Do I trust You,
God? I want to say that I do. I want to claim my full, and thorough confidence
in the One who has held me through life’s most challenging experiences, and
yet, I don’t understand so much that is going on around me.
The very act of
becoming Your child was a life-altering event of complete surrender. I knew
that I would be disowned from my Jewish family for choosing Christ as my
Savior. For six years, I was dead to my own parents who were not there for me
through college graduation, a wedding, and the birth of two beautiful,
delightful cherubs. I clung to Luke 18:29 1, as a rescue raft in a
sea of abandonment and loss. I read this passage countless times, willing
myself to get through the pain, and then realizing that God Himself was healing
the holes in my heart and bringing others from the fold to help bind and close
the gaping wounds. I did trust You then—with all that I had, and I was restored
once again with my family.
When I made wrong
decisions—some, where only by Your grace and mercy I landed unscathed—through
drugs and alcohol and promiscuity; and others that have had lasting
consequences like divorce and severed friendships, You were there. I basked in
the continual warmth of Your love, knowing I was held in the palm of Your hand,
even as I took these detours that must have broken your heart. You were there when my second marriage
was tormenting my very soul. You were there to uphold me and to help me love
the unlovable. You were there when he died, leaving me a widow with a teen-aged
boy to raise alone. I trusted You and You never failed to show me Your
presence. I have trusted you in times of financial difficulty, in losing jobs,
in the death of my parents; the separation from my brothers. There was never a shred of doubt of
Your presence.
So why do I
question my trust now? When all that is crazy and chaotic in the world around
me do I wonder where You are? You have shown me time and again that You can be
trusted. I will rest in this alone. As violence, evil, and corruption seem to
be at every turn, I will trust You. As sorrow and agonizing pain sear the
hurting hearts of parents losing their children to drugs and suicide, I will
trust You. As innocent people are
murdered while enjoying the goodness of life, I will trust You. Even when I
cannot understand, I will trust You, because Your ways are not my ways. I will
lean not on my own understanding, and remember that You alone are God.
1 “I tell you the truth”, Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or
wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will
fail to receive many times as much in this age and in the age to come, eternal
life”
