S8 E10: Transitions + Trust

Happy Sunday or the start of a new week! We’re talking about Transitions and trust this week.

The natural transition from Summer to Autumn seems to hold more tension than other seasonal transitions.  In the Autumn Journals weekly focus I talk about how you can almost feel it in the atmosphere …the push and pull of control between the heat of Summer and the milder temperatures (depending on where you live ;) that the season of Autumn can bring.

Transitions in our life can have a similar tension to them. We aren’t experiencing change as quickly as we hoped for and it’s easy to feel stuck in a season that we are so ready to be out of!!

We can’t control the physical seasons, but we can control where we will place our trust and how we will walk through the seasons of our life.

One of the journal prompts for this week asks the question …

Is trusting God with your season hard?

If your answer to that question is a quick resounding yes, please don’t beat yourself up! Trust is a hard thing for us…for many reasons. Especially when we feel trust has been broken. When trust has been broken it can bleed into every other relationship in our life…including God.  Trust issues affect the openness of our hearts. And it’s a tricky place to live when you are guarding your heart so securely. You might notice I often times say or when I’m offering up a prayer for us, I will invite you to open your heart. I’m speaking that because I want to be intentional about having an open heart to receive all that God has for me. And sometimes we might not even be aware that it’s closed …sometimes out of hurt or protection. And we aren’t even aware that we have that same posture with God.  When our spirit longs for intimacy and connection with our Creator and we don’t realize we’ve built and put up walls that keep us from the very thing we long for.

We have to be aware and make sure we are not approaching our relationship with God according to the limitations of our relationships with others.  That might sound ridiculous to you that you would even consider relating to God as you would other relationships. I think we do it unaware…we don’t even realize it because we act and respond out of habit.  We respond to God as if he’s the one who has broken our trust and hurt us. And maybe you feel like he has.  

If that’s you …be honest about it. He can handle your hurt. I know…I’ve been there. And my anger and doubt weren’t met with a hard hand of judgment… instead, it was met with the loving embrace of a father who loved me through it. That hard season forever changed my relationship with God. I experienced his unconditional love and perfect love changes us to our core.

Have I experienced moments of anger and doubt since then? For sure, but the one thing that is different now is the trust factor. I trust him.

I trust him even when I’m hurt and disappointed even when I’m devastated. I trust him because I believe even when it doesn’t make sense to my human mind or heart!  I trust his love, faithfulness, and goodness to me.

His ways are higher than my ways. And I rarely see it in the moment or season but he’s proven time and time again that he is giving me the desire of my heart. I think that a particular moment will look different from what I’m seeing and experiencing. 

Transitions and trust have been a theme for many of us over the past several years. Lots of changes in the world which has impacted our individual lives. Lots of positive things have risen up out of a lot of not-so-positive circumstances. We have all been given the opportunity to appreciate what ultimately matters in our lives.

My life has experienced major transitions in the last few years as well. One involved us physically moving to another part of the city to be closer to a business and a new project that didn’t end up happening yet had me “stuck” in that particular area because of a lease.  I would frequently vacillate between frustration and trust as I was frustrated being not as close physically to many of my kids and yet there that was held by an underlying trust.

I’ve mentioned many times how early morning walks at sunrise have become an important and life-giving rhythm for me.  As eager as I was to move closer to downtown again I recognized I was feeling some apprehension as where I was had such beautiful unobstructed sunrise and sunset views.

And I have to share something that is pretty raw and real-time for me…

That I shared with my family last week. 

We moved. I feel like I should say we are still moving because I’m still surrounded by boxes. Ha

But if you’ve ever moved you know the vortex you enter in haha it’s like you think things aren’t going better than you expected and everything moving along and then it’s like the last remaining items start multiplying and you feel like you’ve entered a time warp where you are boxing things up and time is passing yet random items are still needing to be boxed and it seems like it’s never going to end haha.

Well, we lived that for a few days so needless to say we were exhausted in every way… I think it was the second morning at the house because the first night was just getting in and collapsing …so I believe it was the 2 morning. I was by myself at the house and I thought before I jump into any unpacking I’m going to grab my journal and take some time to write because it had been a few days since I’d been able to have a regular morning.

I had already been outside that morning as I had the previous day at sunrise but I hadn’t found a great view of the sun coming up so had tried to figure that out while walking around a little.  So I decided to open the back door to allow the natural light in and I plopped down on the couch with my bible and journal and decided to open up to the weekly focus in the Autumn journal.  The words on the page felt very timely as I was reading about the season inviting us ‘home” and reminding us that change is exciting and beautiful and needed for future growth.

All of a sudden I realized there was a direct beam of sunlight shining on the pages I was reading and writing on.  Y'all immediately my eyes well up with tears and I felt like God was giving me the biggest hug and reminding me that wherever I am…he is there.

You might hear that and think I’m a little dramatic and that’s fine although if you are here listening then I’m assuming you’re ok with it or just amused by it either way the point is…God will meet you where you are. He made you the way you are and he will show up and speak to you in a way that speaks to your soul.

That moment was so powerful for me and one that I will never forget. And those moments are why I can’t stop encouraging and inviting you to get still and open up your heart and eyes to the power and presence of God in your life.

Our God is not someone to only read about and hear sermons about but our God wants to be in an intimate relationship with us. Communicating with us in and out of our everyday moments.

The people we sit and hear sermons about in the bible were experiencing God out on the land while working or walking down the street while they were living their everyday ordinary lives.  

I don’t know if you just came out of a season of transition or are smack dab in the middle of a transition.  

Wherever you are I want to remind you today that he is there.

Proverbs 3:5,6

Trust God from the bottom of your heart;

Don’t try to figure out everything on your own.

Listen for God’s voice in everything you do,

Everywhere you go; 

He’s the one who will keep you on track.