In God We Trust

            Have you ever thought about this phrase? It is on our money, and some say it is what our founding fathers were thinking when the United States of America was created.  But, I wonder if anyone is really thinking about it much nowadays.  I have started really thinking about it—maybe because I have been tested in the areas and things I have been putting my trust in.

            Recently, I was trusting in my financial aid to arrive and carry me through the next few months.  I also trusted that my husband’s Veterans benefits (our only source of income at this time) would arrive in our bank account as it usually does.  Due to events that I had no control over and could not stop or reverse, both of these monetary things that I was trusting in never happened!

            As I started to panic, I realized that I was putting my trust in the wrong place and in the wrong things, and that I had a choice to make (I also needed to calm myself down!)  So, I started to think about how God has taken care of my little family so far and if I put my trust totally in Him, he would and could take care of us in this situation too!

            A lot of the time, we find ourselves living from crisis to crisis—when really we should be living from victory to victory.  It is a choice to trust God in the midst of the storms, in the midst of impossible situations.  I had to change my focus and remind myself of whom God is.  He is Jehovah-Jirah, and He will work all things out for His glory!  The next thing I did was to surrender my wants, my desires, even my needs to Him, and to remember that, as my Heavenly Father, he is trying to teach me something from this—and it was up to me whether I learned the lesson.  

Because I know He is working it all out, and because I have decided “In God we trust” and to let this struggle be a learning experience that builds my character, I am now at a place of peace and hope.  There are moments, even days, when I wish this “lesson” would pass a lot quicker than it is, and when I feel like screaming “Ok, ok, I get it now God, so could we please stop with character building, lesson teaching, trust making—at least for a little while!???  But I have made the choice to trust God, to trust that this too shall pass, and I have decided to live from victory to victory, and to let God have His way, not cry and throw a fit for mine!  
By Michelle McDermott