Were you ever made to do that trust exercise at in drama lessons at school or perhaps at a youth group or for team building at work? You know the one – where you stand in front of someone and have to fall back and they catch you? I’m sure I’ve done the exercise before but I can’t remember a specific time. I guess I was always caught, otherwise I probably would have remembered falling to the floor, along with my feelings, pride and trust.
Broken trust
I do remember though, a time where my trusting brother had his head cracked open after a boy at primary school pulled his chair out from beneath him when he went to sit. A cruel trick that ended with a bloodied head, a trip to A&E and stitches. I expect my brother remembers it more than I do.
I remember the times when trust was broken more than when it wasn’t. Maybe because I have been lucky to grow and live among trustworthy people. I’ve been realising how it takes trust to rest. When we go to sleep we trust that no one will break into the house. (A little extreme, I know, because you probably don’t think about that before you fall to sleep.) A more mundane example perhaps; when I sit down with a cup of tea and a magazine, I trust that there is nothing that needs to be done right now in that moment. When I take a bath with a book to read, I have to trust that no one will berate me for leaving the washing up till later or even until the next morning.
Learning to trust
I have to trust that the lounger at the pool side will not break when I sit on it. (Maybe even more so when I’ve eaten nothing but croissants for breakfast all week!) Leaving things undone, taking time to sit and not do means trusting that it is ok to rest. That I myself, and others will give me grace. This is in both small things like when taking time to put my feet up, but also when it comes to big life things.
In big life things like when I believe I can figure it all out and that my ways of work, parenting, paying the bills etc, depend solely on me and what I can do. I am not resting in my trust that God is who he says he is. When I rest in God’s presence, when I listen to what he is calling me to step into next, I am trusting that he will provide, that He knows best and that He is good.
Rest requires trust
When things go wrong I have to trust that he will make all things right. I have to surrender control in order to rest. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, there is huge freedom in that trust. There is ultimate rest. It’s no longer up to me. I can do the next thing, take the next step knowing that God is right there with me as he prompts and leads.
As rest requires trust, trust equals rest. Easy to write but a life time to learn. I’m learning to trust by practicing an exercise in rest.
Abi delights in creating places of peace & beauty for others. She loves encouraging women in their creativity. She is a creative at heart, designer by trade and lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds with her three children. She writes, designs, and publishes iola and loves it!
After studying English and Publishing in Oxford (UK), she has worked in the publishing arena as a book and communications designer. She writes on creativity and design and has self-published a creative tutorial book and a creative devotional guide; Making for Living and Giving, and Re-create – restore your creative soul.
She drinks coffee in the morning but earl grey tea in the afternoon and takes photos of flowers like they are going out of fashion.
abipartridge.co.uk IG @abilouise_harvey.
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