Always?

Knowing all weekend that I was going to write about this this morning I have been struggling with these three words.  Love.  Always.  Trusts.

I’d love to have time to sit down and talk with each of you about what you think this means, because I’ve been stuck.   So I’m going to do some rambling.

We have a mindset that says that others need to “earn our trust.”  But there are no qualifiers to this statement “love always trusts.”   So maybe if we want to be a person who loves we should start with trust.

But what it someone has betrayed our trust?  It’s foolish to keep trusting them, right?  Or what if we have had our trust destroyed by someone in our past, so it’s too hard to trust anyone?

Trust is defined as “the firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.”   Can we trust once trust has been broken?  Can we firmly believe in the reliability of someone who has proven themselves to be unreliable?

So far (and I’m not done thinking about it yet) I have concluded that love always is in the process of trust.   I either have trust or I am finding ways to rebuild it.    Possibly trust in an individual person is impossible, but I am seeking to rebuilt my ability to trust myself, and, most importantly, to trust God.   Concluding that I can never trust anyone, including God or myself again, is not an option if I want to be one who loves.  

We have often applied 1 Corinthians 13 to apply to our relationship with others, but it may more importantly describe what we do if we love God.  Or, as my husband suggested last night when we were discussing this, that it is talking about God’s love for us.

As I still wrestle with this, I’ve decided that I am going to continue to approach each new person I meet with the idea that they can be trusted until proven otherwise.  As I get older, I’m wiser about what this looks like so that I don’t get taken advantage of, but I don’t want to be a person who assumes the worst about people before I know them.

Furthermore, if I have a relationship that is strained and where trust has been broken, as long as I am not in danger, I will seek to restore it.  No matter what, I want to live my life without fearing trust.   Perfect love casts out fear, so I am going to hold fast to that and work to trust people —  potential new friends, old friends and acquaintances  who may have hurt me, myself and, most importantly God.