First, a note from Kim:
Although I have not met Dr. Bev Smallwood in person, I feel like I know her vicariously through my sister, Michelle, who has spoken highly of her and encouraged me with Bev’s insights and wise counsel. Michelle is a friend of Dr. Smallwood’s and more recently, a colleague, as they are both consultants for Rodan and Fields products. Several years ago Michelle introduced me to Bev’s book, This Wasn’t Supposed to Happen to Me: 10 Make-or-Break Choices When Life Steals Your Dreams and Rocks Your World, which I highly recommend to you, especially to those who have been faced with things that “weren’t supposed to happen” to them – as well as to those who counsel and work with people. This book has provided biblically sound wisdom and practical tools for my own life and my ministry. Dr. Smallwood’s New Morning Devotionals continue to encourage and challenge me to walk daily in wisdom, trusting and leaning on Jesus. Thank you, Dr. Bev, for taking time from your busy schedule to share your heart with my readers. I do hope to meet you one day in this life, but if not I know we will meet when we are forever with Jesus!
It’s a Matter of Trust
Dr. Bev Smallwood
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3: 5-6)
The 7-year-old version of me was excited when she handed her autograph book to her Dad to write. For those of you too young to remember, autograph books were little rectangular books about 1/3 inch thick with blank pages awaiting the messages to be written by the people important enough to you to be allotted one of those pages. Certainly my Dad would get a page. I adored my Dad. He said he’d be honored, and he took my treasured book with him. I opened it eagerly when he retur
ned it, and I read (from the only version we knew, the King James):
“Trust in the Lord with all thy heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct thy path.” (Proverbs 3: 5-6)
I love you, Daddy
I remember being less than excited about that message; didn’t mean a lot to me at that innocent age, except the Daddy love part. But my innocence about the world being a safe and lovely place would be shattered less than two years later when my beloved Dad, a 38-year-old minister, was diagnosed with esophageal and stomach cancer. However, I knew he wouldn’t die; God wouldn’t let him die. I needed him, my mom needed him, and all those church people he helped so much needed him. He was God’s man doing God’s work. Of course, he would beat the cancer. But he didn’t, and seven months later, he was gone.
Trust in the Lord with all my heart? Really? While I managed to rebound somewhat and go on and make good grades and have lots of friends, the seeds of distrust had been sown. How could God have let this happen?
Maybe you’ve been there, too. You believed, and you prayed, and you believed some more. But disappointment set in and took root – disappointment with your situation and disappointment with God.
Over my teen years, my unresolved grief and anger showed itself in, well, “being a teenager.” My twenties and thirties were filled with activity and productivity – education degree at 20, six years of teaching, grad school, and Dr. Bev entered the world of psychology practice. Despite the external trappings of success, something was missing. In my spiritual life, I’d run hot a while, then I’d run cold a while. Sometimes I’d even run wild a while.
I remember the day I finally sat in my pastor’s office, and with tears rolling down my face, I confessed, “I just don’t trust God!” Even more life difficulties had occurred. I detailed some of them in my book, This Wasn’t Supposed to Happen to Me, so I won’t go into them here. Just know that this girl knows setbacks, crises, and tragedies first-hand. How could God let these happen? Oh, how I was embarrassed to admit it to my loving pastor, but those words I had quickly read in my Dad’s message in my autograph book were not so easy to pull off.
Maybe you’ve been there, too. Life has hit you hard. You can’t make sense of it all in light of your faith. You’ve wondered, “What’s the purpose in all this?”
As I sit and write this today, I can’t say that I have all that completely resolved. I don’t know why some things happen on this earth and have hammered my life. I do know that at this point in the earth’s history, because God is extending the season of opportunity, He has not yet closed that window of time of grace. As a result, we continue to live in the chaotic world situation first initiated by Adam and Eve, who chose to hand the keys of authority God had given them over to the enemy of our souls. We believers are not immune from this world’s troubles. Jesus told us, “In this world, you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome.”
The past two years have been nightmares for me and for my family- a debilitating motor vehicle accident that robbed me of my ability to work and walk for months, the tragic death of my oldest grandson, Joseph. It’s been awful. But I can tell you with absolutely certainty and with deep faith, I now trust God completely. I was almost there already, but His work within me during the horrific adversity nailed it down. Only He sustained me, healed me, and provided for me when all my earthly forms of security were gone.
I have learned by difficult experience that when life has taken everything else away, He is more than enough. He can be trusted to intimately walk with me, teach me, and Love me. (I always capitalize His Love, for it’s in a category of its own in the trivialized world we call love.) I have found out by experience that there is nothing that can happen to me that can permanently take me under when I truly trust Him.
As I lay in that hospital bed, unable to move an inch without assistance and without screaming in pain – I was not alone. As I faced the ongoing bills at the office and at home when I could not work for months, my God channeled His resources through loving others and through the miraculous appearance of previously uncollectable large accounts. He was and is more than enough.
He is a faithful and trustworthy God. After all these years of a long and winding journey of evolving faith, I know that with no doubts in my deepest soul. I wish I could have settled it all much earlier in life, but the Holy Spirit never gave up on me. He won’t give up on you, either.
I had intended today to go into a word study of the Proverbs passage so that we could better understand its meaning. As I began to write, however, I was directed otherwise. Perhaps tomorrow is when we dig a little deeper to learn more about the how-to of trust. In the meantime, I invite you to reflect on how the challenges of your life have affected your own real openness to and trust of God. Is it possible that, deep down, you harbor a hidden rift with Him?
Oh, my Lord, when I reflect on how You have patiently and gently led me into knowing You, really knowing You – my heart pounds, and I am so, so grateful to You. You are a faithful and trustworthy God, and I trust You. I love You with all my heart. You know that it has not always been that way. Thank You for refusing to reject me or give up on me. Use me for the rest of my life, O God, to encourage others and to help them know that they can indeed trust You.
Dr. Bev Smallwood is a psychologist who founded The Hope Center in 1984. Bev speaks to audiences across the U.S. and around the globe on Magnetic Leadership ® as well as on how to rise above difficult circumstances and come out stronger on the other side. She’s the author of This Wasn’t Supposed to Happen to Me: 10 Make-or-Break Choices When Life Steals Your Dreams and Rocks Your World. Bev’s been interviewed and featured in such national media as FOX News, MSNBC, CNN, USA Today, Entrepreneur, New York Times, SELF Magazine, and many outlets. Her devotional blog, Dr. Bev’s New Morning Devotionals, is followed by many (www.drbevsmallwood.com/newmorning). Dr. Bev may be contacted at 601.264.0890 or by email at Bev@DrBevSmallwood.com.