Trust Issues, Part 1
I paused blogging for a minute. Okay, more than a minute. But I recently had the opportunity to teach a series entitled Trust Issues that got my fingers itching to share some words with my friends.
The topic surfaced as I realized that the last few years had built up my trust in the Lord, but my trust in people needed a little check-up. Can you relate? Are you and God tight, but you find yourself pulling back from people? Or maybe some unexplainable things have left you even wondering if you could trust God. It happens.
But what do you do when your trust gets shaken?
If your trust has been shaken in God or people, or both, I want to encourage you to listen to the Trust Issues series, but I hope this blog format will allow some space to build on those truths and add some additional tools.
There are lots of places to start, but I will start at ground zero. Circumstances are unique to every situation, but at the end of the day, what is the common denominator when trust is broken?
Pain.
If our trust was broken and it didn’t hurt us, we wouldn’t care. It would be an annoying hangnail, but we’d move on. The reason we get stuck is that what felt safe and secure ended up going wrong. Sometimes, terribly wrong.
In the first part of my sermon series, I addressed some places we get stuck with God. The truth is that God is the only one that is genuinely 100% trustworthy, and yet, just like Eve back in the Garden of Eden, we have taken the enemy’s bait and believed what he said about God’s character. To be blunt, Eve had a choice to trust God or the serpent, and Eve trusted the enemy’s twisting of words and accusations. When things we don’t understand happen, we can accidentally believe that, too.
Regardless of where you point your finger as the source of distrust, the only way to return to a healthy place is to deal with the pain. “Great, Karin. That is super helpful,” you might be thinking. The reality is that without intentionality, here is what can happen:
We bury the pain and pretend it didn’t hurt but quietly withdraw from people.
We let the feeling of broken trust spread from the original source to a much bigger group of people or topics.
We put walls up between God and us and then feel untethered… questioning everything we have ever believed.
We see everything through the lens of our pain and accidentally begin tending to our pain… feeding it so that it grows.
If you have pain from broken trust, can I encourage you not to ignore it or avoid it, but to feel it so you can grieve it and put it down?
What could this look like?
Find a safe person that is not involved in the broken trust. Ask them if they can be a place to verbalize the pain you experienced. Give them clear directions. You need someone to see your pain and empathize. I would even tell them you want to grieve and hand it to God. You aren’t looking for them to have the answers but to see you.
Find a counselor to help you process the pain and know how to heal.
Write a letter that expresses all the emotions surrounding your pain.
Then give yourself permission to put the pain in God’s hands.
There’s much more to unpack as I post once a week through this series, but I encourage you to face the pain, so you can feel it and then put it to rest. You only get one life, and God’s design is not to let you stay burdened with pain. He wants to take it off your shoulders and see you flourish.