My family recently returned from an epic trip: in two weeks, we drove 3,000 miles. From Denver, we left the populated and polluted city-life behind in search of the wide open spaces the Dixie Chicks told us about.
First stop, Yellowstone with its geysers and hot springs and animals. Then south to explore and gaze at the Teton range before heading back to the Rocky Mountains and a jaunt over to Moab, Utah.
On the forefront of the trip, it could be argued that my wife and I lacked common sense. 3,000 miles might be doable for adults. But to expect a couple elementary schoolers to kick back, relax, and enjoy the scenery might be a little much.
It gets worse: To see what wanted, we knew we would have to wake up early and stay up late. I love wildlife, and my wife loves photography. The wildlife worth hunting (ok, seeking) like wolves and grizzlies come out to play early to avoid the July heat. And my wife wanted to shoot (ok, photograph) the animals and mountains at dawn, just as the sun climbed over the horizon. This meant setting the alarm clock for 4:15, 4:45, and 5:20 AM on a regular basis.
I might rather wake a hibernating bear than two exhausted and sleeping kids.
Or so I thought.
Turns out, the girls did great. Morning after morning, we disrupted their slumber to get them into the car while the stars still owned the sky. Sometimes I would pick the girls up, wrap a blanket around them, grab their stuffed animals, and set them in the car. Other mornings they walked out into the cold, mountain air with wide and anticipating eyes.
This isn’t normal, by the way. When school starts, at least one of them if not both will resist our early morning wake up call. They’ll lay in bed until we flip their mattresses. That was my expectation for this trip. Instead, they did what we asked and followed our lead. At the end of the trip, it finally hit me:
Our kids trusted our intentions. While they did not know what we would see or experience in the coming day, they believed our hearts wanted to bless them. They trusted we had something good in store, and with that belief, they willingly allowed us to wake them up before 5 AM and before the temperature rose above 45 degrees (despite the fact that we dressed them for the beach, not the mountains).
The girls trusted our hearts. They anticipated our plans as good. And thankfully, our hopes for adventure and close encounters became a reality. We watched in awe as a coyote ran alongside the road, stopped to flip a mouse into its mouth, and went on with the morning. We watched a grizzly bear roam a field twenty-five yards off the road- feeling safer near the cars of tourists than the male grizzly who threatened her cubs. We looked into our rearview mirror as bison walked two feet from our car. We hiked to water falls, jumped from rock to rock in a river stream, and climbed through red rock arches taller than buildings.
As the trip unfolded, our girls found more and more reasons to believe in our vision and care for the day ahead.
In the scenery of our own heart, trust does not always come so easily.
Our lives are full of relationships where trust has eroded.
I am reminded of the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want”. Such a prayer is often glanced over and recited and sung and generally taken for granted without honest attentiveness to the life-saving trust a sheep might have in his shepherd.
Do I trust well?
The question of trust becomes a crucial turning point in all of our stories. At some point, we all learned or decided or tricked ourselves into the same answer: No. Do I believe Mom and Dad have something good in store for me? Do I believe God has my best in mind as he scripts and/or allows my life to unfold? Do I think my neighbor or professor or tennis coach or boss or spouse thinks well enough about me to act with selfless intentions?
Deeper relationship hinges upon our ability and willingness to open ourselves to trust again. To allow our heart the strength to believe another has our best intentions in mind…this would bring the world from black and white into color.
One thing can be said for certain: Our assumptions about the heart of others toward us originate back somewhere in the hovering mist that is the past. A story or two lingers back through that fog. One day we decided we weren’t enough or, the world, most likely interpreted through those closest to us, was out to get us; our world no longer acted with our best in mind.
We wandered off to find and create our own safety.
Like sheep we have gone astray. Sheep lose their path; they lose the way. And most certainly trust has something to do with it. The moment a sheep takes a step away from its shepherd, its either too foolish or greedy or ignorant to keep trust. It makes its decision, and trust is lost, and so it becomes lost as well. That sheep will not find its way home until trust is restored.
Yes, the shepherd comes looking for his sheep. But we sheep who have minds and hearts must open up and examine how we have learned to trust and not to trust before we can follow the shepherd back home.
To find our way home in relationships, our trust begs our attention.
Process:
Take inventory of or even journal about the most important relationships in your world. It takes time to practice and develop awareness to the voices of our heart. Perhaps this process space will allow you to create a new category to pay attention as you interact with others.
What is your level of trust with your spouse/significant other? With your employer? With your kids? With your parents? With your friends? With the teenager who bags your groceries? With the police officer you pass on the highway? With God, or even the idea of God?
Every shifting and movement in our heart has a story, and the stories wait for our exploration when we are ready. “When we are ready” being the key phrase there. Stay present to the feelings related to trust in your world, and over time, the stories will surface with plenty to say. I promise.
One more thing…By using our vacation as an example, I do not mean to imply the trip was a fairy tale. Parts of it were- we laughed and gazed and basked in the beauty around us and currently wish we could hop back on a plane to Jackson Hole. But there were plenty of hard moments. Whatever trust existed between us came hard-earned through the willingness to struggle together. And for those graceful moments when a moose ventured out from the brush to drink from the Snake River as our raft floated by, whatever we had to process through to get to that moment became worth it.
