Out of the Mouths of Babes

Hi. My name is Nina, and I love babies. Whew! Feels good to get that off my chest.

But seriously. I do love babies. They're excited about the world. They're constantly learning and growing and changing. And, best of all, they don't expect you to hold a conversation. Babies are also a reminder to me that life goes on, and that I can be new, too.

Tonight, God used a baby to remind me of a powerful truth. I was sitting at our house church, holding one of the many babies. She grabbed at my bracelet, and I looked down to see her beautiful, soft, unblemished arm laying along my forearm, which is riddled with scars. I tried to pull my arm away, self conscious about her and other church members seeing the scars, but she grabbed my finger. 

I realized, then, that she doesn't care about my scars, she only cares that I hold and love and play with her. It was a poignant reminder not only that the past is the past, but that the scars that define me are not my own. My defining scars belong to a man who was nailed to a cross some 2000 years ago. He took my sins, my shame, my shortcomings, and endured my deserved punishment so that I could experience grace, forgiveness, love, and eternal life. Pretty amazing.

Don't get me wrong, the existence of this blog is proof that my scars are an important part of me. They are an important part of my faith. They are the reason I have a ministry at all. But they are not the essence of who I am. As a reminder, I am, and you are or can be, "forgiven, beloved, hidden in Christ, made in the image of the Giver of Life, righteous and holy, reborn and remade, accepted and worthy, this is our new name" (Jason Gray, "I Am New"). 

Feel free to leave comments or click here to email me at hopeforsi@hotmail.com. I'd love to talk more with you about faith, self injury, suicide, relationships, whatever you're dealing with. Love y'all!

Blind Trust

I babysat for a friend the other day. The baby, we'll call her Abby, is two months old, and she is adorable. Once Mama left, little Abby sat happily on my lap. I read my daily devotion on true beauty to her and changed her diaper with no fuss. Only when she began fighting sleep did she get fussy, and even that was easily remedied by simply walking around the house with her until she fell asleep.

I marveled at her complete trust in me, a virtual stranger who had no kids and precious little experience with them. I marveled even more at at her mother's trust in me - she left the house with no further instructions than "the diapers are there and there's a bottle in the fridge," and she knew I lacked any qualifications. These were two people who trusted me completely with absolutely no reason to do so. Abby trusted me to meet her needs in the absence of her mother, and her mother trusted me to, well, keep Abby alive until she got home.

Abby and her mother painted a very clear picture for me of Proverbs 3:5-6, which says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight."

I can't speak for you, but when I trust someone, it's usually more the "Of course I trust you, I just have to do this one little thing to make it easier for you!" brand of trust. You know the kind, where you don't really trust the person, but you need their help? Yeah. Full on, complete, blind trust is hard for me. But, I think we all need at least two relationships like that in our lives. Hear me out.

First, let's start with the one I know applies to all of my readers, regardless of faith: a friend or family member you can trust completely. This is not only a person you can open up to, but someone you could leave alone to care for your pets, kids, siblings, whatever, and feel completely confident that things would go well. You wouldn't need to call and check up on them periodically, you'd just know everything was fine. Do you have a friend like that? I do. She lives a long ways away now (boo!!), but I'd trust her with my life. It's an awesome thing. Seek this out, if you can, but don't jeopardize your mental safety to do so. I will say, though, that having this kind of friend when you have mental health issues is a Godsend. I frequently call on this friend to help me communicate my thoughts to people, to make me take breaks to talk to her when I'm overly stressed, etc.

Next, the most important one that I pray will someday apply to all of my readers, even if it doesn't currently: God. When I "trust" God, it's often the same way I "trust" people - only as far as I'm forced to by the circumstances, if that. However, my relationship with God should look more like my relationship with my best friend. I should be able to just leave things in his hands to deal with and know that it'll get taken care of in the best way possible. The problem is that I think I know best, even in those situations where I'm not sure which way is up. It's a daily struggle for me to trust as I should. So, I'm not saying I have it down pat, I'm just saying you should give it a try. Tell Him all about the situation; vent, rant, tell Him what you want to happen, tell Him what you don't want to happen, talk your heart out, and then leave it there. Don't worry about it the rest of the day. Or the rest of the hour. Whatever you need to do to babystep yourself to trust.

Let me know how that experiment goes! As always, I love to hear from you so leave me comments or shoot me an email at hopeforsi@hotmail.com.