What is trust? According to Websters dictionary trust is both a noun and a verb.

Noun: a. Reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something.  b. One in which confidence is placed

Verb: a. To rely on the truthfulness or accuracy: Believe b. To place confidence in: Rely on c. to hope or expect confidently.

The teachings of Jesus are very clear, he wants us to trust in him, and to follow him.

I’ve referenced the beginning of my distrust of everything in my post titled “Roadblocks and Spiritual Disobedience”. My lack of trust stems from my lifetime of traumas or what I call pain points. I have spent a great deal of time praying that Jesus would show me what real trust looks like.  

One of the books I have listed in my recommended books page “Understanding the Wounded Heart” by Marcus Warner. The author describes a process on how to take your trauma (pain points) and spend time with the Lord to help with healing those areas. I cannot stress enough how much this book helped me. With my long-time counselor, whom without her I would not be alive today. She was able to get me to a place where I was able to begin my road to faith. Then putting into action, the steps outlined in “Understanding the Wounded Heart”. The Lord showed me what trusting him looks like and how to put it into action in my daily life. This was a life altering moment for me, one I am grateful for.

You’re probably asking, what did he show you and what are you doing with this newfound knowledge.  Well, firstly I would never have started to heal from this trauma because I had it in a neat little box tucked away in my memory and felt like there was no reason to take it out of the box and look at it. Unfortunately, as with most trauma suffers; these events have a way of playing in your memory repeatedly, never giving it a rest. You remember and relive the events every time it rolls around to the forefront of your memory.  I would go through this process daily, it was exhausting. The result of these traumas led to chronic anxiety and depression all my life. But once I moved to the mid-west and renewed my relationship with the Lord, he planted a seed to forgive those who had harmed me.

Through my church family I began going to our recovery group. Again, this is something I would never have done. I went to one support group in my life, and it was terrible, and I swore I would never go to another one. But there I was, in my church’s recovery group talking about things I had neatly put away. Thankfully the Lord is full of grace and love because through a lot of prayer, and if I’m honest, sometimes trying to bargain with the Lord, I have been able to forgive those that have harmed me in my life. I felt the weight of carrying hatred for them lifted from me, it was freeing, and it was the Lord working in my life. I felt like I was opening a new chapter in my life, I was moving forward and had a little skip in my step that I’ve never experienced before. But the constant playing of those traumas was still there, on repeat, I was still reliving them. I really thought that if I forgave them, I would be healed from the trauma, but I found out that forgiveness was only one piece of my healing process.

I want to stop here and state again, that this is my story, this by no means is a “here is how it’s done” manual. Everyone’s healing is their own journey with the Lord. Yours may look different, but the most important thing is to take it to the Lord so he can help you with it.

Back to my journey. This is the point where the book comes in, I had not started reading it yet. I’m guessing that the evil one had something to do with that. He is always trying to make sure we have areas that he can hold onto, because if he is holding onto it, that means the Lord does not have it.  That’s how he works, and unfortunately, he is good at it.

Once I started reading the book, I at first thought it was a little out there in concept. But the Lord was pushing me to keep reading, so I kept reading. It was about halfway through the second chapter that something clicked in me, the Lord tapped me on the shoulder and opened my eyes. This was no longer a concept I wasn’t sure about; I knew that there was something to this and I needed to move forward.

After praying and asking Jesus how I pick a trauma to start with, it was clear that I needed to start with the one trauma instance that has been playing on my memory reel the most. So, I followed the steps in the book and boy did Jesus show me. He showed me that even though the ugliest, evil abuse was happening to me, he was there with me holding my hand, looking at me with love the entire time. When I think about it now, even though I was terrified during the abuse I could feel the love that the Lord had for me when he was there. I have repeated this process through most of my traumas that have been playing on repeat my whole life. And, the Lord’s compassion has been so great towards me, he has healed me of all the traumas I have taken to him so far. How do I know that I was healed? Well anytime the memories would be forefront in my memory I would experience the same fear, panic, and anxiety that I felt when I was being abused. But after the Lord healed me, I can think about them and feel nothing, I may as well be thinking about a loaf of bread.

When I asked why this had happened to me the answer that I was given was that it was to prepare me. Prepare me for what I asked. The Lord and I are still working on this, and he has only revealed that I should share it with others. Hence, this blog. I feel like this topic will expand down the road as I continue growing in my journey. But for now, I know that I can absolutely 100% trust in the Lord to take care of me. He has honored my requests since then, growing my trust in him daily. He has also shown me that I can trust my women’s small group. This is something I would never have done in the past. I am sharing things about myself with them; I’m reaching out when I need help or just need to talk or ask for prayers. I have a way to go in the trust department, but I know that the Lord is standing with me, assuring me that it is okay, because he will take care of me.

So, for anyone reading this, take a moment and pray that the Lord will reveal himself to you in the areas you need it most. Take your burdens to him and lay them at his feet and ask for his help in relieving you of those burdens. Our God is a God full of grace and love.

⁵ Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; ⁶ in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight (NIV Proverbs 3:5-6)