Trust

Sunday Scribblings prompt this week is "Trust."

I spent a lot of my life in search of a person in whom to place my trust. I wanted a kind face to look straight into my eyes and tell me, "It'll be all right," and I wanted to believe that somebody else knew, could ensure, that it all would be all right.

More than once I eagerly, frantically, piled all my eggs into one or another basket and watched, dumbstruck, as the baskets were left by the sides of roads, flung into traffic, stepped on by feet on their way out my door.

When the door closed behind the final set of departing feet, I was left with no eggs and no basket in which to place them.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. -Genesis 1:2

The crashing roar of my sandstone cliffs toppling into the ocean subsided, and in that moment of void, the realization came to me that . . . I was still breathing.

It was then that I began to grow out of the childhood that had held me in a needy grasp, and this is what I have learned:

I need, and am strong enough, to carry my own eggbasket. It is not that people are unkind; it is that the weight of my eggs is too great to add to their baskets.

I can, if I choose, put down the basket. It is not necessary that I carry it everywhere with me.

Trusting creates feelings of security, so long as the trust is properly placed.

I can trust no person, not even myself, to keep me safe.

What I can trust is the ongoing universe:

• The sun will rise in the morning and it will set in the evening.


• My autonomic nervous system is designed to assure that I will continue to breathe.


• Winter will come and, please God!, go, and spring will follow.


• Flowers will bud and bloom, and birds will return and make nests and lay eggs.


• The eggs will hatch, new wet helpless chicks will be fed and fledge and fly...all without their conscious trusting that those things will happen. That's the Plan.

Life goes on.