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Consciousness, coping, faith, healing, Hope, life challenges, personal essay, Psychology, self-development, trust
I’ve discovered for myself that hope and faith are feeble things compared with trust. Hope is a kind of yearning for something that seems beyond our immediate grasp, something that may or may not happen. It carries within itself a sense of uncertainty. Hoping for the best, hoping for a miracle, hoping they will be safe, hoping he will not die.
Within the hopeful thought is the possibility that what one hopes for may not happen. Hope is a telltale sign that someone or something is in peril, that danger awaits. Hope itself seems precarious. With any little wind, setback, relapse, or adverse circumstance, it can be toppled and turned into despair.
But trust is more steady, purposeful, positive. Grounded. It cannot be easily reversed even when obstacles or adverse circumstances assert themselves. It’s like the “Little Engine That Could,” the storybook train that steadily chugs along, even when it’s uphill the whole time. “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” Not hoping it can, but trusting in it’s own strength, power, determination, and ability.
We don’t “trust he won’t die.” We trust he will live. And we base that trust on something we feel firm about, something grounded within our very being. Our belief in him, that he has the courage, the love, the wisdom, the goodness to survive his addiction. To surmount whatever obstacles may stand in his way, whatever chains may attempt to hold him down.
Trust is even more keen-edged than faith, I believe. Faith, like hope, may waver. Trust never does. Trust allows us to leave worry and fear behind. It just doesn’t figure in with the mind-set of trust. You can’t trust and worry at the same time, like you can with hope, or even faith. For the fear there, resides is in the very Source we pin our faith on. The knowledge that God’s will may not be our own. And within that gap lies doubt, uncertainty, fear. Or resignation as we give up our will for His greater wisdom.
But trust, the kind I’m talking about now, is an inner conviction, not reliant on something or someone apart from ourselves or the things we trust in. When we trust the dam won’t break, it’s because we know something about the dam, know how well it was made, how strong it is, it’s ability to withstand whatever comes down that river. To merely hope it will hold? To have faith it will hold? Such mindsets seems flimsy in comparison with trust.
I understand that there are some things you can’t trust in, but only hope for. You can’t trust the cancer won’t spread. You can’t trust cancer. But trusting in the body’s ability to generate what’s needed to fight it off? Trust in the chosen therapeutic to do what it was created to do? Even trust in prayer. These trusting mindsets are better than hope or faith, for they leave no room for fear. And fear itself is a cancer.
So much of what we know about how the world works, is how the mind affects everything, physically as well as emotionally. More and more evidence gives credence to the notion that mind, consciousness, not matter, is the bedrock of all that exists. How we think affects everything around us. So we must chose our mindsets carefully. And hope and faith pale in comparison with trust. Even when it comes to God. Or my son.
Deborah J. Brasket 