Trusting Tuesdays

I'm linking up today to Trusting Tuesdays at The Messy Middle, part of the OneWord365 project. 

A very smart gal named Amy Young gathered those of us with the word "trust" as our One Word for 2014 and invited us to join her the Third Tuesday of every month with our posts.   This way we can see how we're doing with being faithful to the word we chose.....good move, Amy!

I find it interesting that even though I've walked the trust road for only 21 days, God has gradually turned up the heat in areas where I need to trust Him.  In the beginning, it was similar to using flash cards; He and I went through the easy ones first.  I started out simply trusting Him with a person, a situation, or a relationship.  Common, ordinary, everyday scenarios where I just take a moment, breathe out a prayer of "I trust you God with so-and-so," inhale deeply with renewed resolve and press on.  Granted, it feels good to leave those things and people at His feet and let Him carry the burden. There were times I had to remind myself not to take back the burden for my so-and-so's; they were now God's to handle.  I like this trust thing, I thought;  it's working for me.  And it was.  It is.  I have experienced a newfound freedom.

And God must have said, "Good!", because right after that little victory, we moved swiftly along.

As a matter of fact, I think we jumped directly to the back of the flash cards. To the hard ones.

Let me set the scene for you.  I'm rarely sick.  Hardly a cold, nary a cough, and I only use the occasional tissue.  I'm not a plow-through-I'll-just-go-to-work-anyway-but-I'm-really-sick kind of person.  Not at all.  I just don't usually pick up germs that have me down for more than a few hours or a day.

But this past week has had me daily running through a strange array of physical symptoms; none of them life threatening or scary, all of them annoying and mind-consuming.  Like, "I can't stop focusing on them" consuming.

God knew where I needed direct training in the area of trusting Him.  And He brought it.

The cherry on top came yesterday when I was faced with a new symptom.  And this one brought pain.  I was more wondering what to do than I was concerned; sometimes the questioning of whether you're a hypochondriac or not is what's actually the most disconcerting.  Do I call the doctor again?  Or do I wait it out and hope to get better unaided, even when a snowstorm is coming and if I don't get an appointment today it's going to be a while?  The not-knowing-my-next-move was making me crazy.  I hadn't been to the doctor's office in over a year, and here I was looking at making my second appointment in a week.

So I called.  And I received a healthy recommendation to stay put, eat more yogurt and buy a costly over the counter product.

My gut told me that was not going to do a blooming thing for how I was feeling.

But wasn't I supposed to trust the doctor?  Was it right for me to tell her she was wrong? And where did trusting God in all this come into play?

After an hour or so, the nagging in my brain (God....is that You?) told me I had to take action.  Again I dialed the now familiar number and this time made an appointment asking to be seen (thereby disregarding the doctor's  phoned-in advice). It was the right thing to do; I knew it immediately. I had taken a step and listened to my body, mind and soul and what they were telling me to do.

And I realized in so doing, I had listened to God. 

This was new.  This was trust with a twist.  It wasn't a simple, "God, I give you this situation/person/relationship" and then walking away.  This time, trusting God meant listening to His voice in the midst of my confusion, and realizing He was leading me if only I'd stop long enough to notice.

Good thing I went to the doctor's.  I did in fact need to be seen, and the snow did in fact come. A lot of it.

And in it all I learned a new way to trust - by being quiet and listening.  And then stepping out in obedience to what He's telling me to do.

Next flash card.....