Trust and faith have different meanings for different people. Joe Rutland looks at how these have affected his life.
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When it comes to understanding what makes me tick on the inside, I know that trust and faith in whatever is happening in the moment can go two ways.
One, they can provide me with some sort of solid ground upon which to follow my own path; or two, they can be tricky as hell.
My truth is that I could not have imagined how much power there lies within trust and faith. Now I always have had some sense of how powerful these concepts were in my life. Yet when it comes to me truly exercising these two a lot, how does that work?
To me, trust means letting go of preconceived notions and knowing that there will be people willing to help me out. Faith, in one sense, means having the belief that trust will actually occur.
It does not always happen immediately. There is this buffer of time where some communication or arrangement has to be either said or unsaid. Usually, it is better if it’s said because that makes communication clean and clear. The “well, you didn’t say this or that” garbage doesn’t come up a lot.
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Really believing that friends would help me out has been quite a learning curve. Yes, it has occurred before in my life and probably a lot more than I have been consciously aware of a lot. These situations leave me that much more humble and a lot more grateful.
Situations like going to a church in the Phoenix area and getting food to eat, using pay phones because I could not pay my phone bill, and having friends allow me the honor and privilege of spending time in their homes while finding my soul’s ground once again.
Gosh, the inner voices of shame and fear want me to listen and heed their call. Fortunately, the more that I have been moving through this journey, the more those voices are losing their strength. Do they crop up? Yes. Do they put a stranglehold around my neck? Not as much.
It’s helped me that I recently rediscovered my love for running outdoors. Here in Austin, there is a very busy hike-and-bike trail around what’s now called Lady Bird Lake. Old-timers still call it Town Lake. On recent weekends, I’ve gone down there in the middle of a warm Saturday afternoon and sweated my butt off. It felt great, though. Like a lot of stress and disorder was being removed from my body one step at a time.
Learning and understanding my own relationship between trust and faith is an ongoing process. I believe one of my mentors in life said that life itself is a process. How true.
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The learning curve is infinite. It may be true for some men that they reach the final point where they have learned all that they need, and the rest is simply commentary. For others, matters of the heart, soul, mind and body are vitally important. It can be around business, sexuality, healing, wholeness, or relationships.
Yet the basic measuring stick here is what matters most in a man’s life? Does it matter to keep learning or simply say “I got it” and stop learning and growing?
I’m quite amazed at how much I really do not know. See, I know it can be called inner guidance or common sense. For me, I prefer to call it inner guidance because when I listen to my gut instinct, then better things occur in orderly fashion. Imagine having an orderly life instead of one filled with chaos and drama. It is possible.
When I try and force stuff to happen, it gets thrown back in my face like warm spit. You’d think that I’d learn my lessons and simply roll along with the times.
The drama dude in me can kick up the chaos storms and, well, away I go. I start spinning out of control, toss trust and faith out of my mindset, and turn into some sort of spiritual and narcissistic Superman.
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What does it take to really understand that trust and faith matter? Accountability plays a significant role. Hey, I am accountable to the words that I write here. Giving readers a short shrift is not doing me any favors and it does not help the reader, either.
Therefore, I challenge myself – and you – to test those waters of trust and faith a little more. Let’s see what life starts looking like over a period of time.
Sure, the storm clouds will rise and maybe a tornado or hurricane will come along. If they do, though, I believe you and I have the inner strength to survive one more day.
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Photo: Getty Images