On Trust and Love

I have a friend. She is really hard to deal with, and has been for the majority of her life. I don't think she will change, and I think she has a lot of pain that she has to deal with. I state this not as a judgement or an opinion, but as a statement of fact. It is what it is.

I have another friend that was in a relationship with her years ago. After some conversation about friend #1, and what we could do to help her, the ideas about trust and love came up. I've been thinking about both of these ideas a lot lately, but I also think they are commonly in our thoughts as human beings.

Trust is important. It's super important, especially in relationships (and when I say relationships, I mean them in a very wide sense, including friendships). I think that if you don't have trust, you can't have a functional relationship. You just can't.

I believe love is the strongest force in the universe. I am a Christian, and as a follower of Jesus I am continually amazed by all that love has conquered and how we see that woven throughout the entire life of Christ and story of the bible.

But in terms of relationships, trust is at least as important as love. I don't say this as the final authority on the subject, as I'm not married and not in any serious relationship. But I do think that observations and what experience we do have can take us a long way. Over the summer, especially in terms of my relationship with Christ, I began to see love as a commitment, a choice that you choose time and time again, regardless of circumstance. I choose to love God by thanking Him for being Who He is, regardless of the good or bad happening in my life at that time. And I imagine that when the time is right, I will choose to wake up next to my husband every morning, I will choose to be patient with him, I will choose to serve him and our kids. Because love is a choice, a commitment that you must choose. And out of that commitment comes trust.

Trust is a natural response to love. I will trust you when I believe that you will stand by me, because of what your past actions have shown. Love is so, so strong; it crosses oceans and makes distance obsolete. It makes us brave. It gives us hope. But trust is what cements these great things that love starts. Love doesn't lack, at least not the perfect love that the bible describes. But I think it's safe to think of trust as an extension of love, as a manifestation of it. Because it's a response, it has its beginnings, its cause, rooted in love.

Where there is trust, there is love.