TERESITA TANSECO-CRUZ
A long, long time ago, I was a child living in a paradise of wide-open spaces, chasing dragonflies with my playmates, watching beetles sleep, enjoying summer’s sweet star apples or sour green mangoes straight from the tree, playing games that needed no batteries but charged with energy or imagination. The rain was great for getting drenched in with all your clothes on. Family meals were hearty, home life a cushion, our supremely devoted ( and incredibly romantic) parents in loving attendance to our needs. I took all that good stuff for granted. I assumed that was how the whole world spun. I knew trust long before I could define it or realize its meaning. I felt safe all the time.
Then one-day, adulthood arrived, bringing a stranger called change. The meaning of “sour” seemed to have shifted from the fruits of summer to the fruits of misguided decisions. Delightful rains drenching the body had turned to furious storms wrenching the spirit. Expectations (of myself and others) had dissolved into deep disappointments. But stranger than these changes was how I failed to recognize that blessings continued to outweigh the setbacks in my life. I was focused instead on uncertainty, doubt, stress, anxiety. I wanted more and more of whatever I enjoyed and became insecure that I couldn’t “lock it in.” Discontent and restlessness accompanied my spirit. I kept God at the outer layers of my consciousness rather than the center of my being. My relationship with Him was anemic and meandering at best. And yes, the trust had gotten trapped somewhere.
But patiently, God waited. It seemed that when I turned my back to Him, I would feel His gentle hands around my eyes and hear the words: “Guess Who?” He used special “messengers, “circumstances or events, inner resources He had given me, and unexplained gifts or surprises I casually called “coincidence” to let me know that my life was in His hands. I was safe with Him, not from struggles but from the danger of relying solely on myself to find meaning and worth, gratefulness, and true joy in my life. And somewhere along this unyielding path of God’s grace and persistence, I woke up to His deeper presence.
It has taken quite a while, but Trust has now wrestled free from its cage, settling back upon me “ like the dewfall. “ I see how all the “good stuff “ worth having is there for the taking because the God of untiring generosity is doing the giving. I see that “ coincidence” is really God at work in the details of my life. I take nothing for granted because I have come to re-discover trust not by its usual definition but through its enduring Source. God sustains me every second in His company with unrelenting fidelity, love, compassion, and His trademark, mercy.
So here I am once more – in the old familiar “home” of feeling safe, being safe. I am in my second childhood, and from my distant first, Trust has brought a precious friend: Contentment. This is where I pray God calls me from to that infinite paradise.