Steele Here

I’ve been thinking a lot about trust vs. trustworthiness lately.

For so long my mind has been wired to view people as being untrustworthy.   I have had to guard myself at all times because eventually no matter how loving or well intentioned someone seems…they will let me down and leave.  Or I would let them down and they would walk away.

Usually I give people one chance…and assume they will only give me one chance.  Remember that episode of Friends when Chandler and Monica had started their relationship and they had a fight?  Chandler assumed it was all over because they had disagreed for the first time.   Geez, I’m a freaking Chandler!

I’ve always walked away and taken what seemed like the easy way out because my first response is to freeze and not deal with conflict, pain or frustration.   You always tell yourself that you’ll never be like the people that hurt you.  But in the same way that I was abandoned by my dad…I’ve abandoned others emotionally.

That’s not an easy thing to admit but you have to admit things to move beyond your current reality.

What I’ve finally learned about trust is that it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing situation.   I will let people down from time to time and they might let me down too but that’s just because we’re human and we get things wrong sometimes.   Oswald Chambers often spoke of offering people around us a gift…in seeing the grace of God in them.

There are days that I suck at that!  But I’m working on it and praying to be able to offer it…because I’d love people to extend that same gift to me.

Awareness is a powerful gift.  You have two choices once you know something: you can ignore it or take it as a catalyst to grow and make some much needed changes.  I choose change.   God help me.