Today, as I was riding on the back of a moped, hanging on for dear life to a woman that I’ve known for barely a week, I started thinking what a funny thing trust is. Starting ministry in Cambodia this week, I’ve had to trust a lot of people for a lot of things that I’m simply NOT used to depending on others for. I’m in a strange country with 5 team members that I only just met last month. I am dependent on our host family for EVERYTHING. They give us our daily schedule, provide us with a safe place to sleep, cook for us, lock up our belongings, and transport us everywhere. This is not the sort of trust I am accustomed to giving people even after years.
Our team talks a lot about trust. We chose “Trotos” as our team name because it means “vulnerable” in Greek. It’s a little silly, I know. But vulnerability is the thing we all said we wanted to work on this year. We want to learn and grow in what it means to be truly open and vulnerable with each other and those God sends us to minister to. We want to be vulnerable to what God is speaking to us. We want to be open to the love He puts in our hearts for those we encounter and open to receive the love they have for us in return.
This requires a huge amount of trust in our teammates. Trust that when we share a vulnerable moment they will honor it and respond in love and mercy. Trust that as God brings up new things for us to work on individually our team will understand and extend us grace for our insecurities, faults, and general issues. Trust that our team members will be there when we need someone to bring clarity to confusion, help us pray, or just listen to us talk.
It also requires a lot of trust in our leaders and the dynamics of the World Race. We have to trust that our squad leaders really do know what’s best and really are making decisions for our good. (God has blessed us with AMAZING leaders and I am actually very thankful for their leadership.) We have to trust that their hearts really are for us, as they shared during training. A large part of the World Race is learning to live in abandonment. Practically, this looks like our leaders purposefully NOT telling a lot of things until right before we need to know it. We have no idea what we will be doing or even where we will be going even next month. It takes trust to be okay with this. I won’t lie to you, I have struggled with it from time to time. But I am thankful too. Not knowing these things is teaching me to live in the moment. It’s teaching me to keep my heart where my feet are planted today, without being tempted to jump forward and dream about tomorrow.
Ultimately, we are learning to trust God more. Soooooo many things are out of my control right now. So many things that I’m used to worrying about are now being taken care of by someone else. My daily responsibilities right now are basically to play with and love on 30 orphans. I am happy for this simplicity but every now and then I feel anxiety grip my heart and it took me a few days to figure out what it was from. I finally realized that it was the loss of control. I was struggling to trust. Struggling to trust the people God has put in my life. Struggling to trust the process God is taking me through. Struggling to trust God Himself.
Trust has always been difficult for me, and especially so into my adulthood. I struggle to trust even those closest to me. I have often made excuses for it or called something socially acceptable like being self sufficient or independent. Along this journey I have been hit right in the face by my own inability to trust. It has come up again and again. In prayer, when interacting with my teammates, during ministry times. Our team leader, Chris, has helped to see it in myself many times in just a few weeks. So I asked my good, good heavenly Father to reveal to me why this issue is so difficult for me.
One night, during worship He showed me. We were singing a song called Come Away by Jesus Culture. I love this song. I’ve sung it many times in worship but this time it hit me much harder than it ever has. The chorus is supposed to be God speaking:
“come away with me/come away with me/it’s never too late/it’s not too late/it’s not too late for you”
“I have a plan for you/I have a plan for you/it’s gonna be wild/it’s gonna be great/it’s gonna be full of me”
“so open up your heart and let me in/open up your heart and let me in”
Then the worship leader said we should change it around and sing it back to God. She lead us in singing “so I’ll open up my heart and let you in.” But in that moment, I couldn’t bring myself to sing it. I realized that I had stopped trusting the Lord. I had stopped trusting that He really did have a plan for me and that it was going to be a good plan. I had allowed disappointments to cloud my opinion on who God really is. He took me back to several difficult and disappointing times in my life and showed me how I had let it harden my heart toward God and toward people.
I had developed a fear of opening up my heart, even to the One who loves me more than anyone else. I had decided that I was on my own because I no longer trusted my Heavenly Father to take care of me. But in that moment, as people sang all around me and I stood silently crying, God revealed His beautiful, gentle heart to me once again. He is so patient and kind. He truly is always for me, always on my side. But He also allows me to hurt at times because He knows that it is ultimately for my good. He lets me feel brokenness so I will understand just how much I need Him, just how dependent I truly am.
“So I’ll open up my heart and let You in/I’ll open up my heart and let You in”
Thanks for reading! Please continue to keep me and my team in your prayers as we continue with ministry here in Cambodia. Also, my next fundraising deadline is February 29th and I am still $1,200 short. Thank you all for partnering with me and helping to share my updates on facebook, it really helps!
