Trust Learned is Trust Earned

This journey we call Life is sure tricky, a road full of twists and turns, rocks and rills, mountains and valleys. I don't know how to do it very well...I stumble and fall alot, wander and get side tracked alot, whine and cry alot...and I don't like surprises! Now, isn't that some irony?

I think we come into this world with Trust. I think it is wired into us. But that trust can be destroyed very easily by circumstances beyond our control as children, if we are subjected to certain undesirables, such as incest, abuse, or neglect. My ability to trust was shattered at an early age, and the inability to trust surely has made the journey more of a challenge.

According to my own personal experience, this shattered , thus lack, of trust applied to people directly, and to God, as well. I discovered, in my early 30's that I believed in God, and His existence implicitly and always had, but did not trust Him with anything. I truly believed that He was out to get me, because I was unworthy and unloveable. Every bad thing that had ever happened to me was punishment, And I lived in fear of the ever threatening other shoe to drop.

I prayed one day and asked God to teach me to trust Him...Nobody warned me to BUCKLE UP, BABY...HERE IT COMES...

Now, picture this. I am a single mom with 3 sons. I get no child support, or state aid, live on a shoe-string budget, and I am stretched mighty thin. Two weeks after I prayed that prayer, I get called into the office at work and am informed that I am layed off, along with 47 other folks. Upon receiving this information, My magic magnifying mind pictures, in 3-D color, myself as an instant bag-lady with 3 bag-children...

Now I am here to tell you that where there is no trust, them rocks and rills, thrills and spills can be treacherous. Panic-strickened, I walked from that office to gather my belongings in tears, wondering where o where we were gonna end up. Christmas was coming, the rent was due, the tires were bald, and my oldest son wanted a new outfit for the dance next week!

The year that followed was one of the greatest lessons in trust I have ever received. One of my dear friends told me to pray, and the answers would come. Thanks to unemployment, we lived on $600. a month, plus contributions from a mentor who appeared in the nick of time, and all our needs were met. I ended up in college, the company that layed me off adopted my family for Christmas, providing food, gifts for all, and six crisp $100 bills in a sealed envelope, and I learned that I can trust God with my finances.

The following year, it was discovered that I had a mass in my breast that required surgery. Now, again, picture this. My mother was a nurse, and was suffering with ovarian cancer, taking chemo-therapy every three weeks. When I was told of my mammogram results, we all just knew that I had breast cancer, Mom included. I went out and purchased life insurance with money I didnt have, wrote a will so that my kids would not become wards of the state, and began to write my obituary. I cried for the two weeks I had to wait for surgery, and my poor kids were just devastated. It was benign. It was then that I learned that I could trust God with my health.

My life has been filled with incidents such as these, through which I have learned that I can trust God in all things, big and small. Today I face one more lesson...

Believe it or not, Within the past 3 days I have been informed that the two closest friends I have up here, where I now live, have cancer. One of them had breast cancer nearly 5 years ago and now has a lesion in her stomach and a spot on her liver, and the other has advanced colo-rectal cancer at the age of 51. I feel like someone has just come up and kicked me in the gut.

Yup, i see a mountain or two on the horizon, and altho I am no Bible-thumper, I am a praying woman who believes in the Grace and Power of prayer and faith. I smell another lesson coming...