Trusting in God-Choosing Trust over Anxiety

Trusting in God when it feels difficult.

I have so many things to say about trusting in God. God provides. God is who He says He is and does what He says He will do. Over the last three years, my hardest struggle was and still is trusting in God. How do we feel trust and sit in faith when things feel so overwhelmingly important and God feels so overwhelmingly far? I have a dear friend struggling with fertility issues. How do I tell her to feel trust after two miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy? How can she feel peace when her body feels weak and her heart feels sorrowful? 

There may be some people out there that can feel trust easily. I love those people. It's an experience I crave, but I don't easily land on feeling trust, at least not yet. Instead, I landed on choosing trust.

Choosing trust means making the cognitive decision to trust God regardless of what your feelings are, sometimes in spite of what your feelings are. It is as simple as breathing that truth out into the world, "God I trust you." In therapy, we constantly distinguish fact versus feelings. We argue that a feeling is not a fact. A feeling of mistrust does not mean that it is a fact that you don't trust. You can choose your fact: I trust God, without having it align with your feelings.

Here is the way trust changed my life:

I was sipping a warm cup of coffee at a quaint shop in Fort Collins with a friend. Laughter filled our spot in the corner and a smile spread widely across my face. But then it hit me. Worry, fear, and panic flooded my thoughts and I was mentally torn from the conversation at hand. I would focus my thoughts on my friend, yet get swiftly derailed into catastrophic thinking about my own life. Frustration flooded my body as I fought to stay present, yet felt tossed by the waves of my own worries. "Why can't I just trust God? Why do I feel so disheveled all the time?" The thought chorused through my brain as defeat sunk in and for a split moment, I resolved that I would just never trust the Lord. Not fully at least. 

Then the thought hit me. What if I just make up my mind to trust God, regardless of what I feel? Anxiety, you horrible friend, you may rage inside me like a tumultuous storm and blow thoughts, worries, and fear with hurricane force winds. Anxiety, you old ball and chain, you may continue to throw a tantrum, scream, and cry into my bones. You can bring me to my knees, take me out of crucial moments, and shadow my every move. Yet you can not waiver, move, threaten, or challenge my trust in God. That is a choice I get to make, regardless of what anxiety wants to make me feel. And if, when I get to heaven, all I can say is, "God, I chose you even when I didn't feel you," I think that will be enough. 

The art of trusting in God:

I want to give you permission, as a sister in Christ, to choose trust regardless of how you feel. I hope that statement is freeing. If we wait for our emotions to fall into place, we may stay stuck in a spot God never intended for us to be. We may feel discouraged in a lack of trust that we actually have. And we can boldly proclaim that in our weakness, God is strong. Then, when anxiety hits we are not surprised and we are not moved. We accept the feelings that flood our body and know that our choice to trust, regardless of how buried it is in pain, is still seen by God and our hope is reawakened. Need some inspirational verses for trusting in God? Find that here.

Choose trust, friends.