It's All About Trust

But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him Jeremiah 17:7

Gary and I went to church last night – so thankful that our church has a Saturday evening service – and it was communion “Sunday” It was the first time in over a year that I have participated in communion and it really felt more like it meant something to me last night. I spent that time praying for God to show me how to trust Him. I have come to realization that trust is my biggest issue when it comes to my walk with God. I don’t know why exactly, I mean I have been taught for as long as I can remember that God will never give you more than you can handle but I have had a lot handed to me over the years that I thought for sure I couldn’t handle, looking back at it all I guess I did handle it but it tore away at my trust bit by bit and I’m sure Satan himself used that as a little toehold to my heart to push in with doubt, whispering things like “See, God said you could trust Him but look what He has let happen to you now” 

I think the catalyst was when I lost my mom. I was only 23 years old, I didn’t think I could handle that, and to be honest I didn’t handle it very well at first. I was very angry with God. I had trusted Him to not give me more than I could handle and here He was taking my mom away from me at a time when I needed her most. After losing my mom I battled (and continue to battle) depression. It felt like everything good was marred by the fact that she wasn’t there for it. I had my youngest son Garrett a little less than a year after my mom passed away and it was a wonderful day but I was sad because my mom wasn’t there. When I graduated from college I was happy but I was also sad because here was this big day in my life and my mom wasn’t there. When I got my first teaching job, when Ashley and Bobby graduated from high school, when Ashley graduated from college and got her first teaching job, when Ashley became engaged... all these things are wonderful things but they were all a little sad because my mom wasn’t here to share them with me.

I am so thankful that God is a loving and patient God because He has been with me through everything and he has faithfully shown me that I can trust in Him. He has shown me that losing my mom didn’t break me, yeah it bent me like you would never believe, it bent my entire life but it didn’t break me. It actually made me stronger. I often wonder, if my mom hadn’t passed away would I have become a teacher? My mom always talked about things she would do “someday.” Before my mom passed away  was perfectly content working part time as a receptionist and after she passed away I became a stay at home mom. A couple years after she passed away I found myself sitting at my kitchen table preparing to teach Vacation Bible School, and creating lesson plans for the week, I said to myself “If I were a teacher I could do this all the time, maybe someday” and I heard myself say “someday” and it triggered in my head that my mom’s “someday” never came so I stood up, walked out the front door to where Gary was working on a car, I leaned down and said “I want to be a teacher” and his response was “OK do it” so I did, and about 4 years later I was a teacher. Would I have had the strength or the courage to do that if I hadn’t been spurred on by my mom’s loss of her “someday”? I honestly don’t know. I’m not saying that my mom had to die for me to become what God wanted me to become, but He used that event to get me on the path to where He intended I go.

I still fully believe that God never gives us more than we can handle, and I also firmly believe He gives us exactly what we need to get through the things we think we can’t handle, even if that is a message directly from Him. When I was pregnant with Garrett I had a scare, one of my blood tests early in my pregnancy came back as a positive for the HIV virus. I was terrified, turns out that the blood test was a false positive because it had been done too early in my pregnancy and everything was fine. Well about a year after Garrett was born this issue came up again – I can’t remember exactly why but I had to have a series of blood tests including an HIV screening. I began to feverishly worry about this and I kept thinking “What if the false positive was really a positive and the 2^nd one was a false negative?” “What if they were wrong and I have had this virus and they didn’t know?” I was once again terrified that this horrible thing would once again rear its ugly head. I had all sorts of things going through my mind, I was worrying and worrying. I will never forget, I was driving down the road, I was a mess, I was so worried and I had all these things going through my head including my mom's words “God will never give you a burden that you can’t bear”and I said out loud “But what if He thinks I can handle this??” all of a sudden I heard a voice and all it said was “The burden you wouldn’t be able to bear would be that you would have passed it on to Garrett” and all of a sudden a feeling of calm and peace came over me and I was no longer concerned. I knew that I was fine. I have never had anything like that happen to me before or since. I know it was God speaking to me, He knew I needed to know right then and there and He gave me what I needed. I should have known then that I can and should completely trust Him. I am still learning and being reminded of this time has helped me grow closer in my walk.

God shows me more and more each and every day how much I can trust Him. I am so thankful that he is a patient and loving God who is willing to show me how much He loves me and how much I can trust Him.