A Life Marked by Trust, Not Control

As I started this series, it was with a hand gripping a rope and a claim that the grip usually came from somewhere real. At the end of this month, this is where I have landed. A life of trust is not a softer life. It’s a less defended one, and those are completely different things.

What trust is not

It isn’t naivety. Trusting doesn’t mean believing everybody’s good, ignoring evidence, or handing car keys to somebody who has wrecked three cars. Discernment survives this whole process intact. If anything it gets sharper once anxiety stops drowning it out.

It isn’t passivity. You still do your part, all the way, which is harder than either doing everything or doing nothing.

It isn’t calm. I’ve met very few genuinely calm people. Honestly, I’m not one of them. Trust is something you practice while still feeling the thing.

It isn’t a state you arrive at. Nobody graduates. I’ve been at this a long time and I still catch myself arranging outcomes I have no business arranging.

What it actually looks like on a Wednesday

Small and unremarkable, mostly. You say the true thing once and then let it sit, instead of saying it nine more times in different words. Then, you go to bed with something unresolved.

Your kid handles it badly and you keep your hands still. You can either take it to the phone or take it to the Throne on how hard is was not to intervene. You let your husband do it his way and you don’t audit it afterward.

Maybe, you have twenty minutes on the porch where you aren’t managing anything and the world continues. You feel the urge to check, you put a clock on it, and it passes. Then, you make a decision, and then you let it be decided. None of that is dramatic. Stack it up over a year and you’re a different person to live with.

The three things I’d want you to carry out of this

Do your part completely and then stop. Full responsibility, zero control. That’s the assignment. It’s the hardest configuration there is.

Build boundaries instead of controls. A rule for you rather than a rule for them. That’s the only kind that works, because it’s the only kind that doesn’t require anybody’s cooperation.

Get evidence, not arguments. Your nervous system has been collecting data since you were small and it will not update on the strength of a good idea. Small reps. Completed experiences. Then notice, out loud, that the sky held.

The faith part, last

I’ve tried to be careful with this all month, because faith language has been used to tell a lot of people to lie down when they should have been standing up.

Here’s where I actually am.

I do not think trust means believing nothing bad will happen. The evidence against that is overwhelming and it’s in every one of our lives. What I’ve come to is something smaller and sturdier, which is that whatever comes, I’m not holding it up by myself, and I never was, including in the years I was certain I was.

The sleeping-in-the-boat picture still gets me. Storm going, water coming in, everybody frantic, and Him asleep in the back, and them furious about it.

There’s something in that for those of us who made vigilance into a virtue and then wondered why we were so tired.

To the woman with the grip

I’ve been talking to somebody specific all month, and she’s been reading.

You built that grip young, probably, and for good reason. It has cost you a great deal and it also got you here. You’re allowed to be grateful to it and still not take it with you.

You are not crazy. You’ve got some unresolved crappy life experiences shaping how you see things. Remember, they can be found and they can be filed correctly. You don’t have to do it alone.

Never let anybody make you feel less than. You are always more than enough. That fact was true long before you became this competent.

It’s an honor and a privilege to hold your hand while you walk through the ashes and help you sift for your beauty. That’s the truest sentence I know about this work.

One last practical thing

If want one place to start, make it the smallest rep you can find, today. Then notice out loud that nothing fell. That’s it. Not a resolution, not a surrender, not a new system. One small piece of evidence entered into a record that has been running one-sided since you were a kid, and then another one tomorrow.

Recovery time is the measure. Not perfection, not how long you go without slipping. How fast you catch it and come back.

Open your hands. See what’s still there.

This is education, not therapy. If you’re in crisis, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. If you’re in Kentucky and you can’t remember the last event you actually attended, let’s work on that. Circle of Hope Counseling Services.

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