Many of my fellow Indigenous People, Native North American People, and other people groups that have been victims of oppression and injustice have struggles with the issue of trust. Our journey of life is filled with many aspects that cause mistrust or broken trust or no trust.
How do we recover from such a dilemma that truly does affect every aspect of our lives and weighs down our hearts? In fact, breaks our hearts.
With my upbringing, which included being a Sixties Scoop Survivor, I experienced certain relationships or lack of relationships that caused me not to trust certain people or situations. I had a built-in radar that was set off when I came across someone who couldn't be trusted or whom I didn't want to trust.
It started with being thrown into the child welfare system and being moved around 12 times before I ended up with the Stelter family. This was a loving and trusting home, but after I watched my adopted mother die during a six-year battle with cancer, I felt like this radar of mistrust started to kick in. Then my adopted dad got engaged to a new woman in three months and then married within the year caused more mistrust. We didn't connect very well, and this just added to all the events that were building up in my subconscious mind and heart.
This leads me to look at Proverbs 3: 3–6, 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."
For those of us who have struggled with issues of abandonment and trust, doing this is harder than we expect. In fact, even for those who don't have significant issues with trust, they too will have times when trusting God doesn't come easy.
As Indigenous and Native North Americans, we have experienced 400–500 years of colonialism and a genocide. It has been one trauma after the other and many forms of separation. All these experiences that any one of us may encounter, can create a lack of trust. Unfortunately, this lack of trust can transfer over to our relationship with God. Then for those of us who didn't have a father figure, or a good relationship with our father, we can see God as someone who also can't be trusted.
What I love about this passage in Proverbs is that it focuses on the heart. It focuses on our understanding. It focuses on our ways. It focuses on our paths. These are the areas of our lives that can help us be successful in God's plans for our lives. These are the areas of our lives that are all central to our heart, and in the ancient Jewish traditions the heart was the center of our emotions and ambitions.
The wonderful thing about putting all our trust in the Lord is that God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to save the world, to bring us the comfort of God Himself. When we put our complete all-in trust in the things of this world we are often let down. Even family members, whom we love deeply, can let us down. Yet, with God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, we can enter a trust in the one who has our best interests in mind. He wants to mend and heal our broken hearts by showing us that we can trust Him fully and completely.
I know I haven't been the greatest example of always keeping my word, and always doing what I said I would do, when I said I would do it. Yet, God can be trusted fully and completely. Having this complete all-in type of trust in God doesn't mean that everything will go our way, in the way we want it to. God's understandings, ways and paths are kept straight because God doesn't change.
I'm sure each of us knows what it feels like when our understanding, paths and ways are starting to go crooked. It is then that we must make a connection with God again through prayer, confession, reading the scriptures, and going back to church. Then, beyond any doubt, we will see our understandings, ways and paths go straight again. Then our heart is in a strategic and biblical position to continue to be healed.
If you feel like you have gone off the beaten path of God's understandings, ways, and paths, then run back to Him and let Him put you back on a straight path. Let Him heal your heart that can only be healed by His Son Jesus Christ.
Parry Stelter is a doctoral candidate with Providence University and Seminary in Contextual Leadership. He is an active church member in Stony Plan, AB, Canada. He also offers workshop on dealing with grief, loss, intergenerational trauma, and other topics. Visit his website at wordofhopeministries.ca to learn more about this ministry.
