Always Growing: What is Trust?

We all have questions:

Who am I?

What’s my purpose?

Which direction should I go?

Where do I belong?

These questions, and many more like them, are where we start to unravel the abstract tangle of who we are, why we are here, and whether we are worthy of love and acceptance. Whether we say our questions out loud or not, we all have them. And all questions and growth are dependent on trust – trusting God, trusting those around us, even trusting ourselves.

But what is trust?

I built my own definitions for you based on research from several dictionaries, articles, and Brené Brown’s work on the topic:

Trust, noun

a belief state of interpersonal connection and growth which includes reliability, strength of character, truth, safety, and a sense of worth

Trust, verb

the act of vulnerably connecting with another which includes reliability, strength of character, truth, safety, and a sense of worth

When we are very tiny we don’t have an option – trust is survival. No one feeds themselves in the womb. Infants don’t wipe their own bottoms or dress themselves. Later, while we might make our own food and hold down jobs and pay bills, we are still more dependent than we understand.

God created us to trust. Trust is part of our nature, or at least our need to trust is part of our nature. God created us dependent on Him whether drooling in our highchair or grown serving meals to guests at our table. It is in our nature to trust, because without it, we wouldn’t survive. Even as adults, isolation is deadly. We need God and we need each other, which means we need trust.  

Some of us might have a harder time with trust than others, because nurture also has a large part to play in our story. Much of trust is learned. We learn and grow among people. And the world’s brokenness crashes in whether we grew up in solid families or families with more drama. If there were times in our early lives as infants we didn’t get what we needed, it will be harder for us to trust. If we didn’t get the friendships or the safety we needed as adolescents, it can be harder for us to trust. If someone broke our trust in an adult relationship, it can also be harder for us to trust.

Those early days hold a unique power to create some waves in our lives, however. The relationships we have, especially around birth-18 months, uniquely leave waves of impact on our ability to trust throughout life. It is the ongoing care of our earliest caregivers that teaches us what trust looks and acts and feels like. Those caregivers might be a mom or dad, a grandparent, or someone else. I don’t want to overstate their impact, because God is nothing if not creative and doesn’t have to work in our psychological framework, but developmental psychologists agree, early years and bonds are where we learn whether people are trustworthy or not, and whether God is trustworthy or not.

Our caregivers teach us we can ask for help, we can ask for food, and we can ask for love, without saying a word. Our caregivers teach us, sometimes unknowingly, that we shouldn’t ask for help, we shouldn’t ask for food, or we shouldn’t ask for love.

We learn trust when the tiniest versions of ourselves are held in the middle of the night.

We learn trust when our cries for help are answered and when our giggles and grins are met with connection and affection.  

Unfortunately, every caregiver is imperfect, and many have their own baggage. There are many ways early on, we learn that people do not always come through when we cry out.

And then the same is true throughout our lives and relationships. We all have great capacity for love and connection, and also great capacity for disappointing and hurting one another. Those you love likely have done and continue to do things that build trust inside you. They also likely have done or do some things that disrupt trust for you.

It’s time to be honest about childhood and about our relationships. This is one way we get to growth.

Our experiences in this life do not own us, but they will impact how we give and receive trust.  

We can grow in trust and lose trust and grow again.

Just as God creates us in a state of trust and dependency, He also can heal moments and spaces where trust has been broken. Where is grace more vibrantly present, then when we let Jesus in to heal so growth can come. It is those places where Trust has been broken, that God can do His best work and we understand what we need for trust a little bit better than we did yesterday or the day before that.  

Tell me in the comments, what does trust look like for you today? What experiences have taught you trust? Where has God shown Himself trustworthy to you?

Trust: vulnerable connection, impacted by relationships, built, torn, and built again by His grace.

We are always growing…in trust.

Answer these questions for yourself or answer them with a trusted friend or loved one. Keep in mind, we all have great capacity for love and great capacity for mistakes. We can still love people deeply and be honest about our experiences to understand what trust uniquely looks and feels like for us as individuals. 

Want to hear more about trust?

Join me and special guest, Dr. Kim Marxhausen, for Mental Health Monday Live on the Heidi Goehmann Writes Facebook Page the third Monday of each month at noon CST. This month we’ll be live on August 17th at noon. Not available for the live discussion, subscribe to the Heidi Goehmann Write YouTube channel to watch the videos anytime. August 17th at noon we’ll be talking about attachment theory and the childhood experiences that impact trust more deeply.

Tune in to the Coffee Hour Podcast from kfuo.org to hear more from Biblical and psychological research on what builds trust and what hinders trust from infancy to adulthood. Subscribe here:

Up Next:

Early Connections & Growth with Justin Hanneman, LIMHP, PCP + 10 Minutes of Trust with Pastor Matt Schuler