Have you ever played the trust game? It is a game where one person has to put 100% of his trust in their partner. In this activity you must stand in front of your partner facing the opposite way and close your eyes. When the group leader tells you to, you must fall back into your partner’s arms, trusting that he will catch you and not let you fall.
I remember in the eighth grade having a retreat where we played group bonding activities, one of them being the trust game. After hearing the game rules, me and all of my class mates, frantically ran around in search of a partner who would not drop us, someone we could trust. Luckily I was one of the people pared up with someone who really did catch me, unlike some of my other classmates who thought it would be funny to purposely let their partners fall on their backs, or who really couldn’t hold up their other partner.
Thinking back to this experience I feel like I am still constantly playing the trust game with God in my everyday life. God is continuously telling not just me, but all of us, “trust me Sam, Aly, Jack, or whatever your name may be; trust and know that I am always here and that I will always catch you.” I feel as if I fail God so much and have been seeking my own intuition instead of God’s. I fall so many times throughout my life when I choose worldly things over God. Even in my darkest times when I don’t choose God as my partner, he still seeks me out and catches me.
Getting back onto a path with God as my partner, I am now more than ever trusting Him. Many people have and will ask me, “Sam why are you going on this trip? Why the World Race? Why leave? Why now and why outside of America?” Right now, sorry to say, I do not have a 100% answer for you. All I can say is that I am giving up my worldly partners and trusting God, not to say that I’m not scared or not questioning this journey, because I am. If I weren’t then I would not be human. I am going on this trip for God, not for me, not to say I won’t enjoy it, because I will, but I know that through this trip I will be blessed by so many people’s lives that I will come to meet and to know. God is just using me as his instrument. I am going to be put to good use along with all of the other people who deny the world daily.
Like one of my favorite bible verses says, Mathew 16:24- “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Denying yourself is a hard thing to do and being a Christian is no walk in the park, as I used to think. Now more than ever, I face many challenges; I fight with what right and wrong daily and I constantly take the wrong road. It is hard as a human beings to step outside our own bodies, to be able to look into someone else’s life. But when you do, you realize that every one faces the same problems you do daily and that is the reason we are here, that is why we must deny ourselves, and that is why I am going on this trip.
Ending my first of many posts to this blog I would like to enclose some lines from one of my favorite Christian songs by Francesca Battistelli called “I’m Letting Go”- I’m letting go of the life I planned for me and my dreams, I am losing control of my destiny. It feels like I’m falling and that’s what it’s like to believe, so I’m letting go. “Trust God, LET GO, and know that he is behind you to catch you. Unlike some of my classmates in the eighth grade and people in my life, God has and will always be there; you are not alone!”
-Sam Caruso
Psalms 9:10
Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.
