For growth to take place in our lives, and at each new stage of growth, trust is required of us.
Trust is that sense that no matter what happens, it will all be ok.
We are trusting that God’s grace will be there.
Trust is required in all relationships, even business relationships. Relationships can only deepen when trust is present. When we connect with safe people, our capacity to trust grows.
When we get pushed to the edge of ourselves, fear kicks in. We get to that point of uncharted territory. It is that vulnerable point of where we don’t know something or we can’t be sure how things will turn out.
Trust Has Its Dangers
By no means am I saying that we need to trust all people and things in our lives. That is a recipe for disaster. We all know certain people who you wouldn’t trust as far as you could throw them, and for a good reason!
We need to be aware of where, or with who, or in what situations we lack trust. And dig into the circumstances to see if our fear is valid.
I say this because most things we fear, or situations where we lack trust, are just stories we make up in our head. And it keeps us playing it safe.
Speaking of stories, there is also a shadow side of how we trust in things. For example, we can look to something, a Rolex, a fancy car or a romantic relationship, and say to ourselves, “If I just had that, everything will be right in my life.” In this case, we are trusting something other than God to be our savior.
The things you are seeking after, what are you hoping they will give you. Can they deliver?
In light of the dangers, trust is still a muscle that we have to build.
On Belay
When I think about developing trust, I think about the High Ropes Course at Camp Paradise. This is a Father / Child Camp where you spend five days in the woods with no phones, electricity, or running water. I went to Camp five times with each of my daughters, ten trips or nine years, and it was an incredibly formative place for me.
Some of my greatest memories with my kids were at Camp Paradise. And some of my most terrifying!
The High Ropes Course is thirty feet up in the air and has a series of elements to do with your child. You are in a harness and roped in at all times.
There are a series of calls to go through to make sure it is safe to climb. One of them is “On Belay.”
Even though you can test the ropes and make sure that they work, once you get out, it still invokes a high degree of terror — the counselors who spend the whole summers up there bouncing around like monkeys.
One element is a series of trapeze swings that you step from one to the next while they swing back and forth. My daughter freaked out because I was swinging it too much, as I could help it! I thought I was either going to hurt myself doing the splits or dislocate my shoulder. Whatever the case, it wasn’t going to end well. It scared the crap out of me. There were tears, but not from my daughter.
We rallied and said that we were in this together and if we pulled together we could make it out alive. We did, and we made it. It was a situation I will never forget, as my daughter won’t let me. She retells the story any time I need a little embarrassment.
To have any fun up there, you need to trust that the ropes will keep safe. If you fell, you trust that they will catch you.
The High Ropes Course is a great way to develop trust. But in a real-world scenario, the best place to increase your capacity to trust is in a Personal Development Network.
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The Lord is my strength and my shield;
in him my heart trusts, and I am helped;
my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.
Psalm 28:7