“Trust is the fruit of a relationship in which you know you are loved”
-William P. Young
I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “trust” and what it means to me in a few different contexts.
Trust in God.
To me, trusting God implies that I make the connection between God and my situation. If I don’t believe that He’s in control of my circumstances, then why would I need to trust Him in the midst of them? If I believe that my situation is random, then I have no need to trust anyone or anything. I simply cross my fingers and wait.
Trust in others.
To me, trusting others is important, but also sometimes misplaced. I want to build relationships on mutual respect, and on the basis that we have each others’ best interests at heart. However, I know that myself and others are not perfect and will fail at times. We’ll fail to show respect. We’ll fail to put each other first.
So, if all of my trust is in other people, then I will be let down. Not only that, but I will likely be in unhealthy relationships due to my smothering and dependence. I’ll start “needing” people and eventually seek only to take from relationships, counter-intuitively destroying others’ trust in me.
Trust in myself.
While I do notice that I like to rely on myself quite a bit and can stand to learn more dependence on God and others, I’m starting to learn that there are areas where I can grow in trusting myself.
I think it’s good to understand that I’m going to fail and make mistakes. I think it’s good to know that I am not always trustworthy–I can lie to others, to God, and even to myself. But, I want to build trust in myself in many ways (e.g. decision making, gut instincts, training, and rest).
One area where I’ve had to rebuild trust in myself is with food. After a long period where I chose not to really listen to my body, I am now a strong believer in the benefits of eating intuitively.
I think that most of us started off listening to our bodies with no regard for the opinions of others and no comprehension of body image. Some people–like me–then take a long detour into body image issues and disordered eating habits. It can take a lot of work and time to find our way back.
I’m so glad I did the work. I can now trust the tastes, hunger cues, and satiety sensations that I took for granted as a child. I can now look at my body with the childlike innocence of “this is me” and “I’m thankful for a strong, healthy body”–with no judgement or shame or expectation of what it “should” look like or what number my scale “should” reflect.
Of course, I’m not perfect at any of it. But, I embrace the process.
Another area where I want to grow in trusting myself is with decision-making. I want to learn to say YES to things I want and NO to things I don’t want. I think this will help me to let go of my scarcity mindset when it comes to my time and energy. I tend to hold these resources with a tight grip out of fear that I’ll over-commit and not have enough to myself. I don’t trust myself to say no to things that I don’t want, so I hoard my time and energy all-the-more.
I think this lack of trust in decisions is very similar to the food example above: I use to not trust myself to say no or to limit my intake of the “bad foods”. I felt a lack of control. So, in my fear I created restrictions and held on tightly to that sense of control. Only, this caused bondage rather than freedom. My restrictions fixed the symptom of loss of control, but not the underlying condition of loss of trust.
Misplaced Trust?
While I mostly want to grow in trust when it comes to God, I think He works through our circumstances, thoughts, feelings, and through our interactions with others. Maybe sometimes trusting myself or trusting others is a form of trusting Him. I think perspective is the key. Whom is the ultimate source of my trust?