“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths straight.”
~Proverbs 3:5-6
Yesterday, my team and I went zip lining through the rainforest. To say I was nervous would be an understatement. I wasn’t thrilled about this because being suspended high above the ground attatched to a cable didn’t sound like the safest idea but I have a serious fear of missing out that I wasn’t going to not go. My anxiety and fear has held me back from so much in life that I wasn’t going to let it stand in the way again.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and be completely honest. i have trust issues. I don’t always trust people. Very rarely do I immediately trust someone enough to tell them bits of my story within the first 3 conversations (if you are one of those people, you have a peace and sense of love about you that invites others to trust you…consider it a blessing.) Trust scares the mess out of me. Trust isn’t my forte…it’s not my strong suit. Trust, to me, is an open invitation for someone to hurt you.
I, like a lot of people, have been hurt and let down by people I loved and trusted so many times in my life that I got to a point of being extremely careful of who I trusted or not trusting others at all. Sadly and honestly, this weasled its way into my relationship with the Lord.
The other night, I was listening to what Daddy had to say and the word “Trust” kept coming up. I was a little taken aback by this. Trust is something I am working on and I want more than anything to trust people and to trust the Lord without reservation. But it’s hard and I struggle in this arena. I sat and listened longer and asked what He meant by this…I felt Him say “trust your team…trust their love for you. Trust me! It hurts me that you lack so much trust of those who love you…especially me. It hurts when I love you so much that I sent my son to die for you, but you lack so much trust in me and my love for you.”
Ouch! I was so convicted that I felt like scum on the bottom of the ocean.
Back to the zipline!
In the middle of the second line, it came to me that I was trusting this silly piece of steel wire to hold me above the rainforest but I have a hard time completely trusting the One who created the universe…The One who hung the stars in the sky and who holds my every moment in the palm of His hand. I have a hard time completely trusting the God who created every fiber of my being. This makes no sense! I’ve been praying through this and really wrestling with this because I hate so much that I have such a hard time trusting.
Through this, Daddy has made me realize that inorder to trust completely, you just have to let go and jump and believe that you will be caught. Just like trusting that the steel cable wasn’t going to break, I need to completely trust that the love my team has for me is real (not with an inkling of doubt) and most importantly, I need to trust the Lord in everything…which is so much easier said than done.
(In case you’re curious…I LOVED zip lining and was quite sad when it was over. My next adventure? Sand boarding down a volcanoe in Nicaragua! And who knows…maybe I’ll bungee jump in Zimbabwe!)
Side story:
I’m not good communicating verbally and throwing in a different language makes me want to hide in a corner. Last Tuesday, we taught English at an elementary school and by the last class I was over it…I wanted to stop and just sit outside and let my team handle the rest because I was so frustrated. I pushed past that and went into the last classroom (5th grade) feeling defeated and exhausted and like my brain was going to explode.
The whole morning none of the kids could pronounce my name and none of them said it back to me like they did the others. (Apparently Marybeth is a difficult name to say)
We introduced ourselves, yet again. There was one girl who said “Marybeth” and said it in almost perfect English (she said my name multiple times and then again when she saw that she was in my group).
[Back up a bit and I’ll explain that I had a close friend pass away a year ago this month (September 14) and I’ve been really missing her.]
I had the kids go around in a circle and introduce themselves in English and it came to this girl and she said “My name is Danielle.” My friends name was Danielle. (I didn’t put these two things together until later after we got home from ministry)
This was the first class the whole day that I didn’t want to leave because this girl and I were having such good conversation…high school Spanish somehow started coming back to me. My sweet Daddy never ceases to amaze me with how He knows me so intricately and knows what I need even more than I do.
