Trust Doesn't Come Easy

~Image Credit~ 

I've always loved the above sign, it makes me laugh whenever I see it posted somewhere.  But in reality, I often find dogs and cats to be far more trustworthy than many humans.  At the very least, their behavior is predictable, and they aren't likely to blindside you.  People, on the other hand, can be surprisingly deceptive, and what you see isn't always what you get.  The saddest part of that is that the ones who are most likely to betray you are those closest to you, because they are the ones you most likely felt safe with and ended up trusting too much.

When I look back on all the times in my life that I've been blindsided by someone I trusted, I am astounded.  Sometimes I question whether I am a good judge of character at all, and most certainly as I've gotten older I've learned to be a little more careful with how much of myself I share with others. I've also learned to distance myself from people that I don't feel I can really trust.

As any of my long-time blog readers know, I'm a fairly open person and I don't have many secrets. I am frank and likely to tell you how it is without much prodding.  I know when I do that I am putting myself at risk for backlash, for contempt or ridicule or both.  That doesn't worry me too much, I am what I am at this point in my life, and people are free to take it or leave it. 

Far more troubling are the people I've invested time and caring in to build relationships, only to later have that come flying back in my face in the most painful ways.  When I love someone, I love them freely; and when I trust someone, I trust that they are as they represent themselves to be.  Perhaps sometimes I have wanted them to be what I needed at the time so badly that I was blind to the signs that I was being played and misled.  Sometimes we really don't want to know, but sooner or later the truth will out itself and we'll have to deal with the fallout one way or another. 

When I met my husband just over nine years ago, I had reached a point where I no longer trusted anyone to truly be what they seemed, and expected everyone to hurt me at some point.  It took several months, maybe even a year, for me to realize that he is exactly as he appears to be, one of the most authentic, caring, trustworthy people I know. He doesn't manipulate, he doesn't play games, he doesn't have a hidden agenda.  I can't tell you what a blessing it is to know that I can share everything with him, including all the facets of my very-flawed self, and he will still love me and still want me, and still value me.  He is able to see the me I want to be and try to be, and he never, ever throws anything back at me, or throws me an unexpected curve.  I trust him implicitly. 

Learning to trust again because of him, has given me the courage to also trust the very small number of people I consider true friends.  I know they would never do anything intentional to hurt me, and won't one day wake up and be someone totally different from who they are now.

I am blessed to also be able to trust my children, we have close relationships where we can share our thoughts and opinions without judgment.  I wish I would have had that with my mother and father, and perhaps that's why I've worked so hard at maintaining that level of openness with my kids.

The ultimate level of trust, is the trust I place in God, at this point in my life I believe that no matter what happens that trust is pretty much unshakable.  I don't blame God when things go wrong, I also don't say "well then there must not be a God, because look at this or that."  I trust God with my soul and with my life.  I trust Him to walk with me through the darkest times and never to abandon me. I trust that He is exactly what the Bible tells me He is.  I didn't always feel that way.  I went through a period of anger and rebellion that lasted many years, because I didn't understand the nature of God and I felt that he had let me down.  I can tell you those were dark times, and I felt very lost and alone. It's not that God abandoned me, He was just waiting for me to come home. Eventually I did, and I am thankful, so very thankful.

We live in uneasy times, and getting older is a very scary thing for me and my husband too, it is nothing like we once thought it would be, not exactly the golden years.  But no matter how much clamor I hear about all that is wrong with the world, I refuse to live in fear and wallow in anxiety. I am not naïve,  I know that bad things can happen, they can happen to me or my husband, or my children, or any of the people I care about, or totally innocent groups of people.  But, no matter what happens in the years of life I have remaining, I'm going to place my trust in God, and in those I know to be what they claim to be. I trust them to walk with me until the end.  

I'm going to continue working on forgiving those in whom my trust was misplaced too. I don't know why they did what they did, but it really doesn't matter now.  It's over and done and I learned from it. I am more cautious with my heart, and with what I share, but that won't stop me from reaching out and loving others, it won't stop me from opening myself up to show I care, because that's what I was born to do... to encourage and to care, and I know that God has me in His hands.  That kind of trust is a wonderful thing!

I am linking this post up at Rory Bore's Coffee Chat

where the topic of the week is trust.  Come and join us!