Month 2, Lesson 2 / End of the Year Post

I was pregnant with Everlea last December 31 and John and I were sitting on the couch in our living room sharing home baked bread and a good wine (just a little for me, 'course) and I knew that the word which would describe 2014 would be "abundance". Looking back at the last 12 months, I can see why.

We added a little one to our family, and she is incredible and babbly and joyful and smart. We watched our firstborn grow into a rational, persuasive, curly haired little blondie who has fine motor skills and can climb a ladder at the park. We lost a ton of crap (and a lot of good stuff too) that might have held us back from the adventure we're on right now. We paid off our debt. We had this crazy amazing community build up around us. We're in Nicaragua. We always had exactly what (but more often) more than we needed, freeing our hands to do the things we felt God was asking us to, and that's abundance. It wasn't easy - it was incredibly, crazy difficult - but it was abundant. Even when everything we owned (or almost) was lost, it was abundant.

Which is why Lesson 2 is such a funny one for me. Lesson 2 is that I need to trust God. We learned a lot about a few other things too, but not like this. You'd think that after all of his amazing provision, after all the abundance (even the abundance in the loss), trust would come second nature - sometimes it does, but often, truthfully, it does not. John has a stronger "gift of faith" than this one. This lack of trust, this fear of ...everything... manifests itself in my life predominantly through anxiety*, and it's been a long and arduous uphill battle toward freedom, which began around the same time God started taking control of other areas of our life, too (just over 2 years ago).

I used to have this recurring dream where I was in a car (blue, for the record) and I was in the passengers seat, but driving. Nobody in the driver's seat. I'd be holding the steering wheel and with my foot on the gas pedal, but when I needed to press the brake, I couldn't reach it - so I'd always try to climb into the driver's seat but I couldn't get there. I could drive, but I couldn't stop, and I definitely couldn't get into the driver's seat.

It doesn't take a prophet to decode that one, but it took me saying it out loud to a bunch of trusted mentors to really crack the code myself.

I have some trust issues. God's working on it.

I don't think that the reason we had the house fire, or even that we were called to Nicaragua, was to sort out Sam's trust issues with God. I think that life is intended to sort out our trust issues with God. All of life. All of the time. The good stuff and the hard stuff. The hard stuff won't stop once I trust the Lord fully and completely - but the good stuff won't either (Which, by the way, is a lie us self-fear-mongerers love to believe: if I start to fully trust God, He will stop being good to me, as some kind of sick test. It's true! We who struggle with fear / trust / control are caught in this crazy web of fear wrapped in fear. It's awful and it's a lie, for the record, because He has already extended His goodness to us and we don't need to "be blessed" with stuff because we are inherently blessed... now I digress.)

But in it all, and especially in the last month, I'm learning that if I don't trust God, I will implode.

How can I - you, whoever - look at this world, look at the insecurity of everything, and try to assume control of it, something that is my sin nature to do? It's exhausting.  How can I find reasons for why life is the way that it is, with all the heartache and the brokenness (it's physically evident here in Nicaragua but just as prevalent in our lives in "the West"), the way people are the way that they are, that I can't change them, force them to see things - that in fact I can't change anything, I can barely even change myself - that I can't control some things that happen to my family or to others and it's just... it just is? And sometimes it sucks? Try to give me the answer to those questions and you will wind up on a floor in fetal position. Pinky promise.

The beauty in trusting God is that I don't need one single answer to any of it. I just have to believe that He will rescue it all.

I've learned in the last month (and really in the last year) that you simply can't live in this world and not trust God and have life in fullness. You can't have all of that. Things are not fully complete in myself if I don't trust the Lord. In fact, I'd say that it's impossible to live in the fruits of the spirit if you don't trust the Lord.

I can't have love if I don't trust God.
I can't have joy if I don't trust God.
I can't have peace if I don't trust God.
I can't have patience if I don't trust God.
I can't have kindness if I don't trust God.
I can't have goodness if I don't trust God.
I can't have faithfulness if I don't trust God.
I can't have gentleness if I don't trust God.
I can't have self-control if I don't trust God.

But I want those things. All of them. So I have to trust God.

And with that, the word that I think will describe 2015 is, oddly, "stability". I'm confident that won't have anything to do with actual physical stability, but the stability that comes with trusting in God, with striding in the Lord's strides. I think that I (and you) can humbly ask for that and that He will graciously give it to me (and you), even if it is a daily request, even if I (and you) mess it up, which we will. Trust is rough. I can think of ten hundred million reasons not to trust a God that I can't see, but the fullness of life that comes with handing everything over to Him instead... it's just far more convincing to me. It's easier. And I really want the fruits of the spirit.

It's been an abundant year, even in all the loss of stuff, in the sense of homelessness, in the good and the hard, and I pray that next year is stable because I will grow further in my trust of the Lord. I believe that it can be a good one, albeit one with hard moments, even when I trust the Lord.

[*Hold your advice, read this first, also yes I have good support.]