Nancie Carmichael

TIME TO TRUST

What a year: job loss; stock market dive; real estate investments gone sour. The daughter of a friend of ours committed suicide. Another friend discovered he had terminal cancer. And on and on it goes. One of my sons said, "This year really sucks." I agree.

There was good stuff, too. It just seemed harder to find the good news this year.
But when you lose a lot, you take inventory of what you do have: People who care. Family. Faith. A home. Purpose. The privilege to give to other people. And when all the props are kicked out from under you, what gets you through is pretty simple: Trust that God will see you through.

Children can teach us about trust.
Our friend Steve Savelich is a focused, take-charge kind of guy. It was Steve's assignment to pick up their second-grade son, Jake, from school every day. One rainy afternoon Steve was working in his office, absorbed in a creative project and completely lost track of the time. When he glanced at his watch, he was shocked to realize he should have picked up Jake 45 minutes ago.

Steve hurriedly drove to the elementary school. On the way he pictured a crying, distraught little boy, wondering where his father was. When Steve pulled up to the school, all the doors were locked, the lights were out and everyone had gone home. As Steve drove into the parking lot, there was Jake-standing beneath a tree in his yellow rain slicker holding his lunch box, swinging it back and forth. Waiting. Steve jumped out of his car, expecting to see and hear the terror he had unintentionally caused his son. "Oh, Jacob..." he began. "I am so sorry, son, to be so late!"

Steve looked with surprise at his son's face. There were no tears, and Jake's calm response was, "Hi, Dad! You told me you would come, so I knew you would."

Steve got in the car, and realized God was speaking to him through this incident. "Jacob trusted you and took you at your word. Shouldn't you do the same for me?"

Waiting develops trust
I love to walk alongside the Metolius River that is near our home. I walked there last week, and the river was running cold and clear and fast and the trail was frozen in most places; muddy in a few other spots where the sun hit.

There's a bit of green near the water's edge that looks like water cress, but mostly the grasses and reeds along the trail this time of year are dull yellow and brown. Spring is not coming easily this year.

I walked carefully, trying not to slip. The only color for miles was the reddish-orange rose hip blossoms that clung to the bare branches of the wild rose bushes that line the river, along with the bare willows and bare vine maples, now gray and brown. I looked for a red-winged blackbird or a yellow warbler. But I didn't see any birds, not even a water ouzel. Just the cold, fast river and the hard ground, and the muddy, frozen trail alongside the river.

But above it, towering Ponderosas and a clear blue sky, like a promise: Somewhere, deep in the earth, sap will begin rising. Soon, I'll hear a red-winged blackbird. There will be a subtle shift in the feel of the air; a taste of dirt and the sharp sweet smell of rising sap.

I prayed for my son, Andy, as I walked the trail, who was at that moment having surgery to have a ruptured Achilles tendon re-attached. Six months, the doctor said, for him to be back to normal. Six months is a long time for a young man to heal. But he will heal, and what he will discover is that the waiting is only a season. And he will look back and remember, "It was hard. But I got through it, and I'm better now."

It's hard to wait, though. It's hard to wait in the long winter days, when nothing is growing, when everything is frozen.

It's hard to wait for the economy to turn around. Wait for a piece of property to sell. Wait to get that job. Wait for love to return. Wait for health to be restored. Wait for the awful, gut-wrenching feeling of loss to subside. Wait for good news. Many of my loved ones are there, waiting. As perhaps you are, too. Maybe it seems that you've hung on, and hung on. Now your hands are weary from gripping. Help that had seemed eminent, or promised, is delayed. And you ask, "How long, O Lord, O long?"

Walking the frozen trail by the beautiful river reminds me that as sure as the earth turns, a new season will come. All that I have seen helps me to trust for what I do not now see. The faithfulness of our Creator dictates the seasons. He will restore us, He will bring back the springtime. Where we are now is a precursor of the next season.

Thousands of years ago, the poet-turned-king wrote, "I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord.

Adapted from
"Surviving One Bad Year", book published by Howard Publishing, out in October 2009
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