Read other articles by Soulflower in the Archives

               Trust?
Who do you trust?  I mean without a shadow of a doubt, is there one person that you could pour your heart out to and know that whatever innermost desire or secret you are revealing to them will be safe?  How many times can you think back over your life when you have given your trust to someone and that person abuses or betrays it?  It’s sad to say, but even if it happens to you only once, you will always remember the experience and each one there after will carry a reminder in the back of your head.  Trust is like money huh?  Hard to get and even more difficult to give up.

A child learns how to trust from the people closest to them.  Early in life they are taught inadvertently that when they cry, they can trust that they will get fed, changed, or comforted.  Before a child will trust their own legs to walk, they’ll hold tightly to the finger of their mother, trusting that their grip is the only thing that is keeping them from falling.  In that one gesture, the child shows mother that he/she needs to trust her with everything that he/she has; especially since with his limited scope, mother is all he/she knows.  Mother, builds confidence in child by extending that finger and being the link to his desire to walk.

            When anything happens to breach that trust, a breakdown occurs.  If the mother becomes distracted and momentarily pulls her hand away from the child, the child may stumble and fall.  If it happens too often, the child may begin to lose faith in that finger, releasing the belief that he can trust outside of himself.  He soon learns that he has to trust himself and before long, he realizes that he didn’t need that finger to hold on to anyway and begins to walk on his own.

            We have become a society of people who are seemingly incapable of trusting.  Sisters, we don’t trust one another.  We don’t trust our men.  But most of all, we sometimes don’t even trust ourselves.  When in a situation that calls for us to have to depend on another, we are overly cautious and anxious.  When in most cases it is something inside of us that prevents us from trusting that person completely in the first place.  It could be fallout from a previous relationship causing it, or something as deep and profound as the absence of a parent. Regardless of the reason for our lack of trust, it limits our ability to live fully and freely.  The ultimate trust relationship begins with the Creator.  Once we learn how to fully put our trust in him, the trust within ourselves begins to flourish and soon begins to bubble over into all of our relationships.  Before you know it, the situation at your job has changed and you have been reconsidered for that promotion that had been out of your reach.  Soon, the relationship you thought was dry and barren becomes fruitful and begins to flourish.  My mother told me one time that when we have a desire to achieve something, the means to obtain it are already in us.  But instead of trusting ourselves to see it to completion, we teeter as a child holding on to that invisible finger as if we can’t walk alone. 

            Not trusting ourselves can keep us in relationships that are unhealthy.  It will prevent us from stepping out on faith into the desires of our hearts and makes us uncertain and anxious in our every day lives.  If this applies to you, I urge you to finally see whatever it is that is causing you not to trust fully.  Move through it.  Forgive whoever it is that destroyed the trust you have in you.  Then forgive yourself.  Finally, allow yourself to move into a different state of mind regarding your relationship with God and with self.  You can be trusted and you can trust.  Ya Feel me?

                                                 by Bridgette Hogan
                                                                   Ya feel me?  
                                Email her if you would like to respond to this subject.

Bridgette is a contributing writer of Blacksonville.com