Relationships
After what people did to me, I do not know how to trust anyone again. Is being permanently guarded just wisdom now?
“Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.”
Jeremiah preached to a nation that had trusted every available alliance except God and watched each one fail. Into that he sets a picture of a person rooted beside water, unafraid when the drought comes. He is not saying trust nobody. He is saying that when your trust is rooted somewhere that cannot fail, you can afford to risk it with people again, because they are no longer your only supply.
“At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.”
This is near the end of Paul's life, written from prison to Timothy. He says that at his first defence nobody stood with him and everyone deserted him, and then he asks that it not be held against them. In the same breath he says the Lord stood by him. He names the abandonment honestly, refuses to let it harden into a verdict on all people, and keeps going.
A path forward
Distinguish guarded from closed. Pick one safe person and tell them one true thing this month that you would normally keep back. Trust rebuilds in increments, not in one leap.
Stop asking whether people are trustworthy in general and start watching for specific evidence: do they keep small promises, handle your information carefully, apologise well.
Take the memory into prayer and say it plainly to God, including the part you have never said out loud to anyone. Carrying it privately is what keeps it in charge of you.
Closing verse
“What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.”
- Psalm 56:3
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