Matters of the Heart – Trust T
he tradition of Valentine’s Day is about love and relationships. Love and connection is not just about a season or a day. Love is present always. Many of you may remember the classic movie Love Story with Ally McGraw and Ryan O’Neil. There was this line in the movie, “Love means you never have to say you are sorry.” We all know that is absolutely not true. Love means you get the opportunity to say you are sorry over and over and over again. The line does have some interesting aspects, as many people think that relationships should be EASY and that is what that statement infers to me. Most of us know relationships are not easy. They challenge us in ways that nothing else can. Relationships can hurt us deeply. They can cause us to behave in ways that make us hardly recognize others or ourselves. You may find yourself asking, “Did I just do that? Did I just say that? What was I thinking?” Relationships can offer us our deepest blows and our most amazing, joyful experiences. When it is all said and done, everything is about relationships. There are the relationships we have with others, the relationship we have with our self and the relationship we have with God. Relationships are something that are all-inclusive and very important yet seem to be baffling, ambiguous and filled with myths and misconceptions. We often seem to lack understanding, education and skills to maintain healthy relationships. We are taught to do math problems, science theories, how to conjugate verbs, yet there are no classes in
school that teach us about the most important things in life, relationships and love. Many believe that the foundation for a loving, healthy relationship is trust. But, what is trust? Where does it come from? Is there a difference between TRUST and TRUSTING in someone or something? What do you need to be able to trust? Do you need to trust someone to feel safe with them? Or can you not fully trust someone and yet still feel safe and still love them unconditionally? We usually use TRUST as a noun. Remember nouns describe persons, places and things. Actually, trust makes more sense when we use it as a verb. Trust is a process. It is not a feeling. It begins where all things begin, in a belief. What you believe about trust, relationships and yourself will create your definition of Trust. There are those who believe that trust is earned. There are those who believe that trust is there until proven unwarranted. There are those who believe you can never fully trust anyone ever. There are those who believe trust is always about the other person. All of us have been hurt, lied to and about, deceived or let down. When that happens our humanness wants to recoil, become fearful and become untrusting. So what is the answer? If TRUST is the foundation for all relationships and we all have been hurt and want to avoid being hurt again, how can we TRUST? How can we have loving relationships? First, we must build our own inner resources so that our safety and security lie stably within ourselves, not based on
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by Sherry Petro-Surdel