Guest Columnist Epic Trust

Sep 29, 2009

As a kid in Catholic School, I learned all about the epic tales of Abraham, Jonah and the Whale, Joseph, John the Baptist and the Blessed Mother. They all seemed so fantastic and out of this world…tell me one person YOU know whose been swallowed by a whale. To follow God these people had serious trust…they had epic trust.

 

As a 25-year old woman in the Los Angeles area, I’m not expecting to be swallowed by ocean life anytime soon, but I am still called to the radical, unwavering and epic trust of those I read and learned about as a kid. 

 

I didn’t always live in California, and my own tale of epic trust has been unfolding now for several months. I’m from Pennsylvania, right outside of Philly (go Birds) I had a great job, a great apartment and great lack of trust in God. I was super comfortable, a twenty-something with all the fixin’s: cool place, free weekends, nice ride, great friends, and I literally lived next door to my church. What more could you ask for? “Nothing,” would have been my response to you just a few short months ago. But what I didn’t realize was that there was something missing: a truthful and penetrating relationship with the God, who (literally) lived next door.

 

I came out to California because I felt called. I didn’t have a job waiting, I didn’t have a new permanent residence set up, but I left my whole entire life in PA behind me. It was the scariest thing I had ever done, and to top it off I drove across the country to get here. Please don’t get me wrong, this was like pulling teeth for me. I am the worst “truster” in the universe, and I also happen to be really bad with change, so though this sounds like the makings of a four star coming-of-age chick flick, it was terribly difficult for me.

 

The point of this little column is not to update you on Kathryn’s Summer 2009 Experience, its to remind you (and me) that God is still calling us to trust with everything we have. To have crazy, get- in –your-car-leave-your-life-behind-and –follow-Me trust. Trust that God has control over every aspect of our lives as long as we allow Him that control. We have to turn it over every day.

 

To a young person in LA –such as myself, or maybe you—that can seem like an impossibility for an abundance of reasons:  1) LA is so fast-paced and competitive that allowing Someone Else to make decisions for me seems totally ludicrous. 2) It’s hard to find people who would support such insanity as trusting in the God of the Universe. And 3) sometimes I’m not in the mood. But when it’s hard and I’m lonely and I’m not in the mood I have to remember the journey: my safe trip across 3000 miles of road, the job that landed right in my lap in the worst recession my generation has ever seen, the roof over my head and the friendly hellos from home in my Facebook inbox. All of it is by the grace and will of God, Who (when given the ropes) can get things done quite a bit more efficiently than I ever could, even on a good day.

 

Ok, so feeling called to cross the country to get a fresh start might not be as epic as, “Hey, cross the desert with an entire nation of people following you,” or “Do me a favor:  bear and raise the God-Man, Creator of the Universe and Savior of the World,” but it’s part of my epic tale, everybody’s got one. The whole of creation is one endless, fruitful epic tale of God’s love for His creation. To tap into that and find our joy, peace, happiness, we gotta trust. Trust is hard, but 10 out of 10 saints recommend it, and it comes with an eternal guarantee of satisfaction.