Warning: this blog post will not uplift or encourage anyone and may even cause melancholy. For that, I apologize in advance for dashing anyone’s hope into the dark abyss of futility. Maybe tomorrow I will delete the “not so encouraging” blog post. But for today, here goes:

I give up. I give up trying to put my trust in anyone or anything other than God and my own conscience. Not trusting someone and being proven wrong is far better than trusting someone to be what you hoped and believed they were and then being proven wrong. Putting up a shield/wall around yourself may be a cop-out but is more desirable than opening up completely and being either rejected or betrayed. Twenty years ago, I took those kind of chances with my heart and was passionately  willing to sacrifice my own dignity if it meant I was to give people the “benefit of doubt” and trust them in advance. Unfortunately, I learned the very hardest ways that being a trusting person is akin to throwing oneself into shark infested waters.

In the last few years I’ve watched some people who I believed to be very trustworthy  make some of the most deceitful and hateful choices in their lives leaving many others to pick up the pieces. The people they hurt are daily trying to get past the pain and put what ‘s left of their lives back together.  It had a huge impact on my ability to trust others. I grieved for my friends and their families and I also grieved because I knew that once again human nature cannot be trusted. Ever. Period. I know this is cynical and negative, but today I can’t climb out of it. It’ll just have to be one of those days. I’ll work on moving past my disappointment in the human race tomorrow.

For tonight, I lean on the undeniable and unarguable truth that God is who He says He is and that He is the only one I base my trust in. I trust that He loves me. I trust that He loves the human race, in spite of whether we deserve it or not. I trust that in the end, we will all see the ultimate truth to things our feeble minds just can’t comprehend. I also trust myself. At 43 years old, I know who I am, I know what I want from life and I know what I need. Whether that makes the day better or not, I’m unsure. But, I trust myself. I’m not some insecure twenty-something searching for her place in this world and struggling to get to know what I truly need and want from life. I know I need God. I know that I’m flawed,  yet, at the same time I’m strong and accomplished. I also know that I’m valuable – to God – whether I feel that way every day or not. And most of all, when I feel flattened and let down and even invisible at times, I know He still sees me.

“It is better to trust in the Lord Than to put confidence in man.” (Psalm 118:8)