Trust.
Life is measured by moments of trust.
The smallest of words can grab your entire heart – t.r.u.s.t. When times get tough, questions rise up and fears overcome you. When you shout out “WHY?” and are buried in waves of grief threatening to consume you.
Then what?
Either you trust someone or you don’t – it’s just that simple. We open our hearts and lives to others and let them join with us. It could be our spouse, our family, our close friends, our significant other. You know whom you love and whom you long for. Whomever it is in your life that you allow access to deep and intimate places in your heart – it’s them!
Are you confident in times of unrelenting trial that they will stand with you? Â Do you know without a doubt that they will be for you? Can you find the comfort you need in the arms of those you love?
Do you truly trust them?
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.”
Scripture tells us to trust in the Lord will all your heart. That means there is nothing I should be holding back from Him. Â I may not be aware of what that could be in the moments of weakness, but when the Light comes, He reveals it clearly.
For years I have been hung up on this verse of Scripture, getting snagged  about not leaning on my own understanding. Funny thing is, all the time I was trying not to do that – it’s exactly what I ended up doing!
My trust in God comes when I give my whole heart to Him, even the painful stuff. My trust in God comes when I submit my ways to Him. Just let it all go to Him and trust Him to speak as He makes the paths straight. Those paths might be straightened by the Lord – yet if I am standing back in worry about the right road to take, that’s far from trusting Him, isn’t it?
I trust myself much more than I trust God.
I don’t know what this might look like in your life, but I do know what it looks like in mine. If trust has been broken in a relationship I tend to look to my own measurements of how to rebuild that trust and what it might look like. I contemplate decisions but hold off on making them.  Playing the victim much longer than I should, wallowing in my pain than in the victory that comes in trusting God. Rebuilding and restoring relationships takes great courage and effort.
God must be at the center.
We all have people in our lives we love. Some of those we love, we yearn for them to love us in return.  Broken families and relationships scatter the globe and cross into the pathways of our lives in raw and emotional ways. We ache for love and find ourselves doing things we might not have otherwise done in our quest to be filled.
We can pretend we have it all together – but see my hand raised over here. I admit right now – I don’t. Sometimes I don’t even know what trust looks like – but oh how I yearn for it in the broken places. To stop trusting myself and freely dropping all the pretenses and let God just take it.  Submitting my ways to Him and trusting Him to make the paths clear and giving me the light to see my steps.
Just  one.
I like how the Proverbs 3:5-7 is written in The Message:
Trust God from the bottom of your heart;
    don’t try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;
    he’s the one who will keep you on track.
Don’t assume that you know it all.
Trust. Don’t try to figure out everything.
Listen. He will keep you on track.
Of all the relationships that might be broken in  your life – God wants to be at the very center of them – in  my heart, and in yours -guiding our ways and our minds to Him.
So, reach out – hang on.
Trust.
 New International Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986Â
Peterson, Eugene H. The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002.
Embracing His Presence 