Does God = Trust?

Or is it the other way around?

“I felt as if I were sinning by announcing to the world and myself that I could trust myself.”

Ever since I read this sentence in Women Food & God, my mind won’t let it go. Everything I hear or read, I hear or read through the filter of: “I felt as if I were sinning by announcing to the world and myself that I could trust myself.”

I’ve been thinking about all the times I didn’t trust me and thus looked outside myself for an answer. It’s sort of what we’re trained to do these days, right? We look for the answer in food, in other people, in books, in pills, in diets, in seminars, in church, and in god.

Once, in high school, I looked for the answer in a Bible study. But those Bible study folks scared the crap out of me. They spoke in tongues and told me that if I danced and listened to rock and roll, that I’d go to hell for sure. But they promised me…all I had to do was give my life over to Jesus and I’d be saved. Yeah, right.

But who hasn’t allowed themselves to be swayed by a gimmick and a promise? Both the diet industry and the god industry are full of them. In fact, they are sometimes combined!

So I’ve been thinking about what it might mean it we were all able to honestly say and believe: “I trust myself. I’m good right where I am. I have everything I need.” Because that’s how I feel right now.

And it feels, at once, wonderful and scary. It feels empowering and threatening. It feels humble and pompous. It feels like I’m saying  “I know it all” even though I know I don’t. And I guess that’s where the sinning part comes in…I mean, who am I to feel that way on my very own??

I’ve been known to be a resister…I resist having other people tell me or show how to do things. Especially certain people. Just ask my mother. I shy away from step-by-step instructions, even when they seem to work for everyone else. I end up having to piece together my own solution based on everything I’ve experienced, the books I’ve read, the things I’ve heard, and the people I’ve known and learned from. And what a mosaic that is!

For a very long time I resisted god. It’s only been recently that I’ve been able to believe in god in a way that makes sense to me. And that means not separating god from myself. Maybe it’s a control issue. Wink.

Seriously though, it’s not that I think I am god, but that god is within me, guiding me along to BE me. And god is in everyone else too. And when I say god, I don’t mean a “religious” god…I mean a force that is greater. Is it possible that we are, at the same time, our imperfect selves AND a force that is greater than our selves.

And so now, this trust thing that I have going on? What is it? Is it god? Is it me? Is it an illusion? Is the access to trust is god? Or is god the access to trust?

Please note that my use of the lower case “g” for god is intentional, but not meant as a sign of disrespect to anyone. It is meant to distinguish between god as I see it and the religious “God.”