Who Do You Trust?

By: Amy Marcle

I can answer that opening question in one word.  Nobody. 
Well, almost nobody.  Trust.  A very small word, but a huge mountain to
climb for many people.  Trust.  A very small word, but when broken can ruin
the strongest relationships.   My trust issues do not really originate from a
direct issue involving any specific event in my life, but rather a fear of what
might happen if I give up control to someone else.  When my child was small, there were very few people I trusted to watch her when I could not. 
Her daycare was literally 90 seconds from my work, and I rarely would go
to places where she could not tag along.  Fast forward to today and the same applies to my dogs.  Our vacations and weekend trips now revolve
around being able to accommodate our pets because I simply do not trust leaving them with a pet sitter while we are away. 
My lack of trust in people, in society, in myself has
created an overwhelming amount of unnecessary anxiety over the years.   I will write more about my battles with anxiety as we continue to share our
experiences on this website, but for now I will say that my anxiety comes from
a lack of trust.  We visited a local church service a few Sundays ago, and the
sermon could not have been any more appropriate for my insecurities.  It was as if the minister called me that morning and said, “what do you need to hear the most today?”  However, that could not have been the case,
because the minister has no idea who I even am. 
I was just a visitor in the congregation, after all, how could he have
possibly known what lesson I needed in my life.The essence of his Sunday morning message was this…Do You
Trust Jesus…. Enough?  We all trust Jesus
to some extent or else we would not have been in attendance that morning.  But do we trust Jesus enough?  He proceeded to recite the story in the Bible
about an official whose son was sick and dying. 
When the official met Jesus, he asked Him to have mercy on his son and
heal him.  Jesus informed the man that
unless he saw signs and wonders then the young man would not believe.  The father continued to beg him to heal his
sick child and Jesus answered “Go, your son will live.”  As the official made his way back home, he
was met by his servants who relayed the good news that his son was well again
and had his full health back.  The
official asked at what time the fever had left his son, and his servants
answered that his fever had left him the day before at one in the
afternoon.  The official immediately knew
that was the same exact moment that Jesus had told him that his son would
definitely live. 

Who did this official and father trust?  He trusted Jesus.  He trusted Jesus enough to go back home and let Jesus handle the health of his child. 
He trusted Jesus enough to not continue to beg Jesus for the health of
his child to be restored.  He trusted Jesus enough to obey him and wait.  The
question I kept asking myself during church that sunny Sunday morning was “DID I TRUST JESUS ENOUGH?”Anxiety has been a part of my life since I was five years
old.  My mother and I were involved in an
automobile accident on our way home from my Kindergarten field trip to the city park.  We got caught in the middle of a thunderstorm
with heavy rain, loud thunder, blustery winds, and sharp lightening…the whole
works.  Our car jumped a ditch, missed hitting
a brick retaining wall by just a few feet, and landed in the front yard of a
couple who just happened to not be at home at the time.  This was before cell phones, of course, so we took out on foot to find a phone. 
Luckily, the yard we landed in was not too far from my great Aunt
Lucille’s home.  Of course, she wasn’t home either.  I’m not sure if it was from
walking in the storm, the sound of the rain, or the anxiety I had thinking I
had just narrowly escaped death, but I peed on her porch.  And then I got even more anxious.  Luckily, someone soon drove by and was able
to help us get to my dad and take shelter. 
That wreck during that storm set me up for a lifelong dance
with anxiety.  For a very long time, I could not separate the fact that thunderstorms caused accidents.  The weather could predict a storm coming and I immediately assumed someone was going to get hurt in an accident.  My mind would not let me comprehend that one
had no effect on the other.  As I grew older, my apprehension regarding storms
disappeared, for a while.  But it will later return, and I will discuss the reasons for its reappearance in a separate blog.  However, my fear of automobile accidents only grew as the years went by.  
One afternoon, when I was around ten years old, my brother
got dropped off at our house by a wrecker service.  Allen had been trying to call us at home totell us that he had been involved in an automobile accident on his way to college.  Again, this was before cell phones were around and we did not have a cordless phone at the time.  My parents and I had been outside as he made his many attempts to call us from a local phone.  While I was thrilled that he had not been severely injured, hearing the story of how his accident happened and then seeing his car made my stomach hurt.  On
his way to college, he met a truck that was pulling a trailer.  The fender wheel of the trailer loosened and was flying in his path directly at his windshield.  He had to make a split-second decision…run off in the gulley to the side of him or hit the fender and risk it decapitating him as it was headed right to his head. 
He took his chance and swerved down into a deep ravine, totaling his
car.  He walked away with only cuts, scrapes, and bruises from the impact.  But that did not ease my mind at all.  I was
relieved he had survived but did not understand why.  Would he die the next time he went back down that road on his daily commute?  I did
not trust Jesus enough to know that his plan for my brother was bigger than
that car accident.  I felt like it was a setup for more pain later.  And I dreaded
it each time he drove that road for a long, long time.When I began driving myself years later, I realized that
driving was not as frightening as I had thought it would be.  I was good at controlling the car, paid attention, and did not get distracted.  I
had been in several small car wrecks or fender benders since my brother’s
accident and had survived just fine.  And
I never associated fear with driving again….until I had my own child who became old enough to drive.Teaching Haley to drive was easy.  She handled the vehicle well as her dad and I took her out to practice driving.  She was careful, followed the rules, never touched her phone, and took great care to keep herself and others safe.  She was four months away from getting her official license when we experienced one of the worst days of our life to that point.In June 2018, we were sitting on our screened in porch
enjoying the summer breeze with a friend of ours.  As the sun was setting the air began to fill with sirens as we could hear ambulances and response teams flying down the four lane just north of our house.  We
wondered to ourselves what could possibly be going on that required the
attention of so many emergency personnel vehicles.   As moments went by, we began to hear helicopters flying overhead.  Not good.  The direction they were headed for was just moments away from Jason’s cousin’s house as well as Jason’s parents.  I texted his cousin, Stacy, and asked her if she knew what may be going on out that way.  She was always quick on
the draw at responding, but this time my phone sat unnervingly quiet.  I opened my Facebook feed to see if anyone had posted news, because that is typically my source of information.  Before I could scroll through my feed, my
cell phone rang.  It was my mother-in-law, Robbie.  When I saw her name pop up on my cell phone at 8:30 pm on a Saturday night, I knew it could not be good news she was calling to share with me.  And sadly, my assumptions were correct.I stared at my phone for what seemed an eternity before
accepting the call.  I think a part of me was not ready to hear the news that was about to be delivered to me.  “Hello,” I said nervously.  She was crying uncontrollably on the other end of the phone.  “Amy, Alyssa’s
dead.”  Those were the only words I heard at first.  My chest was instantly filled with such heartache I was not sure how to process what she had just said.  My daughter and husband stood directly in
front of my face asking “What, what has happened?”  I managed to say, “Who was with her?”  While Robbie was trying to inform me about
the accident that had happened, all I could do was look at Haley and Jason in
disbelief.  Haley began questioning me with much nervousness, “Mom, is it Alyssa?  Is she ok?  Is she hurt?”  I kept shaking my head and fought back tears because I knew I needed to be strong for Haley and Jason for what I was about to relay to them.“Alyssa was just killed in a car wreck.  That’s where the ambulances were headed.  Makenna and Alex (Alyssa’s boyfriend and sister)
were with her.  They are being sent to the Med by chopper in Memphis.”  If I live to be one hundred years old, I will never forget
the look on Haley’s face nor the cries and screams that followed.  Alyssa was her cousin and her first best friend. She was also Stacy’s daughter. 
And it hit me at that moment why Stacy had not answered my texts.   Guilt washed over me like a flood.  I had been texting her and she was receiving
the worst news of her life, the worst news of all of our lives.  Alyssa was just a year older than Haley.  They had grown up together.  She was like our second daughter.  I cannot count the number of concerts,
shopping trips, camping trips, sleepovers, and swimming parties they had
together.  She lived across the road from Jason’s parents, and Haley and Alyssa spent every other Sunday afternoon together for 15 years.  Her passing left a hole in our lives that we will never be able to fill.  And her cause of death opened up the door to my anxiety about travel all over again.Later that year, Haley obtained her driver’s license and
would no longer need us to driver her places anymore.  She had found her freedom to come and go without having to ask her parents for a ride. 
She was proud of her newfound freedom, as she should be, but all I could
do was worry.  Every time she backed out of our driveway into the world, I thought about Alyssa.  I thought about how she had just run to town
a few miles away and how she did not come home.  When we would drive that stretch of highway, I would think to myself, “Alyssa was still alive at this spot.”  Then I would drive a few feet and think “and then here she was not.”  It was that instant.  And the reality of how life can change in that instant made me fear for Haley each time she drove away.  Today, I have finally started to relax a smidgeon about her
safety while out driving.  But the past five years have wrecked havoc on my nerves. 
It’s not that I do not have faith in her abilities, I do not trust all of the other drivers on the road. 
Alyssa’s accident was caused by someone else.  Would someone cause my child to be involved in an accident too?  Would someone’s recklessness be the cause I lost someone too?  Typing these thoughts even makes me anxious.  It wasn’t until a couple of Sunday’s ago that I realized my problem and the root cause of my anxiety.  I did not trust God enough.

Anxiety is a tool used by Satan to grab a hold of your soul
when you are already in a fragile state of mind.  He uses it to force negativity inside of your life and to question the plans that God has already laid out for us.  I often hear people say that “Christians should never be anxious.”  I do not agree with that statement.  I’m a Christian and
while I understand that God is in control of all things, turning off my anxiety
is just not that easy.  We as Christians are not perfect, we all still have struggles that we must face daily.  Anxiety is mine.  Anxiety occurs in me when I feel like I am not in control of a situation.   And when
I am not in control of the things in life I want to be, I turned to addiction
to help me feel less stressed.  If I could focus on losing weight, I did not have to focus on my anxiety.  For me the two went hand in hand.

The sermon I heard at church a few weeks ago presented the
question “Do You Trust Jesus Enough?”  And
I realized I did not.  I may say I do.  I may convince myself that I do, but
when I worry so much the opposite is true.  I realized during that church service that God is in control of this entire world, that no amount of worry I cause myself, His plan is perfect even when it does not align with the plans we may have laid our for ourselves.   I also did not trust
that Alyssa’s accident may have been part of God’s bigger picture.  Maybe His plan was to use her short time on Earth as a testimony to others.  After
all, she was passionate about sharing her love for God with others.  Maybe she reached who she was supposed to reach in her short life and He was ready for her to be with Him.  Maybe He wasn’t punishing those left behind,
but teaching us to prepare.    I realized that Sunday that if I want to find
peace in my life and be less anxious, I have to let God have control in my
life.  The Bible states in I Peter 5:7,
“casting all your care upon him, for He careth for you.” I did not trust that this verse was not just for the
millions of other people who read it, but it was also for me.  God cared for me.  He does not want me to worry, because He has
control.  Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding. 
In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”We put our trust in many things but are we putting our trust
in God?   Or are we trying to carry all
the worry on our own shoulders?  I would
say it is safe to say 99 percent of the things I worry about never happen.  And when something bad does happen, it
catches me off guard.  That’s why I
worry, I feel I can worry the negative away from myself and the ones I
love.  But, all worry does is steal our
joy.  It ruins today as we wait for
tomorrow. 

If we want to make our paths easier to travel, we must place
our total trust in Jesus.  After all,
Jesus sees the entire journey we are own, while we just see it day by day.