Exercising your TRUST muscle

Central Oregon flipped its switch from Spring to Summer about two weeks ago.

It’s been warm and right now, we are getting drenched by rain that is falling so hard you would think the drops are in competition with who can get down to the ground the fastest. It’s one of those rain storms where you aren’t sure when it will let up, but you know it will because that is how life works.

The rain will stop, Its just a matter of when.

If my life was a jeep and destiny was down the jungle road, my jeep has turned off the road it was driving on and is now working its way thru an unmarked, never before traversed bumpy path. I like an adventure when it’s on the movie screen. I like big changes when I’m reading it from a book. I like to hear stories of how someone survived an impossible feat.

I just don’t want to be the star of it.

But, it seems life just doesn’t really care what I want. It drives itself on auto pilot, its wheels following the ruts and I better just have good shocks a working seat belt and shucks, if I have to wear a helmet, it should at least be cute.

The storm I’m feeling is associated with one of the husbands businesses. It didn’t die, its just got re-routed and he is working on some of his other entrepreneurial endeavors to pay the bills. All of us in the family are adjusting to new ways of thinking, new ways of doing, new ways of living. Being the Lady of the house and the one who doesn’t bring home the bacon, but cooks the bacon the husband brings home, I am exercising the trust muscle on whole different levels.

Let’s just say, I’ve been working it out, I’d like to say that there is in an end in sight with being able to rest it, and a point where I won’t ever need it. But, I’m thinking, that I use it every day in little ways and its the big nasty storms where I have to flex it and work it hard then normal, and I wonder if I’ll be able to hold up. Now, can you imagine if the trust muscle was an actual muscle? What if it was a neck muscle and it bulked up when we were having to practice putting trust into something or someone. That would be lovely. That might be as bad as thought bubbles over our heads. Then we would all be walking around not wanting to trust because our necks would bulge.

I can laugh at this, so can you.

So, we travel thru the storm. We are in the jeep, all six of us. We all have sunscreen on our faces and water bottles half full. We have the GPS out, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t and I don’t understand how to read it half the time. We have an idea of the destination of where we want to end up at, but we don’t have the address. We don’t know how long it will take us to get there, but we do know we can’t argue and bicker about who ate the last fruit leather and who’s turn it is to pick a song to listen too. We are driving in the general direction of where we think we want to go. We have a spare tire and a little extra fuel and we get tired of squinting in the sun and wondering if this trail is going to come out close to the destination we are dreaming about.

This is life.

We all are sitting in a jeep, going different speeds and down different roads and coming across different wildlife and we all have to trust, that our perseverance is going to carry us through the tougher days and weeks and months that turn into years. When I think about the earthly aspirations that I want, like a forever home, I sometimes feel guilt over that. I know, “this world isn’t my home, we are just a passin thru.. My treasures are laid up, somewhere beyond the blue”. But, back on planet earth, I don’t dig life as a nomad. I have devoted my life to being a wife and mother and with that, doing hospitality and building a home base full of memories for the babies the Lord gave me. This is a dream, I’m following. And, It feels like our jeep just got lost in the jungle, again. And, I’m a little upset about that.

We always say someday we hope our dreams and goals will be achieved, and someday, may come. Often, someday never does. God only knows if my someday will come. I sometimes lose the trust. I take a break from using my muscle and I get discouraged terribly, because of what I have always had in my mind of the way my mothering career establishment should have been, and it didn’t go as planned. And I feel like I failed my kids. They didn’t get to build the memories I wanted for them. This doesn’t mean they aren’t having a happy life, they don’t know any different. Our youngest wants to own her own dog. We already have two Yorkies, but they don’t belong to her exclusively. I told her we had to own our own place and not be renting before she could get one. She told me I needed to stop buying groceries and start saving the money for a house! Right idea, but wrong category honey! Looking at things positively, they will be flexible adults!

I suppose God wants me to see that I do not need a permanent home to be the best mother I can be, that I can take my fuzzy slippers and my own pillow where ever we go. Is He waiting for me to fully surrender this dream to him? I don’t know. I think I shall make a little model house, and when I pray set it down at my feet as a reminder to myself that He owns the cattle on a thousand hills and He will give and take away and if it’s his will for us to be in forever home, He will bring it about. I will keep asking him. And like Hannah of the old testament with her baby, I will offer my home to him. I already do, but maybe that would help Him say yes faster!

I’m pretty sure He honors persistence, that’s a neighbor of stubborn, and I’m stocked up well with that.

The we are bumping along on this trail, and its a new beginning and focusing on blooming where we are planted today. And like it or not, I’m there riding along with the rest of the family with a cute helmet and sunglasses and bold lipstick.

Trust muscle, if it were visible, my neck would be bulging. bigger than my head!

~Prudence