Who do you trust?

By Lenora Rand
From the August Recovery Worship service.

“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me.” John 14:1

Ok, I'll admit it…I have a few tiny trust issues. I don’t believe generally that things are going to turn out well for me. I tend to anticipate, in fact, that things are going to go badly. Possibly very, very badly. In my heart of hearts I believe that the world is a deeply nasty, unsafe place and though my life has not been too bad so far, no major huge successes or windfalls certainly, but no major disasters really, it’s only a matter of time before the worst happens.

To celebrate our first wedding anniversary, Gary and I decided to travel to Maine for a summer vacation. While there we camped in this beautiful state park out in the middle of nowhere. We were young and poor—we had only a miniscule borrowed pup tent to sleep in, which we pitched in this idyllic remote area, nothing around but the bugs and the birds (and possibly some bears lurking behind trees, stalking us…). We also had a little axe luckily, so we could cut up enough branches and fallen limbs to have a small fire. So on our first lovely Maine night in the woods, we sat by the fire, surrounded by a chorus of nature, until bedtime. At that point we crawled into our pup tent. And Gary quickly went to sleep. I did not. I lay there listening. Considering the possibility of bears. And snakes. But trying to talk myself off the wall of my fear. I was a city girl and not a nature girl but I told myself many other people had survived nights out in pup tents so I should just calm down. I was beginning to relax a little when I suddenly heard some other noise—not bug-related or bear-related…no, it was the noise of a truck or a car somewhere in the not too distant distance. And that’s when major panic hit. What about axe murderers????? There could be axe murderers in the woods. And we were so far away from civilization how easy would it be for them to creep into our campsite and murder us in our sleep? Possibly even with our own axe, which we’d probably conveniently left for them next to the fire pit!

I nudged Gary awake and asked, “What did we do with the axe, where did we leave it?” He said something along the lines of “What are you talking about? What difference does it make?” So I explained to him my whole theory about the axe murderers and my strong sense that we should have the axe in the tent with us, both so they wouldn’t kill us with it, and possibly for protection in case they’d brought their own axe. We’d only been married a year, remember, and we were still getting to know each other and I’m thinking at that point Gary was wondering if an annulment was still a possibility. He kept reassuring me everything was going to be all right and told me just to go back to sleep and I told him I really thought he should go out and get the axe and then I would sleep a lot better. But he wasn’t budging…so finally, now with fear and fury, I crawled out of the sleeping bag and the tiny tent, by myself, got to the fire pit, retrieved the axe and squirmed back in. I tucked the axe under my pillow and, no thanks to Gary – Happy-frigging-Anniversary—finally, finally got to sleep.

So yeah, trust has been a bit of an issue for me. And I’ve tended to self-medicate over the fear—with food mostly but with whatever is handy truthfully: cigarettes, alcohol, shopping, working…which has led to a lot of addiction issues I’m slowly, slowly recovering from.

And because I don’t trust, I’ve tended to try to take matters into my own hands as much as possible. Get to the axe before someone else does, so to speak. Which has led to a lot of attempts to control people and situations, tendencies toward perfectionism. And then the exhaustion from trying to be so perfect and to control everything has often led me to just want to throw up my hands and go off somewhere and be alone for the rest of my life. The problem is where would that be? Not out in the backwoods of Maine, certainly…!

The disciples in the story John tells in John 14 had a few trust issues too. Philip and Thomas in particular. They are clearly caught up in a crazy mind swirl in this story. Trying to figure out how they can possibly trust God. And how to trust Jesus, who never gives a straight answer it seems, who’s always talking in metaphors and symbols and pushing them to step outside of their regular ways of seeing things and doing things. Which is really quite annoying. It doesn’t take much imagination to hear their annoyance and frustration in this passage. And reading between the lines, you can almost even hear them saying a few choice words that John didn’t record for posterity.

“No, we don’t (insert swear word) know, Lord,” Thomas said. “We have no (insert swear word) idea where you are going, so how can we (insert swear word) know the way?”

But Jesus tells them, Look, I know it’s hard to trust in God because you haven’t seen God—but you’ve seen me, you’ve known me, and so you’ve seen God. I am your best picture of God.

What Jesus seems to be trying to explain to Philip and Thomas is that he understands that their ability to trust God, to turn their will and their lives over to a power greater than them, is very dependant on their picture of God. The picture of God they’re carrying around with them. And that’s the message I think Jesus is tryng to communicate to us too.

Zoe, my oldest daughter, has been taking driver’s ed this summer. And part of the deal is that we, her loving parents, need to go out and practice driving with her. For hours. There are many advantages Gary and I have discovered about having children later in life. But I have to say, being in the car with your kids who are learning to drive…at our age…heart attacks are not out of the question.

AND now that I’m watching Zoe drive and in the habit of screaming when she gets too close to parked cars, or flailing my arms and stomping on imaginary brakes when we come speeding up behind other cars at a stop light…I’ve also started noticing how Gary drives. And he does some things…now that I’m paying attention…that are pretty scary too. But the thing is, I am not generally screaming or flailing while riding with him. Because I trust him. I trust that he knows what he’s doing. So he can be going at the exact same speed as Zoe while approaching a stoplight and with him, I’m perfectly relaxed, but when Zoe is behind the wheel, I’m going: “Slow down, slow down, slow down….BRAKE! BRAKE! BRAKE!”

Now, I’m sure you’ve heard someone talk about how surrendering to God or your Higher Power is like letting God be in the driver’s seat. And I have to say whenever anyone suggested that sort of thing to me—Oh Lenora, you’ve just got to take your hands off the wheel--I’ve kinda wanted to slap them. And I think that’s partly because I’ve been terrified. Because I’ve got two pictures of God I’ve been hauling around with me all my life. One of them is the picture I carry in my mind, the one that says God is good and kind and loving and wants the best for me. That’s the Senior Class picture of God, the official, retouched photo that goes in a frame and sits on the piano. The other picture is the one I carry in my gut, the picture taken when no one was prepared, no one was smiling for the camera, my secret picture, the one that actually affects the way I act and live every day. That one isn’t so pretty. In that picture, God looks judgmental and mean, or totally checked out and uncaring, or too busy to bother, or like he couldn’t care less what is best for me—I am just a speck of dust and he’s got more important things to deal with. It’s not the official photo I show when I’m talking about God. But it’s the one that I carry closest to my heart. And the way you get to see this picture of God is in how I act. That’s the God I’m picturing in the driver’s seat when I’m into my addictive behavior. When I’m trying to fix, manage and control.

I have been in years and years of therapy. And I mean that literally. Frankly I could have purchased a small house for the amount I’ve spent having my head shrunk over the past 25 years…or even a large house in some sections of the country. Maybe two houses in Arizona these days. Most of that time I have been seeing a psychiatrist, Jeff, who has always sort of reminded me of Yoda of Star Wars fame. Full of annoying bits of wisdom, he is. Speaking in metaphors a lot, he does. Jeff has this habit, like Yoda, and frankly, now that I think about it, like Jesus, of suggesting you do things the opposite of the way common sense would tell you to do things. Like when you get angry with Jeff he says thank you and acts like you’ve given him a gift. Or when you complain to him about someone who has yelled at you or called you a loser or something along those lines, he’s been known to suggest you thank that person for saying out loud the messages you’re usually spewing at yourself secretly inside your own head. Or when one member of your family is causing “problems” he might suggest you be grateful to them for carrying the pain and anger of the whole family. Weird stuff, it is.

One of the other weird and wonderful things Jeff has done is helped me begin to get a new picture of God. To replace, at least sometimes, the picture I usually have imbedded in my brain, with a better one. Like Jesus said to his disciples, my therapist has said to me, “What if God actually looked a lot more like me—doesn’t it seem like I want the best for you? Doesn’t it seem like I find you fascinating and strangely adorable and worth my time and attention? And what about Gary—what if your picture of God looked less like a pissed off police officer and more like your husband when he’s laughing at something funny you’ve said, or rubbing your back when you’re sad? Or your children—have you ever imagined that God could love you so unconditionally? Or what if God looked more like your therapy group? Or your best friend? Or your church choir singing together on a Sunday morning?”

When I was growing up we used to sing this old hymn called “Trust and Obey.” Maybe you know it. The chorus goes: “Trust and obey. For there’s no other way. To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” I used to hear that song and think, “Well I’ll never be happy in Jesus then…’cause (insert swear word) if I’m ever going to trust and obey." I couldn’t hear “Trust and obey…” meaning, “Relax, you don’t have to be in charge here. You don’t have to worry yourself to death. I’ve got you covered. I love you and I’m taking care of you.”

No, those words, “trust and obey” sounded to me just like another way of saying, “Shut up and do what I tell you.” “Quit whining and pretend to be happy.” Because that’s all I could hear my picture of God saying to me. So I guess it’s no wonder that I’ve spent a good portion of my life, flailing around and screaming Brake, Brake, Brake. Or sleeping with axes under the pillow.

But lately I’ve sometimes been able to catch a glimpse of a different sort of God. One who is looking out for me. Who wants good things for me. Who has my best interests at heart. I’ve been trying to do what Jesus suggested to his disciples, looking at him when I think about trusting God, looking at how he treated people, how Jesus asked questions more than he pronounced judgments, how he gave 2nd and 3rd and 4th chances, how he never cast the first stone, how he touched the untouchable, and healed the ones everyone else had forgotten, how he believed in people more than they believed in themselves.

But unlike Philip and Thomas, I don’t have Jesus standing right in front of me every day. Sometimes it’s hard to get a clear picture of him too. So I’ve also been working on changing my picture of God, the one that I carry in my gut, by looking at the loving, kind, caring trustworthy people around me. At the people who believe in me, and care for me, and want to be with me, who forgive me and give me another chance, and another, and another.

One of the things they say to people coming into recovery who are struggling with the whole idea of a Higher Power is that you can think of your 12 step group as your Higher Power. What if we really did that? What if, instead of looking at the often distorted snapshot of God we have inside us, we took a look around this room, and we looked in each other’s eyes? What if we allowed ourselves to see the compassion there? What if we allowed ourselves to see, in these eyes, delight in us? Forgiveness for our failures? Understanding of our struggles? A desire for us to do well, to succeed? What if we saw the love? Imagine what we might do. Where we might go. What we might accomplish if we could really see what’s right in front of us. And imagine what might happen if we could actually trust that.