To Trust or Not to Trust

We’ve all had circumstances in our lives where things do not go as we planned or as we had hoped they would. We pour our time, energy, creativity, commitment, and love into something only to experience fear, anger, confusion, disappointment, despair over the end of something we really believed in and truly wanted to work out. We desire to create and sustain good things (otherwise we wouldn’t bother). So why don’t things always go the way we hope they will?

The short answer to this question is, “Because space is being created for something even better.” Let me elaborate.
In my world nothing happens by accident. Nothing. Everything that exists has wonderful potential purposes, and I believe that one of my main jobs in life is to take whatever circumstances I have attracted into my life and do the best I can in that moment to make the most of them whatever they may be.

One of the ideas I depend upon every single day goes something like this:

I can trust God, the universe, myself, and other people to conspire perfectly for my benefit and for the benefit of all. Regardless of circumstantial appearances, I can trust that all things are working together for the highest good of all concerned.

I think many people believe that things often get much worse before they get better. Despite this faily commpn belief. many of us assume that if things aren’t going the way we want them to go they must be “BAD.”

This kind of thinking denies us the opportunities to maximize the circumstances that we attract into our lives. If you think about anything that has happened in your life that you didn’t want to happen, chances are the first thing you did was resist it. In some way you denied it or pushed back against it, thinking “This can’t be happening!” or “I hate this!” or “I wish this would just go away!” or whatever exclamatory phrases occurred to you at the time.

What if, instead of resisting, we chose to act as if this thing we do not want is actually an opportunity? What if we have actually been waiting for this very moment to take our lives to a whole new level? What if the thing that we do not want is actually the secret doorway to an unbelievably wonderful future?

We all have stories of circumstances that we thought were terrible that actually turned out to be “blessings in disguise” once we had the benefits of time, experience, or perspective. How about we take that attitude all of the time, regardless of appearances? What do we lose by doing this? (Perhaps the sick pleasures that go along with being “right” and miserable?) Thinking that there is absolutely no possibility of anything good ever coming from a particular circumstance only delays the realization that whaever has happened or is happening is a great growth opportunity.

What I know for sure is that our chances for success are much better if we are open to the possibilities within less-than-desirable (or downright horrible, terrible, absolutely no-good) events and circumstances. While most of us resist these kinds of experiences out of habit, my hope is that we can all open up at least a little bit more to the possibility that even the worst circumstances and events hold the seeds for real progress for ourselves and for others.

Good farmers plant their seeds. They trust that the seed, sun, rain, and soil will do what they are supposed to do (well, at least organic farmers do!). All of life is rigged for our benefit, whether we believe it or not. Perhaps the next time something doesn’t go the way we want it to (or even right now!) we can choose to believe that it has a useful purpose, even if we can’t see it yet. Let’s believe that it may very well be exactly what we need to expand into an much more expansive experience of life. I humbly submit that that is exactly what it is.

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