Some of us who have gone through enough earthly hell it’s hard to be heavenly minded, on an automatic level. Meaning, trusting in God. There is a wrestling match of the self, the mind, the way that we interpret faith or even the willingness to “go out on a limb” and place our trust, which is really our lives, into the hands of the creator of the universe. It seems like a gamble and one that may fail at that.

Often, in childhood trust is automatic until we are given a reason not to do so. Betrayal, neglect, loss, these are detours on the journey of finding safety and security. People are hardwired to live a life with all our basic needs met, survival mode thwarts that sense of safety and it often feels like the axis has been tipped; we, sometimes in desperation, will make all of our choices out of that place of need, to right that axis back into place.

It feels like we’ve been thrown to the wolves, that we are on our own in a race to navigate the rough terrain, outrunning the awful reality of the wilderness mindset. One where you feel forsaken, forgotten. Trying to figure out on a very primitive level that there is no way to make but your own and no one is there to help you. You feel the drive to survive and there is no other way but the one that you carve out for yourself.

There is also the element of human error, the kind that translates to being shown from those early developmental stages that the adults are out of control and not to be trusted. The parentified child enters into the picture. If they can’t parent you, you parent yourself.

Neglect is a power weapon against healthy neurological development, in fact on psychopathic level, it’s hard to operate beyond the toddler stage if your needs were not met at that level. Going to bed with hunger pains, on a cognitive level is not interpreted or explained but there is an awareness and a deep sense that something isn’t right. Rather than the adventure stage of exploration that most children are permitted to engage in, now foraging and hunting for food enters the picture. The natural order of development becomes disrupted.

Trauma forms the unnatural upset that no human is prepared or shown how to brace for impact. It simply arrives on the scene like a bomb that has gone off and the child is left, ears ringing and unable to compute the sudden shift. They are called “resilient” but is it really resiliency if you were forced into it?

One of the most common human responses in life is to “fill in the blanks”. When no one shows you the truth, you arrive at your own conclusions. You make up your own survival guide and manufacture your own compass. It may be insufficient or unsophisticated but it works for you. Children who are not shown real love but a counterfeit version of it become leery of anyone that crosses their path, emerging out of the woods around them.

They’ve been traveling alone so it feels like a threat to have anyone claim to want to accompany them on their journey. Their original caretakers failed them so miserably enough to wound them internally that another person stepping onto their path makes them feel overly hypervigilant.

The saying that we aren’t “an island unto ourselves” actually translates that living a life apart from other human beings, is unhealthy and we need to be around others to maintain healthy integration into society-we are after all, social creatures.

But in living with the wilderness mindset, its’ not about the “shouldy thinking” as Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck highlighted in their work. We don’t always base our life of the “Shoulds”. It’s obviously a great idea to be socially accepted, involved with others and to have healthy relationships.

However, living with the drive to survive, to thrive almost sounds like some kind of Disneyland fantasy world. A luxury at best. Engaging with others carries the need to calculate the risk. Given the internal unhealed wounds that exist within the person traumatized in childhood, it sounds like they are being asked to suspend everything they know in order to experience exposure. And the outcome isn’t guaranteed.

The source of friction, the tug of war on a metaphysical level is that-yes they want to have a healthy relationship but they don’t want to be hurt again.

Often I think of stepping into a bear trap in the woods, the mere idea of freedom invokes the reality of an even more excruciating pain. God doesn’t force anyone to receive His help but He very patiently waits, crouched down, for the exact moment we signal our need to be freed from that trap. And then He graciously and intentionally intervenes to help with the extraction.

And touching on the topic of avoidant attachment, is that the ideal is secure attachment. But to think that someone would actually arrive at the river with us and run the gauntlet of life together, seems farfetched at best. At least if we run it alone and we know what’s at stake, we wouldn’t have someone in the boat that would deliberately sabotage the trip or drown us both.

Trust sounds like a nicety. To be able to place that kind of confidence into another human being, has almost a euphoric feeling about the idea. Let alone, to trust God?

There are a few camps of people out there when it comes to the topic of trust in God:

The devout: Those that have the faith, no questions asked that yes, trusting God is a must in order to navigate through life. Without His help they would be lost. They value His place of love and authority in their lives.

The devoid: They want nothing to do with a “higher power” as they believe only in what can be shown or proven. There is no such thing as some cosmic being out there that actually cares enough to intervene. They believe they are completely on their own and there is no afterlife.

The dubious: They think “source” is cool and all but they are hesitant to make any kind of commitment to such a thing as they are “spiritual” obviously, but they don’t want anything close to religion that might crash their hedonistic party. Rules and such really aren’t for them. So sometimes when they meditate they might throw some kind of casual prayer out into the cosmos but they are on the fence about all of it. Pretty sure that whole “Jesus” thing is just a psychological diagnosis really.

These camps all have one thing in common, mindset. What they believe to be true for them, is. What they don’t believe to be so, isn’t. What conclusions they’ve determined, they have their own manifesto.

Adding trust to the arsenal of tools to carry us through the hills and valleys actually helps heal the way the wilderness mindset can take a toll on the way that people respond to life. Why? Why would trust help or do anything?

It’s a heavy pack to carry on the journey, the weight of it that you will not set it down, will not release it and simply cannot rest because of it.

To trust in the truth of who God is, isn’t a defenseless way of living. It doesn’t demand that we radically relinquish every belief that we ever arrived at and do nothing. It is a revolutionary pivot point to say that perhaps even though we are on this endeavor, even though we have traveled through the battlefields and have our war torn ways; its not rendering us weak-it’s equipping us with what we never had.

Taking into consideration that we are the way that we are for a reason, there is no need to judge by what means we got to the point that we did.

The weight of isolation takes a toll on the mind and the soul. To seek respite, to accept replenishment, to find a newfound strength cannot come from the old ways.

Jeremiah 17:7-8

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
    whose confidence is in him.
⁸ They will be like a tree planted by the water
    that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
    its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
    and never fails to bear fruit.”

Proverbs 3:5-6

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding but in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.”

To trust is to increase our ability to function through the trials and tribulations of life. Exploring the historical context of David, before he was king. Life in the wilderness, caves were where he sought shelter, a murderous King Saul after him. No family to support him. Even he, turned to God. At each and every turn that his life could have ended, he survived. But he didn’t stay in the wilderness. History shows that around 1010-970 BCE, over Judah and then united Israel, that David went from wilderness to wealth.

If it’s working, we stay with it. If it lacks we have room for increase. David wrote in psalm 34 verse 10, “Those who trust in the Lord lack no good thing.”

Looking at his life, he wasn’t one that remined in a church without problems. He was not surrounded by an entourage of people that had an easy life, in fact being out in the wilderness when he wasn’t alone, he was surrounded by warriors. Taking from this example we can see that in season and out during that time, he relied on the Lord and how it worked in his favor. Who he kept company with made all the difference too.

No matter what way we had to teach ourselves to survive before, we don’t have to remain limited. We can add trust in God to our survival kit. Without him, we may have done the best we can, but we can also see that no matter what way we used to operate, we can trust in Him and lack no good thing. He is the one that fully knows where we have ben, but also where we are headed.

I would encourage you today that surrender to God is not a passive choice but a deliberate and intentional strategic battle plan one of the highest most sophisticated methods. The same God that was with David, is the same one, that we have access to. We need only speak with Him, as He is already near. David wrote in Psalm 116:2 “Because He bends down to listen, I will pray as long as I have breath.”

Even as we fight a war we never asked for in the wilderness of life, we need not do it alone.

Don’t give up.