Trust Is Not a Feeling

Yesterday marked a month before I am to move to Portland. As I looked at the numbers this ($1100/month to raise in 29 days), I struggled to maintain confidence. As I received yet another "no" from a church this morning, I could help but look up into the face of my Heavenly Father and say, "Why, Daddy?"

His answer was short and simple. "Trust is not a feeling, my daughter. Trust is an action."

He lead me back to a memory from February 11th of this past year--the day a good friend, Kate, and I jumped off a 40-foot cliff into the Pacific Ocean at South Point, Hawaii.

I remembered the four-seconds of intense, exhausting emotions as the gravity pulled my body the full forty feet from the jump to the splash. I remembered looking out at the endless waves on the horizon and feeling small and insignificant. I remembered thinking "Whew! That's over!" as I bobbed back to the surface but then staring up the rusty ladder moving with every wave and realizing that the hardest part was yet to come. I remember getting stuck in fear halfway up the ladder and feeling like I'd be there for the rest of my life.

This was no different.

The gravity of concern pulls me downward at times. The waves make me seem small. When I think I'm almost at the end, everything halts for days and days. It's exhausting.

But trust is not a feeling. Trust is an action. Trust is jumping into the abyss of the unknown and believing that my Daddy's going to catch me at the bottom.

So I jump.