Learning to Trust

Learning to Trust

Shortly after I gave my life to Christ I felt the call to go to South Africa. I was a new believer, still riding the emotional high of being adopted into a divine family and confused as ever about what life should look like. All I knew was South Africa was where I was supposed to go.

The first time I applied, the leadership that interviewed me was incredible. They recommended I get myself a little more grounded in my faith, but honored the fact that I was feeling the pull in my heart. They left me with some recommendations and a tremendous amount of encouragement. They continued to stay in touch, and when the next trip came around, and it was time to apply, they made sure I knew.

Getting the call inviting me to go with the team to South Africa is one of my most memorable moments. It was an invitation to step out and take a risk. It was the most exciting invitation I’d received since God opened His arms and asked if I wanted to come home. I didn’t even have to think about it. I was going.

The training was hard. It took a lot of commitment and work to prepare to go, and it was during the holiday season when it’s easy to let your relationship with God slide a little as you succumb to the busyness of the season. On top of that, I was still less than a year old in my relationship with Christ. I was still (and always will be) struggling to let go of my old self-- the self that was very broken, very beaten and didn’t trust other people very easily-- while trying to bond with this new group of people in my life and spiritually prepare for what God had in store for us.

Trust was my main issue. All my life the people who were supposed to love me tended to hurt me instead. I knew God wasn’t like that, but I had a hard time truly living in that belief that God wasn’t going to turn on me the minute I screwed up. In so many ways I lived in fear of losing God’s love.

Our God is so faithful, and so very, very patient.

I feel that in South Africa, I fell in love with God all over again. South Africa is where I learned to trust God.

I was under some serious spiritual attack in the two weeks we were there. I felt undermined, weak, ugly, useless and awkward. I desperately just wanted to fit in with the team, but couldn’t understand why I was there. I felt like the band kid in the gym locker room. For the first time, though, rather than wallow in those feelings, I found myself reaching out to God.

I lived for our moments together throughout the day where I would get out my journal and pour my heart out. I’d sing worship songs whenever I was working, and I’d take time to myself whenever possible to reach out to Him. What was such a struggle back home became the most natural feeling in the world in South Africa. I’d pray in my head as I headed into difficult situations and I’d pray in thanksgiving when God pulled me through them. Time and again He rescued me in South Africa. He opened up my heart, poured into it and then helped me pour out of it.

My favorite memory of this was teaching the poetry class to the kids at Bridges of Hope. I was really nervous, but poetry is a passion of mine. I worked really hard to find poems that would address pain and freedom, and to give the kids a chance to reflect on many of the same things in the poems we wrote that day. A poem I read to every class was “A Hymn to the Father” by John Donne.

I chose the poem originally without really thinking about it, but by the end of that day, after reading it out loud to the classes all day long, I felt as though it was written just for me. It is about the poet and his sin, and his struggle to believe that God could truly forgive him for all that he’s done. It talks about the layers of sin we live in, and that as soon as God uncovers and helps us heal from one, there is only more to be exposed. At the end of the poem, Christ’s power over sin is realized. God is bigger than our sin.

This rocked my world. With every recitation, the words sank in more. My sin isn’t more powerful than God’s love. It took a whole year, and a trip to South Africa to truly understand that. I cried the last time I read the poem for the day, happy tears of finally letting God through that brick wall I’d been trying to keep standing in my heart.

I walked away from that day with a renewed sense of who our God is, and with some amazing poetry from those incredibly talented kids. Their love, vulnerability and eagerness only made it easier to fall in love with South Africa and with the God who made them the special people they are.

South Africa changed me forever. I brought what it taught me home, and left a piece of myself back there.

-- Siobahnne Tyler