Trust can get broken so easily, but we can build a new trust by cognitively reassessing our situations.  It takes time and effort, but it is worth it.

There was a rebuilding that needed to happen. It was a rebuilding of trust in themselves and with others.

Somewhere, some time, every one of us is going to have our trust broken. We live with an expectation that certain things will happen the way we believe they will happen. The rules won’t get broken. That the promises made will be kept.

But trust gets broken in many different areas of our lives.

relationships

career

health

Government

Church

God

I once sat with a man who, in his late forties, discovered he had manic depressive episodes.

Up till then, everything seemed fine. His wife told me that he had had a few strange moments in his life with some weird ideas, but for the most part, he lived within the bounds of what anyone would call normal.

Then all of a sudden, his illness truly took control, and he started acting highly erratically. He was admitted into the psych ward and began the journey into an awareness of his broken self.

With medication, support, and guidance, he returned to his family and started to rebuild his life. But there was a deep loss of trust in himself, his world, and his God.

As he talked with me, there was a need to rebuild trust in himself. The beliefs he had about himself, life, and God were all lying in rubble.

Trust questions knawed at his soul.

Do I trust my thinking?

Where was God?

What do I believe now?

Who do I trust?

Shame and guilt pounded on his soul. ‘What a fool’ was spoken out more than once.

When you’re in a hole, it’s easy to drown in the dirt you’re digging in.

Broken trust Bible

The Bible is full of stories where trust has been broken.

Josephs relationship with his brothers

Davids affair with Bathsheba

Peters denial of Jesus Christ

With each of these moments, there was a time where there was a breach of trust.

Joseph trusted his brothers, but they sold him into slavery. Could he trust them again?

David broke marriage vows and commitments to God. Could he be trustworthy again as a man and as a leader?

Peter broke his trust relationship with Jesus by denying him and leaving him alone. Could Jesus trust him again?

All of these examples, plus many more, show the fragility of trust. Trust is finite; life is fragile.

There is a Fragility

As I sat with the man discovering his manic depressive illness, I witnessed his awareness grow about his fragility.

That given the right amount of stress, lack of sleep, and with a body that was vulnerable in its own particular way, then the fragility would crack. He would become unwell and unstable.

He was becoming aware of his weaknesses.

Before the breakdown, he would have given theoretical assent to this weakness, but now he was truly knowing and embracing it on a soul level.

He could have talked about physical weaknesses on a theological level, but now he was searching for God amongst the rubble of his own torn down city.

There is a fragility in life we can’t control and is open to breaches of trust.

Cognitive reassessments

Rebuilding trust requires the ‘brick by brick’ work of cognitively reassessing that which we are trusting in.

A cognitive reassessment means to look at the facts. The brick and mortar of the situation. Is there change? What actually has been done?

Brick by brick, we can build it from the floorIf we hold on to each other,we’ll be better than before. Train

Our subconscious can be reprogrammed through cognitive reassessments of behaviors.

Joseph had to do a cognitive reassessment of his brothers to see whether they could be trusted again. He did this by giving them several tests.

David could not be trusted to be leader and King again without going through his dark night of the soul. The behaviors of repentance and sorrow marked a changed life.

Jesus could once again trust Peter when he saw the brokenness of his heart.  He had to tell Peter three times of his trust in him.