I will trust in you...

I have been so focused on things of daily life that tend to create drama.  And yet I always seem to forget that behind all the day to day drama there is more.  And that more is possible for everyone, not just those who's lives are all together.  Yet maybe even more important is the fact that the more includes those of us who have fled, feel abandoned, or any other bump in the road you can think of.  

In my world, it seems that all I have been finding are the bumps in the road.  These bumps seem to just be swallowing me up whole most days.  So, how do I handle these bumps in life?  Well I would love to say that I just walk thru them and don't think twice about what is happening.  But that would be a lie.  You see for each and every bump in the road; I feel them, I remember them, and of course I never forget them.  That might be seen as a good thing, and yet where would be the story in feeling, remembering, and never forgetting if they were just like old photographs of relatives you can't seem to put a name to?  No, these bumps are much more engraved inside of me in the same way that some people remember Pearl Harbor Day or even the Day the Towers Fell.  

And as far as them being faded pictures, I can only dream.  This is like looking at perfectly in focus still life or even home movies.  No one has aged a second from the moment these bumps were engraved.  And with that...  I find that it is not so easy to trust.  Trust might be a word we all throw around... but trusting in other people is a step that I have been burned at more times that I want to think about.  And sadly it is usually by those in my life that I hold most dear.  Honestly who wants to relive the moment your husband tried to kill you again every single day since it happened?  Never mind remembering a conversation with someone long dead that enforces the idea that you are worthless and unwanted?  That by failing in your own life that you brought physical pain to their life?  Or that you lack of perfection destroyed the self esteem of someone who you knew you needed to love?  And even going as far to hear that your love for someone required a price so steep that God whisked them away from this earth because of it?

You see, while we desire to live in a culture of free love.  The ability to chart our own course and even control our own destiny...  We can and do leave behind a trail of damage from our desire to get ahead.  And yet I am going to guess that you are thinking, that no one can be that cruel.  Love never hurts.  But it does, and it can hurt so deeply that it can change the world we live in.

And while I would love to explain in many different ways how I have been hurt, there is one that right now is much deeper than any other.  And that is the relationship in my life between expressing emotions and the desire to show how together I am that I don't need any help.  But it really isn't that I don't need the help.  I wish I could open my mouth and say hey can u help me pay this bill or even do you know someone who shovels walks so that I am not stuck in my house each time it snows.  The problem is the asking for help requires a level of trust.  A level of trust that just is not within my grasp right now.  And that level of trust then is also so keenly noticed with the fact that I don't feel safe.  Yet a lack of safety isn't due to a physical war.  It is the product of the idea that we never let down the walls to let people know where and how we are weak.  It is just much safer to move forward and never let anyone know they hurt you.  Sadly the more I have done this, and so of it was a direct result of a physical pain inflicted upon me for having expressed an emotion, the easier it has become to take each and every moment that I have been hurt, or even wondered if I would get hurt, and to find a way to package them up and lock them away in the vault of my memories.  

You see, this lack of trust has set up the cycle of:

1. I find a bump in the road.
2. These things we like to call emotions start to find a way inside me.  They feel like they are starting to bubble up inside of me.
3. And then I do an assessment...  Is it safe?  Am I going to show where I am weak?  Or is this letting someone in this life too close to the castle walls protecting my vault?

And with this cycle, I am starting to see that the sound advice that I do hear...  I question, just because of the world trust.  And it is not even being asked to trust a person here on this earth that is living.  It is trusting in the simple fact that if I turned the boxes over to God...  What could he do to help me?  Why do I deserve any help?  And what risk is it to me, taking a step to trust, and possibly start to see my way away from all the bumps in life that I have neatly stored and organized?

While I have no answers... and currently more questions... Maybe this is a start towards that critical step of I WILL TRUST IN YOU... WHEN THE WEAK SAY I AM STRONG IN THE STRENGTH OF THE LORD... I WILL TRUST IN YOU.