Trusting

Most of the time when I write one of these things it’s for the purpose of sharing something I have learned from my own experiences. I have experienced a lot and God has taught me so many things through my own past. This is not one of those pieces. This is not something from my past or something that God has taught me. This is something current. This is something fresh and real to me. It’s easier to talk about the past. This is a little more difficult because it is something I am going through right at this moment. It’s funny how that works. For me to talk about a present struggle, I am admitting that I don’t have every thing figured out. I don’t have all of the answers. And admitting that I mess things up all the time puts me in a vulnerable position, but it’s a real one. How many of us actually like to admit to out own sin? Whenever I read other Christian writers I always have the impression that they are some sort of spiritual giants without their own mistakes. I always think of those people as really godly and pretty much without sin. Recently, I have tried to do away with the labels within Christianity. There aren’t spiritual giants and spiritual weaklings. There are only people. Real people with real mistakes and real triumphs.

Well, I guess I should move onto my current struggle. It’s trust. I know I have admitted before that it is easier for me to trust God than it is to trust people. People are faulty and they do eventually let you down. But the truth is, sometimes I don’t trust God. We were reading about trusting God today in church and all of this just hit me. We were actually reading about delighting in God. You know the verse, “Take delight in God and He will give you your hearts desires.” The whole passage is in Psalm 37 if you want to look it up. But it also talks about trusting in God. After we talked a little about trusting in God to provide, that’s when I started thinking. I don’t trust God that much.

Like I said, it is really hard for me to trust people. People have let me down many times and I guess it has just affected me. I don’t want to be like this. It’s something that has gotten better over the past year, but I still have some trust issues. And it seems like when I start to let those walls down, the trust is broken and I am right back where I started. But I am far better about this than I was, I promise. Trusting God. Sometimes it’s just hard for me to actually trust Him. I mean, it sounds good and like the right Christian thing to say. “I trust God.” But how many of us actually do?

Do I actually trust God that He will provide for me? Do I trust that God will take care of certain situations? Do I trust that God in going back to get my masters? Will He provide a counseling job for me when I get out of school? Do I trust God in pursuing relationships? Do I actually trust that one day He will guide me to the woman He wants me to marry? We all have our own questions. I know sometimes I try to work things out myself. Sometimes I just feel that God is too busy to handle my problems, so I shouldn’t trust Him to take care of them. He’s got other kids who are way more important to Him than me. I mean seriously. I come from a broken home, I probably have failed for Him more times than I have succeeded, and I don’t read my Bible everyday. Sometimes I don’t consider myself to be high on God’s priority list so why should I just trust Him.

I know what the Bible says about trusting God. I know that He says He will never abandon me. I know that He says He knows my name. I know that God says He upholds me with His hand. I know that He says He will take care of me. I know all of these things, but sometimes I just don’t live like I believe they are true. The thing is, deep down, I know they are true. In my soul, I know that God loves me and will take care of me. That’s the hard part about living a life for Him, there is a difference in knowing things and actually living things. To live my life trusting in Him is hard. I am so used to having my own back and trying to arrange things for my own life. But I don’t want to be like this anymore. I want to actually trust Him with every aspect of my life. As far as the trusting other people issue, I’m sure He’ll work with me on that…

Child of Divorce

“Hi. My name is Matt and my parents are divorced.” No, I am not in some support group for people who come from broken homes. Maybe I ought to be though. I was 15 when my parents divorced. I always read things about children who think it is their fault that their parents divorced. I never thought it was my fault. I never asked, “Did Daddy leave because of me?” That blaming myself thing never happened to me. That’s not to say my parent’s divorce didn’t affect me. It did. It took me awhile to figure out how it affected me. For awhile, I didn’t even know that it did. There are probably still some hidden issues that it caused in my life, but I think I have found most of them and dealt with them.

I know at first I doubted the whole area of relationships. Can healthy loving relationships actually be real or are they something you only read about? (Personally, I have never read about any of those. I mean, there are those fairy tales and all…but they are make believe.) I was talking to a good friend of mine the other day about conflict in relationships. He actually said that conflict is what keeps the relationship interesting. Maybe I should rephrase that. Differences are what keep the relationship interesting. If you agree on everything then it gets boring pretty fast. I listened to Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz) talk about the elements of story the other day. He also said that conflict is what keeps a story interesting. Without conflict in a story we are left with something like, “Bob went to the beach. The weather was nice. He ate a good lunch. He played a game of volleyball. It ended in a tie.” See, no conflict or struggle or differences equals boring. I used to have this tendency to shy away from conflict in a relationship. Probably stemming from my parents divorce. I guess I thought that a conflict would lead to an ending of the relationship as it did with my parents. Now I know that there are always going to be differences in any relationship. Come on, you are two completely unique individuals becoming one…that is bound to cause conflict. I guess the main thing is working through the differences. A healthy relationship is not agreeing all the time or being exactly the same; it’s working together despite the differences.

I remember reading an article in a Christian magazine a few years ago. It was on dealing with being a child of divorce and how that affects your own relationships in your adult years. I knew it to be true. My parents divorce did affect my future relationships in a negative way. Thankfully, I realized this during college and with God’s help have been getting over the issues. I guess the main thing I dealt with is a fear of rejection. You know, pushing others away before they had a chance to reject me…this way at least I felt in control. But I wasn’t in control. The fear was in control. And once I realized that I didn’t want to live out of this fear, I had to come to terms that to pursue a relationship meant risk. Risk making mistakes, risk to be rejected. My favorite quote is this…"Nothing in life worth having comes without some kind of fight." (Bruce Cockburn) I believe that we can substitute the word risk in for fight and it still be true. Nothing in life worth having comes without some kind of risk.

There have been more things I have had to deal with over the years. Being too independent is one. Going through my parents divorce left me with this attitude that I will not need anyone because they will eventually let me down. The only problem with this is that when you don’t need anyone, no one needs you. Yes, being independent can be good in some instances. But God designed me to desire relationship. Independence and relationship seem to work against each other. One more thing I have had to deal with is handling with the flaws of others. I am not sure if this has developed from being a child of divorce or not. Probably so. Probably something like, “I have always been quick to point out the faults in potential relationship partners because this way I would have an excuse not to get close to them,” or something to that affect. I’ll have to research this more while I am studying counseling. But yeah, making excuses and pointing out dumb flaws is another thing. I guess that could fall under the fear of rejection category. Pushing others away before they got too close. I heard this somewhere before, probably a movie, but I like it. “There are always a million reasons not to do something.” I can always make excuses. But I know I don’t want to make excuses anymore.

Well, that’s a peek into what it’s like being a child of divorce. If you’re not one of us, you probably will come across one of us. And if you do, remember these things because children of divorce mostly have the same issues. Don’t think that we are messed up because we all are kinda jacked up in our own ways. If you can relate to the things I have said, I hope you have talked to someone about these things. You cannot get through them on your own. That’s all for now…

His Story, My Story, Your Story

I read a story today about a man I go to church with. I don't know him personally; I know who he is and I know his children and all. It was a good story, good enough to get me thinking and writing. Well, there was an article written about him and his wife because they opened up a thrift store. Their thrift store donates its profits to missionaries. That's not the part of the article that I enjoyed though. The part I liked was about the man. He said he had been a wild man for many years, addicted to marijuana and alcohol. He said he and his wife had separated about three years ago. He said he had his own battles that he was living in. The article then goes onto say that one night he prayed for help, and Jesus answered. Since then he and his wife have reconciled, and he is fully committed to following Him.

I absolutely love peoples' stories. I love hearing about God transforming lives and peoples' encounters with Him. To me, this is a central part of the Gospel. You see, I grew up with this belief that the Gospel is some list of things you have to do or believe to get to Heaven. And in a sense, maybe some of that is true. But the Gospel is so much more than that. One thing that I have learned is that we are all broken. We are all in the same boat. There are not groups of people who are super-spiritual and those who are not. We all have our own battles and pain that we have to deal with. We all have our own addictions that we need saving from.

When I look at Jesus, when I read His message, I hear this, "Okay, you can try to do life without me, but it's not going to work out that great. You will be in pain. You will be lost. You will be enslaved. You will only find despair. Have a relationship with me. I will show you a better way, My way. I will heal your pain. I will guide you when you feel lost. I will set you free from sin and from the Law. I will give you hope. I will be because I Am." He is about changing lives. He is about restoring souls to the glory they we're meant to have.

You see, somewhere down the line becoming a follower of Christ got a bad rap. Holy Rollers, Bible Thumpers and Conservative Evangelicals are the terms thrown out there. Somewhere down the line His message was watered down where we could just go to church and follow certain guidelines (only when we felt like it). Sometimes we live like we don't even know who He is, then just go to church on Sunday morning like everything is okay. Sometimes we like to call ourselves His children, but we really could care less about actually following Him with our lives. I say this as someone who has lived this way before. I say this with true concern and love. This is not what following Him is about.

I too have my own story of how He healed my soul. I have my own story of how He impacted my life. I have my own story to share. I believe our personal stories can have a greater impact on the world than some list of guidelines. Yes, things in the Bible are important but they seem so rigid when they are not used personally. And when I tell my story or when the man at my church tells his story, we do it because we're saying that this can happen in anyone's life too. He is greater than any sin I have in the past. He is greater than any wound that was dealt to me. He is greater than any doubt or fear I have. He is better than any addiction that enslaves me. He is all this and more, and He waits for each of us to come to the realization that we can't do life without Him. We were never meant to live away from our Father. He wants to be apart of our story.