What an unwelcome friend. A running injury. My Achilles tendon is painfully swollen, halting all running in the most crucial weeks of mileage.
My only other running injury was to my IT band—the illiotibial tendon which runs along the outside of the leg from hip to knee. That was five years ago and a most troublesome experience. Many months of running in pain. Running then walking. Not running at all. I was so scared. Terrified of the unknowns. Plagued by the “What ifs…?”.
“What if it never heals?”
“What if I can never regain my momentum?”
“What if…?”
My husband constantly chided me, “You have to have faith. Believe it will heal. Trust that you are doing the right things for it. Stop being so negative. You can’t live in fear and heal.”
“But what if…?”
Now, five years later, with my leg propped up on pillows, I’m hearing the same old thing. “Stay positive. Relax. Trust it will get better.”
There’s that word again. Trust. Trust in what? Trust in the therapy? Trust in the rest? Trust in miraculous healing?
"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight." Proverbs 3:5-6
E.M Bounds calls trust, “Faith in full flower…It is firm belief.”
“Trust sees God doing things here and now… [it] brings eternity into the annals and happenings of time, transmutes the substance of hope into the reality of fruition and changes promise into present possession.”
Hope to reality. Promise into present possession.
Bounds goes on to explain that trust sees God doing things here and now. Even more. Trust expands its sights into the eternal and brings it to the happenings of time.
Hope to reality. Promise into present possession.
Trust in a thing, activity or organization is passive and carries no substance. Trust in a person is where Trust flourishes. Healthy relationships are the fertile soil for trust to grow and thrive. Children trust their parents. Husbands trust their wives and vice versa. Faith-filled people trust their God.
At least… these all happen in a perfect world.
Trust is something I took entirely for granted; until I adopted my Ethiopian children. In my relationship with my biological boys, I unknowingly enjoyed a sweetly cocooned life filled with mutual trust, understanding and unhindered love. They trusted me to nurture them and always have their best interest at heart. Because they have never experienced anything but fullness of trust, they operate out of a position of trust. Their instinct is to trust.
Not so with JB and Risa. Their instinct and consequently their actions tend to be born from lack of trust. It was a blow to my mommy ego. How do you parent children who don’t trust you? The relationship is broken before it even begins.
Part of the missing trust is simply a natural part of the transition-- the grieving and bonding process. The rest, as far as I can discern, stems from their lives pre-us.
One child recovers quickly. There is evidence of healthy, trust-filled relationships in this one’s life. This child now thrives in the cocoon.
The other child still holds trust at arm’s length. Scared to let faith fully flower. Though there is much of this child’s life I will never know, I see the effects. Unwillingness to release into the cocoon. Expecting the worst from people rather than the best. The “What ifs… “ plague this child.
Just as I cannot force my tendon to heal, just as I cannot force character to develop, I realize I cannot force faith to fully flower.
“Trust grows nowhere so readily and richly as in the prayer chamber,” says Bounds. “The eye and presence of God give vigorous life to trust, just as the eye and the presence of the sun make fruit and flower to grow, and all things glad and bright with fuller life.”
It is time for me to look higher than my children’s field of vision. It’s time for my eyes to see the eternal, grab what is hoped for-- change it to reality—from the position of bended knee and bowed head.
“All things are possible to him who believes,” Jesus says.
It is time for me to believe. “What ifs…” have no place in my life or the life of my children. Not for my body. Not for my mind. Not for my child.
Excuse me. My chamber is waiting.
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