In other words, God wants us to have invested our minds in God’s trustworthiness to the extent that it’s no longer head knowledge, but true heart knowledge. When we believe, fully, thoroughly, that God has our best interest at heart, then no matter what happens, we put our life in His hands - and leave it there.
In February 2007, we had a very warm day, after a series of cold days when the children hadn’t been outside. After a morning of schoolwork, I told the boys they needed haircuts - outside. I trimmed Christopher’s hair first. When I finished, he asked if he could ride his bike while I cut Jonathan’s hair. I said yes, but that I wasn’t going to be very long, then we’d do a little more school work. He quickly grabbed his bike and rode on the porch, headed towards the ramp down to the sidewalk. The porch was wet. He was going too fast. His wheel lost traction. As his bike slipped out from under him, Christopher was catapulted into the logs which stick out from the corner of the porch. The impact broke his jaw, popping the bone out of the flesh and then snapping it back in again. Christopher came running, screaming, blood pouring out of his mouth and out of his face.
The trip to the ER, the ambulance ride, the next four days in Cardinal Glennon Hospital, and the three weeks of his mouth wired shut were some of the toughest days Ron and I have endured as parents. We had many conversations about that incident. I don’t know why God allowed it to happen. It was such a freak accident - with such big consequences! Ron and I asked ourselves, and God, what we were supposed to learn from the whole thing. I did learn some things. Some good things came out of the whole ordeal. But I don’t know that we’ll ever know why it happened. Still, the one thing that Ron and I both concluded had to do with trust, trusting God completely. Think about it: is it really trust if only good things happen? Or, can you really say that you trust God if you always see why a thing happened? Trust means believing that God has your best interest at heart even when you don’t see why, even when it is something painful and difficult.