November 18, 2012
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Trust is Worth the Price I pay to Keep
I have 12 more minutes of internet if I am going to leave to catch the bus to walk to get to where my host mother is waiting for me at the time I told her. I could just call, but my cell phone was stolen. Stolen and lied to my face about. Then sold to someone else in front of other children who didn’t say anything. And the internet freezes up and I tell myself that minute doesn’t count so I get another one…
Because I just don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about stolen things and broken trust and how hard it is to fix when broken…and all the phone numbers that I’ve lost and how that number is written on 250 business cards. And what if someone calls who wants to donate a million dollars?
“I just need something that is a little bigger than the world I am living in, or I will cry” Is how I feel. And internet is nice like that. It reminds me that I have one friend who has three darling boys. One friend who just had a baby girl. One friend traveling home after a long time gone. One friend to pray for. One friend to laugh with…of course, there is God. He is bigger than the world I live in and I don’t need a little light on my computer to tell me I am connected. Hum.
It is so ugly when someone reprimands you for trusting: “You should have locked your purse up.” Looking at me like it was my fault my stuff was stolen. Those kinds of people need someone to blame to feel better. I understand being careful. I put my things in a back room and closed the door. Sometimes, if someone is determined to steal from you, it is just going to happen.
Worse is the mother of the boy, who knows he did it, but instead lays blame on the church “My children are never going back to that place because all they do is falsely accuse my children of stealing.”
I need to know that God can make something beautiful of this mess. That I am not losing my money and my phone, but am gaining whatever it is that God has planned for this situation. That is what faith looks like right now, and it is hard for me to see.
I’ve been told to lock my purse up now. Behind every locked door is some kind of broken trust, and every time I turn to lock it, I am reminded of that. And honestly, I’d rather lose another cell phone than have to remember that. Trust is such a beautiful thing. Why then, when you are stolen from, does it make trust look so naïve and stupid?
