When I was a little, bitty girl my Grandma Helen would prop me on a pillow on the front of her saddle and off we’d go. She rode a fast moving Tennessee Walking horse named Reno and in those days, Reno took my grandma and me over the mountains and through the woods and never did it dawn on me we might have been in danger. Grandma trusted Reno, and I trusted Grandma, and our rides brimmed over with joy and enthusiasm.
I think back on these horse rides with Grandma as I mow the lawn with Cruz in my lap. He loves riding the mower and has no idea the trust it takes to bring him aboard a potentially dangerous piece of equipment. I still haven’t mustered the faith to put my baby on a horse with me, but the mower provides fodder for how we all operate on some level of faith in our daily lives, whether or not that faith is anchored in trust in the living God.
My Grandma Helen wasn’t a believer in Jesus, but she believed in her horse and her own human abilities to keep her grandchild safe on a thousand pounds of animal with a mind of its own. Grandma grew up in Montana and rode a horse miles to school every morning rain or shine or snow blowing in her face. Horses were like cars in those days, just part of daily life before everyone owned automobiles. At seventeen, Grandma sold her horse and bought a train ticket to California all by herself, again acting in faith that when she stepped off that train, she could build a bright, new life in a sunnier clime where she would acquire new horses.
Shivering in the hard Montana winters as young girls, Grandma and her sisters dreamed of plucking bananas from trees in California. This never came to pass since none of my grandparents’ trees ever produced bananas, though fig and cherries fattened birds and grandchildren fifty years later on their lush California property.
The gist of this tale is it takes trust to live our lives: we all operate by putting our faith in something. I’ve heard people say, “I will never place my faith in a God who …” Fill in the blank for most likely you have heard people say this, too. If God does not answer our prayers, live up to our expectations, or cater to our wants and wishes, we decide to live without Him or just keep Him around for Sundays when we dress all nice and smiley for church. Come Monday, many of us put our trust in something far less than God, and a day always comes, usually an average day that turns into an all out nightmare because of an accident or infidelity or some other life-altering tragedy, when that trust in something far less fails us. Completely and utterly fails us. This kind of crisis often forces us to reevaluate where we’ve placed our trust. Every American dollar in our wallet says, “In God We Trust,” but for how many of us is this really true?
The day of deciding where I placed my trust arrived for me in the middle of a marriage mess. Plus, at that time, I was sick of the inability for Sunday church to change my circumstances. Church had become bad juju for me. It just made me feel worse about myself and my life. In church, Jesus hung on a wooden cross in a wooden building and my wooden heart was absolutely out of gas for all this wooden religion. One desperate day, not in church, I said to God, “If you’re real, I need you.” I said this with all my wooden heart and after this, God became real to me. Jesus changed my life.
Yet there are days even now I still sometimes find myself putting my trust in lesser things than God. I believe this happens because of pride. All is well in my world and I begin to believe I can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan and never, never, never let my husband forget he’s a man because I’m a woooooman…” Remember that TV commercial? I think it sold perfume. Anyway, I start trusting in my own ability instead of God and fall flat on my face in front of the cross begging God to forgive my arrogance and fix my mothering, or my marriage, or some other broken cog in my life wheel. And God is so gracious to always pick me up and put me back on the solid ground of his promise that, “I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength,” Philippians 4:13.
I often find myself praying this verse as I chase after Cruz and G2 alongside mommies half my age tailing their small children. This morning my little men raced off before breakfast in a motorized toy jeep. In high gear this little buggy goes surprisingly fast, keeping me jogging after it, instructing G2 on safety maneuvers. After an hour of this business before finishing my second cup of coffee, I felt like I’d been to the gym, and I’m not a gym girl. While jogging through the field in my flip flops, I mulled over the trust it takes to put an 18 month old in the passenger seat with a four-year-old driver. Our oldest daughter Cami often chides me for choices like these. “Who buys their three-year-old a skateboard?” she said to me at nine magnificent years of age, disgusted with my parenting decisions even before all her college child-development courses. Luke was the tot scooting around on the skateboard at the thrift store. The board cost two dollars and Luke was having such fun with it, I carried it home for him much to Cami’s dismay. Fortunately, Luke never got hurt on the skateboard so I didn’t have to hear about it for the rest of my life. When that old married woman Cami comes to visit these days, I tell her, “Stop worrying about your little brothers. Pray for them.”
I won’t ever be able to trust in horses or other animals to keep my children safe the way Grandma Helen trusted Reno. When Cruz rolls around with the dogs, I ask God to take care of him. Sure, I could deny baby Cruz the pleasures of dog-rolling and jeep jaunts and mower riding, ensuring his relative safety, but the truth is we cannot keep our children safe in this unsafe world. The Bible says, “God cares for those who trust in Him,” 
Nahum 1:7.