way of throwing unexpected people and events in our paths. A perspective of faith would tell us that these people and events have a purpose. But when these people and events make me uncomfortable, I question their purpose and try to control the experience. I don’t want the pain. I don’t want the discomfort.

This reaction comes from a place of fear.

I have a past full of people and experiences that were uncomfortable and, in all honesty, at times downright painful. My painful experiences created scars, which resulted in fear and ultimately created my need to control the world.

But faith doesn’t require control. Faith requires surrender.

If you viewed my life with the benefit of hindsight, faith would be easy and surrender would come naturally. But if you follow my story from the point where a 16-year-old girl clutches a pregnancy test with a result that grips her heart in fear, you would understand my need for control.

Looking back over events in life that have already occurred brings a broader perspective. A perspective that is unseen when we are in the middle of living.

In the midst of day-to-day life, we encounter a variety of people and experiences. When we combine those people and experiences with the bombarding pace of life, we can quickly find ourselves at a place of reaction and survival. And when we are just reacting and surviving, we are probably reacting in a way that protects us from pain—a pain that created a scar and resulted in a fear.

But here is the problem: when we park ourselves in the middle of pain and fear, we miss the place faith is leading us to. And when I have allowed myself to experience the place faith leads me to, it has been abundantly more than I could have asked for or imagined (Ephesians 3:20).

Pregnant at only 16, I was parked in the middle of a world of pain and fear.

Parked in my fear, I saw the repercussions of my choice displayed in the pain on my family’s faces. I missed the gift of the life growing inside of me.

Parked in my fear, I saw the rejection and judgment of others. I missed the divine grace that pardoned judgment and rejection, even my own.

Parked in my fear, I missed His glory that already saw the kind smile and gentle heart that grew up alongside me.

Parked in my fear, I missed His glory that already saw another man ready to take the place of father and come to be known in my world as “Dad,” not only to the life I was blessed with at 16 but to the lives of two other precious children as well.

With faith I could have seen all of this at the tender age of 16 … and maybe because of the choice I made, in some ways I did.

But trust and faith are easier on this side of my story.

I believe in more and I can tell you all the benefits of an unseen, untouchable more. But to exercise the type of blind, untouchable faith that requires unclenched hands and trust is nothing short of difficult. Especially since I know to get to the glory side of the experience, I first have to survive the pain.

So, here I am at the end of this post, and the one I haven’t finished from June, still struggling with my trust issues. I can continue to look back at all I survived along my journey and know faith is surely the better choice, but yet the question still remains …

Do I trust enough to walk in faith, or will I let fears created from scars blind me to a belief in things I can’t see or touch?