To be fair, I can barely trust God to work in my life, much less me actually trusting those that God has placed in my life.
I got trust issues.
It’s one thing when a friend or two hurts you, but when everyone who was supposed to love and care for you hurts you (without provocation) in your youth, you tend to lose faith in people as a whole.
I promise you, I am a work in progress. I am DAILY surrendering my heart to God, asking Him to heal every single part of me… and it is from His healing that these messages are birthed. As a part of my healing process, I did something that I seldom do, I reached out to my ex-boyfriend to get some answers to questions of my heart.
Our conversation was thought-provoking, to say the least. In the first stages of my healing I realized my fault in our relationship’s demise but I never really inquired about how he felt during our relationship. One day about two years ago we met for lunch to discuss the past and everything that had happened. When we spoke on Thursday morning, he reminded me that he had already told me all that I was currently asking him… but I informed him that my ears had heard that conversation yet my heart was hearing our current conversation. From our brief texts I learned one thing- it is hard for me to trust people. I asked Greg what frustrated him the most about me in our relationship and what he told me awakened me in a new way. Greg told me that he felt like he had “earned my trust” since he didn’t “cheat or ‘act up’…but that being in a relationship with me felt like he was “running up hill with chains on your feet.”
Ouch.
I asked him why he stayed, why he loved me, and why he even wanted me back (I mean, how could he, after how i had made him feel?) and he simply replied that the love he had for me was great and driven by the totality of me and my heart. He called me “the whole package.” Yet here I sit at the beginning of a new relationship, still struggling to fully trust the man that has my heart.
This man is good to me… and for me.
He loves me and he consistently strives to help me in every area of my life. He is inspiring and his loving heart pushes me to be and do better. He loves me in a way that he has never loved another… and I feel the same for him. The love that I feel for him is deeper than anything that I’ve ever felt before and it is terrifying to me. So the thought of spoiling what we have because I’m bleeding on someone who didn’t hurt me does not sit well with me.
The issue with trust is similar to that of patience- you can’t work on it without being in the moment. God has healed so much of me prior to entering this relationship but He knew that learning how to trust someone could only be accomplished by being in the relationship and in situations where trusting him (through Him) was my only option. Just like I can’t learn to trust myself to stand on my legs without standing on my legs, I can’t learn to trust the people I am in relationships with (romantic or platonic) without being in those relationships.
I am trusting in process.
A bit of advice for you: don’t ask God to heal you unless you are ready to be healed from EVERYTHING in your life. As I travel along this healing journey (which began in 2017), I am constantly confronted with opportunities to either heal and grow or wallow and suffer. Beloved, in all things, I’m choosing heal and grow. I’m choosing to approach this relationship (and all others) with a clean slate, not carrying the past into my present at every opportunity.
A few years ago my bestie got her first tattoo (see pic below). Considering the fact that my tattoos are all words or butterflies, her tattoo choice was really beautiful to me. She chose the Sankofa bird. Sankofa is loosely translated to mean, “go back to the past and bring forward that which is useful.” To many, it may seem weird to talk to one’s ex first thing in the morning, but like Sankofa, I needed to look back into that relationship and bring forward lessons and experience that would be useful to me today.
Dear friend, I don’t know about you but I cannot continue to carry the weight of past hurts around with me anymore. It’s tiring and taxing and it is simply hurting me more. The Bible says that there is a season for everything, which means that when the season ends, we must wholly step out of that season, choosing only to walk in the new season. Like Sankofa, we must only look back to bring forward what will be currently useful.
Today I’m walking in my present, with the wisdom acquired from my past, as I look forward to my future. Healing happens when we fully surrender to God and allow Him to work within us. We must surrender and then trust God to be, well, God… because only He can heal our hearts. That is the issue with trust.
Be blessed.
God Happened To ME Ministries, LLC 