from weheartit
Dear Seth,
This letter to you has terrified me from the moment we chose the topics. Now finally writing it is like painting the invisible elephant that popped into my head when I started mulling it over: I’m not sure that I trust you.
Love and respect – we have that balance most days, but I’ve not yet found a commandment that says I’m to trust a soul. Not even you.
Not even you, and yet I mostly do in a very general way. I trust you, because you love me, not because you are strong or because of your resolve or good nature. I trust you because you are patient and kind. You erase my bad records. You keep faith. I trust you because we’ve endured so far.
All these words sound so simple – abstract, like asking what is love and then imagining rainbows and hickies on the collar bone, when really love can be the most glorious pain, second-by-second forgiveness, or selfless abandon.
Trust is quantifiable and not unconditional, something you can earn or misplace or lose altogether. Trust is a relatively fickle thing.
The way I’m wrestling now, how I’m having a hard time knowing the difference between trusting you and trusting IN you, I know it says something about my fear habit. This reveals that I gain some twisted sense of control by holding on to negative expectations toward you. Part of me lives like I’m bracing myself for the earth to shatter. I’ve hidden this even from myself.
You’ve hurt me before, and a great hurdle in my life has been to surrender fear of future hurt – and for that matter, fear of my own future failure. I know all this means that I have to trust God. I know that when I trust God alone, I certainly come to love you more.
Truly my expectations toward you are good, so good. And when I untwist things, I can say that I do indeed trust you because that kind of surrender is the sweetest part of our marriage, and I’m not sure it’s conditional at all.
Believing with you,
Amber
***
Please do join Seth, Joy, Scott, and me as we hold our marriages up to the light. Call your marriage what it really is. Every Monday in April we’re writing letters because we believe that when we bless our own marriage, we bless the marriages of others. If you write a post, simply leave the link to your Marriage Letter post only, and then send your readers to this post for more encouragement from others. Thank you for joining us. Next week our topic is Enduring Loss Together.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Amber, several years ago I heard that, as you point out, the Bible doesn’t say anything about trusting each other. It repeatedly mentions trusting God and talks an awful lot about loving each other. Trust God, Love People. (that seems to ring more true than “Love God, Trust People.” Amy
Amy @ themessymiddle recently posted..Aerobics for the soul
I can’t tell you guys how uncomfortable this post makes me.
I want to hug you! I also want to say “you are so brave!” but am getting the feeling that you might not feel that way… so instead just thank you for sharing even though it was uncomfortable.
How you described needing to surrender fear of future hurt… that is exactly the barrier of trust for me! That fear thing. I feel my arms locked in tight (figuratively? literally? both?) and it takes a lot, a LOT of concentration to let them relax sometimes…
Carissa recently posted..gesso’ed sleeve
Trust is earned, built, and can be broken — so true. Loving someone means letting them in past the armor we put up to protect ourselves from the pain of broken trust. It is such a hard thing.
Joy @ Joy In This Journey recently posted..I Trust You Because… ~ Marriage Letters
So proud of you for posting your true feelings, when they are so uncomfortable. You have made me think about this word trust in a way I wouldn’t have before, so thank you for the sacrifice today. Trust is fickle . . . yes it is.
Shelly Miller recently posted..Don’t Tell Me, Show Me
you spoke the words of my heart. . . and i’m not sure i’ll have the courage to put it in my own words this week. it was a difficult topic to contemplate.
thanks so much for sharing your heart. beautiful, you are.
steph
HopeUnbroken recently posted..i say good-bye, i say hello—5-minute friday post
wow that is a hard topic for sure. Trust.
I am the same way.
Coming from a terribly broken childhood trust was not something that came easy for me and I knew from day one it was me who had the walls. Thirty eight years of marriage has made those walls move on occasion when trust had to take place. It is not that I don’t trust. I trust on some level but I don’t trust someone other than God to know what is best for me. (perhaps because he was the one who protected me on many occasion when life was very difficult). There was no other resource. Trust.
It is a hard and difficult thing to learn and at age 57 I am still learning. I think it will be life long. As you say, Love is easy it is the other ‘layers’ beneath the love that is hard.
Uncomfortable you may be, but I suspect you don’t see how you trust so bravely even in the fear. I’m sitting completely outside your life thinking, it takes an immense amount of trust in your husband to confess your fears publicly. And I’m wondering, (as a single gal who has been given reason upon reason not to let anyone in that could hurt what little is left to be broken) will I ever be as brave as this? So brave to trust your husband enough to admit that sometimes, you’re scared to trust him. It’s certainly an ever-evolving process, and from the outside, you both persevere and trust when the world would say you would both be right to give up and wall the other out.
So, I wonder. Will I ever be this brave? And I thank you both for starting these, because as a single girl, it’s nice to see that marriage is still valued and forgiveness is real and that sometimes confessing to complete strangers your fears and shortcomings can be the exact remedy that was needed. I love what you (both) do here. Thank you.
Brittany recently posted..Psalm 38:8-22
I used to think I was such a trusting person. Then it came time in my life to face everything that had years built up and then been pushed over into a giant mess. There was no trust left, if there had been any at all. I love these words, because the reminder to trust God and love people is deep. God knows how hard it is to let go of fear. <3
This is bold and lovely. Thank you for stirring the heart on this issue today. My own, in particular. Smiling here. You write with such unique raw and real beauty. I do love it. Everytime I pop over to read, you have me thinking deep and digging deep. Grateful here.
The fear of future hurts is a huge hurdle for me in the trust department – more so with friendships and other relationships than in marriage (but it gets me there, too). Agh. I did not need to write this post until I recovered from my sinus infection. or ever maybe.
Amanda @wandering recently posted..the marriage letters – I trust you because…
Wow, you are so right. Incredible that I still finding myself putting my trust in people + things that will let me down … but I fail to truly trust Him + His plan. So much easier, so instant, to “trust” what I can see …. even though I know it’s not the best thing for me.
now let’s see if I get up the strength to join y’all in writing a letter for next monday.
xo
Kac
Kacia recently posted..mini + me | 041412
this was so real. many times real is uncomfortable, but its the uncomfortable things that you bare, that touch others lives, making them comfortable. i know this from experience.. what a great idea. marriage letters monday. hopefully i will join in next monday.. =)
i love the distinction you made between love and respect and trust. that the first two are commanded towards each other and the last to God. i have never thought of it that way before and it helped me to see trust as something precious and fragile that is created between two people who are committed to each other, even if they don’t do it all right. that is really beautiful. thank you.
Brave woman – and true, too. Trust is the hardest thing of all for most of us. It means opening ourselves to terrifying vulnerability and it means loss of control, too. No wonder it sometimes feels overwhelmingly frightening. Thanks for taking this leap – I think that alone speaks volumes about your growing ability to do exactly what you fear.
diana trautwein recently posted..Quiet Time, Nourishing Time
Thank you for this.
Stumbled upon it by chance, it express much of my feelings for my person too, so I asked him to read it too…as these things are so hard to put in words.
All the best to you.
It makes me uncomfortable, too. Thank you, Amber. I’m always here quietly reading these letters between you and Seth. You guys create ripples with your honesty. Just know that.
I’m gone to tell my little brother, that he should also pay a visit this weblog on regular basis to get updated from newest news update.
beauty from pain recently posted..beauty from pain
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