“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”

Proverbs 3:5

Having been on pregnancy bedrest with triplets, I have had to trust God like never before. I could eat nutritiously, follow the doctor’s orders, pray, but I really had no control over the outcome.

My constant prayer for myself and the three fragile lives inside me was, “Every breath is from you, O Lord.”

Fortunately, I had a happy ending to this story and my triplets just turned 25! Yet I often wonder, what if things had not turned out so well? Would I have been able to continue to trust in God’s goodness? And do I choose to humbly trust Him still? Back then I didn’t have much choice…….the babies were going to come out of my body in some way or another. But trusting God didn’t stop there. It is a constant struggle and in fulfilling my call to motherhood, I have had plenty of opportunities to learn to trust God over the years!

During the recent pandemic I have been further challenged to trust God in all things and found myself going back to my prayer from over 25 years ago, “Every breath is from you, O Lord”. While the world around me lived in fear, for the most part I was trusting God and not worried about illness. I was much more worried about the loss of freedom, the tyranny and all the economic and psychological damage from the promotion of fear over faith, shockingly even from most churches. It was as if fear had become a virtue which is not truth. God is in charge of every breath we take, from the first to the last, not any human being, the government or the church.

I don’t know what new challenges lie ahead for me in life, but my struggle to trust God is difficult and ongoing. All too often I find myself choosing fear over faith. Sometimes we have done all we can or know how to do and need to give the rest to God. I am glad His goodness and love is unchanging. And so I conclude with the words on the Divine Mercy image of Jesus as seen through the eyes of St. Faustina, “Jesus, I trust in You.”