God has been teaching me even more this week about trusting Him.  Trust is a close sister to patience for me, so these thoughts are really about both.  It seems that the more I ask Him for either attribute, the more ways He surprises me with fulfilling my desire.  This week, He revealed both halves of the whole to me concerning my trust in Him.

On the Sabbath start to my week, I attended a baby shower in honor of my best friend from college.  Given our own struggle with infertility and our inability to conceive a child, I long ago vowed not to attend any more baby showers, mostly out of self-protection.  In sorting through my own pain, I found it much too difficult to rejoice with another in their seemingly uncomplicated blessing.  I’ve slowly come to accept over the years that it’s okay to not be okay with our situation, to question God about it, to at times be angry with Him in my questioning.  He can handle it.  And in the midst of my honesty with Him, He’s taught me a cornucopia of lessons about waiting upon Him and trusting Him with all of me (again, the spiritual sisters of patience and trust).  On Sunday, I glimpsed a road marker on my journey to fully trusting Him, a sign that I’m headed in the right direction.  I felt such a peace that day and an overwhelming sense of God’s presence.  I also felt excitement to celebrate with my friend.  I realized that my rejoicing now comes from a very real place of trust with my Father.  He has allowed me the time over the past eight years to grieve my own loss so that I can experience true healing.  He has shown me that even though my plans may go unfulfilled, His plans for me are greater and better.  I trust in the truth that He only desires good for me, that His heart toward me is good– at all times and in all things.  Thus, even though pain still lingers, I can rejoice.

Then yesterday, I was reminded that even though my heart desires to fully trust my Father, my flesh still fights against me.  We just turned in our lengthy application to affiliate as missionaries with CMF earlier this week, and we found out yesterday that our applications will not be considered for approval until August, rather than June as we originally thought.  Even though I completely understand the unavoidable reasons for the delay (partly which is our fault for still working to complete certain items), I was still a bit disheartened.  It’s only two additional months.  But everything has been progressing so rapidly and organically up until this point that I thought it was a “God thing” that we would be swiftly approved in June and ready to take the next step of classes and support raising.  I seem to have easily forgotten that this is part of our journey too– the waiting.  How is it possible that just a few days before, I was praising God for how much I have learned patience and trust in Him in another area of my life, yet in this part of the journey, I saw a speed bump to moving forward, rather than another opportunity to trust and wait upon Him?

The amazing thing is that God did not shake His head in disappointment or roll His eyes at me as if to say, how quickly you turn back to self-reliance after all I’ve taught you?  Instead, He patiently prodded me toward greater trust by saying to me, if I want this to happen more quickly, it will.  He also reminded me through the words of a friend that He is not disappointed when I fail to trust Him in a given situation.  He doesn’t assume a patriarchal posture in rebuking me for my unbelief.  Rather, He regards my trust with adoration, whether it be great or little at the moment.  He’s not about degrees or quantitatively measuring my trust on a scale of 1-10.  Instead, He rejoices when I trust Him with a bit more of my heart because He regards me with a Creator’s eye.  He knows that with every moment of trust, I lean more fully into who He created me to be.  And by becoming more of Him, I can experience the abundant life that He desires for me.

Two halves of the whole regarding trust:  a revelation concerning my growth in giving Him more of myself (which I eagerly claim in spite of an enemy who tells me otherwise) and my Father’s loving perspective on my trust for Him.