Trust in Relationships

It’s fascinating considering the incredible impact of trust in relationships.

Experiencing Trust: It’s taken for granted as it appears, but it is experienced and witnessed as we observe the child and the parent. There is no question between either party. The child trusts the parent for provision and protection. The child holds the hand of the parent. The child awaits the call of the parent. The child lives implicitly by trust in the parent.

Building Trust: The implicit trust of the child to the parent is not automatically conveyed to other parties. Especially seeing as though those who are not parents are initially considered to be strangers and aliens. Strange, foreign, peculiar and bizarre. Only tentative approaches can develop the degree of familiarity that allows a degree of trust. Conversation allows understanding. Understanding employs right responses. Right responses can generate further extension of opportunities to share understanding and perhaps that can lead to joint ventures. Agreeing to meet for a meal. Agree to share matters of the heart. Agree to do what makes for enjoying each other’s company. But it doesn’t take much to put a strain on that trust or break it. Apologies may be offered but how can we ever trust again other than to trust the other to be a disappointment?

Rebuilding Trust: For some it’s about going back to do the things that worked before. Restoration comes for others by establishing new ways of relating. Perhaps the old ways did not take into account the change that took place with growth. Perhaps those ways were only good for that season and it’s time to refresh. It also takes an acknowledgement of the desire to rebuild. It takes both in the relationship to commit. Maybe not to the same degree, but at least on the same basis – that basis being the agreement to build again. It takes intention to place the relationship as a priority. It takes compassion. It takes a generosity of spirit. It takes humility and purity. It takes much to commit to the rebuild, but with that gracious desire to restore and rebuild can come an opportunity to enjoy something even greater than what was previously experienced.

Legacy of trust: My father was one of the main figures who taught me by example the value of trust in relationships. He behaved in a trustworthy manner – he was not one to divulge the business of others, gossip was something he detested because of what it did to trust in relationships. It was clear he invested a lot of trust in the relationships he had largely because of those who spoke so well of him when he left England to return to living in Jamaica. I didn’t follow in all of the ways of my father and thankfully he never left me with the burden that suggested I should be like him in every way. He did leave me, however with the unforgettable impression of the power of trust in relationships. It’s the hallmark of the vertical relationship – trust in God gives Him the steering wheel of your life and the agreement to go where he steers. That trust likewise helps in building and rebuilding the right kind of trust in relationships.

It’s this trust that can make an incredible difference in life.

(Photo by Everton Vila on Unsplash)

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

C. L. J. Dryden