Trust and Time

Trust is a powerful force. Depending on who you place your trust in, the keeper of your trust’s integrity and strength can grant you peace or bring you woe. The Bible comprises several commands and precepts encouraging us to place our trust wholeheartedly in the Lord God Almighty. With our trust in the Lord, our confidence will never shatter, because God is God, and there is no one like Him. 

But I have a confession to make. 

I am struggling intensely to trust God not in the matters of salvation or healing people or working for the good of my loved ones. I struggle trusting God when it comes to me. It is hard for me to stop being wise in my own eyes and to completely rely on the wisdom and love of God. Lately, this ugly monster of unbelief freaking shows up like I Dream of Jeannie in my personal dealings impeding my spiritual development and pillaging my relationships with others. He enjoys popping up in my nonexistent love life where I wonder can the Lord truly bring someone into my life (that I genuinely love) who loves the Lord with all his heart and me? Other areas I am struggling to overcome unbelief are my finances and career. Quietly, I have been working on a business, a private tutoring company. Until I hit a roadblock a few weeks ago and I tried addressing the issue from every angle and spoke to others about it. 

These past two years have taught me the importance of maintaining multiple streams of income, but it is hard when my job is full time and some days I come home exhausted. Although I am a five year high school English teacher and I am not quite up the financial ladder yet.

Normally, I would seek the advice from godlier folk, they’d tell me to read and meditate on a few scriptures, repent of my pride, and pray to God concerning these persistent issues.

They are not wrong, but sometimes there are ingrown difficulties in our lives we encounter that have roots embedded deep in our hearts and minds. To the terrifying reality that these prolonged pains and adversities are changing us, and in a maleficent manner undoing the work of the Holy Spirit and germinating our spirits. It’s like an infestation of weeds and pests. In a spiritual sense, everyone’s heart is a garden and whether we sow seeds of darkness or of light. We reap a crop, which will manifest publicly in our day to day lives.

This is what I call problem soil. In agriculture, problem soil had a history of being fertile and productive, but years of damage and misuse has caused it to become infertile. Examining my love and financial life these areas exemplify the analogy and were irritated to this depleted state through several means. In addition, whenever I encounter circumstances, people, or events grazing these areas I am emotionally triggered and my body elicits physical reactions like frustrated deep breaths, deflective answers, and immediate agitation or giving into negative thoughts and self talk. 

The absence of good growth here bothers me. I feel embarrassed. I am a twenty seven year old woman going on twenty eight years old still living with her parents. I feel left behind like everyone on the millennial assembly line has put their lives together, and I just figured out my box is missing pieces. To be honest the love life area would not hurt as much if I was living on my own, but my living situation is a reflection of my poor financial choices and a not so financially lucrative career.  

I want to be independent. I want to be on my own and embracing my own space. I do not care about inviting men over or throwing parties, but I want the space, the room to breathe and fill rooms with my essence. 

On the other hand, the love life bothers me because I do not want to be forty meeting someone or getting married. To be more specific, I am not the greatest at loving myself and embracing who I am coupled with my mental illness are both terrifying enemies for my self worth (poor gal).

As you can see, these areas of my heart are problem soil, so today, and over this month I felt like I was emotionally and spiritually dying. I fell asleep on a soggy, wet pillow riding uncontrollable emotions. I hoped vainly for some form of a miracle would happen on Resurrection Day concerning specific dreams with a person, but to no avail nothing has changed. So this morning, instead of a divine miracle, I was woken up by the sweet sounds of birds chirping out my window and the smell of an Easter dinner being prepared by the hands of my loving mother. 

I woke up to reading my pente, a slew of devotionals functioning in my brain as puzzles from God to help me unlock the treasures of the day. My previous blog post titled, “Do I dare Hope,” I wrote about how many of us do want a miracle and as I continued, “We simply want a sign, an acknowledgment from the throne of heaven to earth that God knows we exist, that God has clearly zeroed in on our suffering, our chronic anguish as we wake up in these dark tombs.”

Well, the Lord God heard my anguish, He saw my tears, and He saw how I among other brothers and sisters in Christ wanted to be seen and heard. So I analyzed the puzzle pieces that Sunday and watched the day’s events unfold. 

There was church laughter, jabs, and messages of my beloved church family. My little cousins visited in their Easter dressup and on this day, my family and I gave our condolences to a church family whose patriarch passed last week. It was also the day of going to his wake of our dearly loved church member and deacon. Going to the wake, seeing him and seeing his family standing firmly in the love of God I am confident he is looking down proud and as Christians, death is not a goodbye, but a see ya later.  

• Every season has a beginning and an end. My parents did not stay in those old houses and places throughout their whole life. They moved on and moved forward. Friendships formed and relationships dissipated. In our deacon’s program was one of my favorite verses, God has our times in His plans because He is the Lord of all things and He alone, determines our seasons beginnings and ends. 

• Not everything lasts forever. Although I am in a challenging circumstance right now, my hardships and adversities will not last forever. I recall other problems I faced which drove me tears and had me shaking in my shoes, and God like always is faithful and true. He brought me from there and He will take me from here. 

• You never know when your time is up. No one saw his death coming and as church and friend I will weep and rejoice with my friends and church family. Everyone has a set time, so use your time wisely and to the glory of God no matter what you are doing or where God has placed you. 

• Treasure every moment with the people you love. Everyday, I am reminded how much God loves me and how He is taking care of me and all of my needs through my family and church family. How dare I ever complain or groan? I may not be where I want to be, but it does not mean I am not where I need to be. And as a growing child of God, the Holy Spirit is drilling into me how much more important it is for me to know how greater is the need over the want. A need is a deemed necessary essential and within this season these are the needs afforded to me through the grace of God, and I will thank God for them–everyday! 

So say it to yourself. “I trust you, Lord. I trust you, Lord with all my heart.”

I trust you, Lord. I trust you, because you are God and I am not. To say, “I trust you, Lord,” is a statement of faith, a grand declaration, but most importantly those four words are a requirement. Live by them. Let these words remind you of your limitations and the limitless possibilities of the God you serve!

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