Trust — A belief that something is true and trustworthy. Certainty, assurance, reliance.
Trust is important in all relationships; from parents to relatives, friends and even our pets. If we start to distrust them the relationship begins to break down.
What is happening in our world is daunting. I believe we will get to a point where we won’t trust anyone. It seems that the recent shooters’ families had no idea about of their relatives extremists views.
It’s frightening how our society has escalated from simply not being able to trust the people who have proven they are untrustworthy, to now not being able to trust the nice couple next door. We will have to drastically change our idea of what is “safe”- just to protect ourselves.
What frightens me the most is what this world could be like in 10 or 20 years when our children are trying to build their lives. They deserve the same freedom and happiness that the rest of us have had throughout our lives.
What leads a woman and a man to make a choice to kill others? What drives the extreme hate they harbor in their hearts? No matter how it is labeled it just boils down to one thing- hate. Hate, evil, ego, self-elevated pride, power, loathing, etc.
It is a matter of the heart. Pure and simple!!! I really want you to get this so I’m going to say it again. It is a matter of the heart. It is heart disease, if you will.
The blame can be put on stress, being raised by neglectful parents, abuse, brow beating, bullying, but truly these are excuses. The last thing I want to do is to minimize pain that we have suffered in the past or even the present, but when our heart is right we can get through all of the above, if our heart hardens, there is a downward spiral that is nearly impossible to recover from. Circumstances in life can lead us to live a hard life, but the truth is that we do not have to stay there.
Each of us has a purpose. It might be to make a worldwide difference, but most of us are needed right where we are by people who are right in front of us. You’ve heard the saying, “Bloom where you are planted.” That’s most of us. We each have a purpose every minute of every day.
Each day we need to focus on the better things is life. NO, we can’t ignore the violence, but we can’t dwell on it either, because it will take us to that hardened heart that we cannot escape.
My hope is that the following words will steer you to build trust instead of tearing it down. We don’t need to tear down; the world is working on that for us.
Show love, compassion and tenderheartedness.
I’ll share a story. One of our children was ready to go out into the world and was pulling away as hard as she could. It made me and my husband very angry because we were not trying to keep her from growing up, we were on her side but she was being hateful. Her ego and self-pride escalated in a very short period of time. My husband and I had to take a step back, pray for wisdom and evaluate what was happening. Our human instinct was to fight back, but our heart said to love her. That took our pride down a few notches and was hard, but we pushed through with the love.
We sat down with her. Told her that we loved her dearly and that there is never anything she can do to make us stop loving her (even though we wanted to lock her in her room and throw away the key). Oh, sorry, did I say that out loud? Lol.
The end result, after buckets of tears from all of us, she stayed at home a while longer, settled down and began to feel the true love we have for her. That was a victory straight from heaven. I know it doesn’t always work out that well, but this time it did and I am oh-so grateful.
What is happening in this world and in America is frightening but we must stay focused on being the person we were created to be, not a creation of the evil in this world. Show love, show compassion (even when we don’t want to) and be tender hearted. We must be an example for others around us. Our children deserve it, our friends deserve it and our family deserves it.
#smallsteps can change lives.
Love it.