The Women of the ELCA have a web-based magazine called Cafe’. Cafe is written for young women who want to “build Community, participate in Advocacy, strengthen Faith, and strive toward Enlightenment.” Sounds great, right? So I subscribed. You can either read the articles or subscribe to the podcast and have them read to you. I have to be completely honest. Most months I skim over the article and don’t give it the time I could to really benefit from it. There are always brief faith reflections to go along with the article and a study page that has ideas for further reflection. For small groups of young women that meet monthly, this could be a great resource for conversation.
This month, the article is about building trust in relationships and is written by a young pastor in Maryland. From the first word, it hit home pretty hard. Take a minute to read it, then come back here (MAKE SURE YOU COME BACK!)
You can never prove anyone trustworthy. Not God, not people. That’s because proof is always related to things that happened in the past. The person acted trustworthy in the past, so you believe he or she is trustworthy. But trust, like faith, always reaches to the future. You can never know for certain that who you’re trusting will behave in the same way.
Sometimes, trust is broken. Trust is broken so badly that it is irreparable. Maybe it’s someone else’s actions that break the trust. Or maybe it’s our own doubts that break the trust. Maybe we lose trust in ourselves more than we lose trust in someone else. This is true in romantic relationships as well as any other relationship. There are just times when, for whatever reason, you will never be able to trust that person again, no matter how hard you work at it. Or maybe the trust is so broken that you don’t even have enough trust to move forward and work at it. You get to a point where a painful decision has to be made. You can choose stay in the relationship and live a life of doubt – never truly trusting the person you are in relationship with. Or, you can choose to sever the tie and move on. Whichever you choose, you end up with what I call “serious trust issues.”
This has happened to me several times in my life. Although this blog is not the place for me to share those personal intimate details of my decision to either stay or sever, I can say that this article spoke volumes of truth to me. I’ve lived this article. I have serious trust issues. 18 months ago I would have been the little girl afraid to jump off into the arms of the person waiting for me. I’d like to say that I always had faith that God would catch me, but it was other people that I doubted. What I realized over time was that sometimes God catches us by working through other people. If I can’t have faith that God will work through people around me if I let them in, then I really am not trusting God as much as I say I am.
Somewhere along the way, God became incredibly active in healing my trust issues. Over the last 18 months I have met people who have drastically changed my life. I have met God in new and very unexpected places. Every single time it happens, my heart heals a little more. I learn to trust a little more. And maybe the most important thing I’ve learned is that when doubt starts to sink in, I have to begin the tough conversations with those people that I am in relationship with. I can’t wait until the doubt is so big that the trust is irreparable. Being in relationship is all about trust. In order to keep trust, we have to be honest with each other. We have to take the plunge and be vulnerable. We can’t require proof. We have to be willing to agree to disagree, to love each other in the midst of differences, and to cherish the relationship above all else.
We have to, in the end, have faith in the things we can’t see. No wonder we have such a tough time living in real relationships with one another.
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