Trust

He was an alcoholic.  I knew that. 

He had an insatiable porn addiction.  I had no clue.

Apparently, while I spent morning, noon and night at work, my ex-husband was on the internet, prowling from one obscene website to the next.   He spent countless hours everyday pandering to this addiction.  I eventually learned that he would even sneak out of our bed in the middle of the night to live in a virtual world feeding his lust and curiosity. 

I never thought to look through an internet search history.  I never stumbled upon a suspicious credit card charge.  Not once did I even sense his absence from our bed.  I really was clueless.  

It turns out there was a lot I didn’t know.  How could I have been so unaware?

Looking back, I know I lived with a belief that his experience was my experience and I trusted him implicitly.  Perhaps I should really say I trusted him naively.  I thought he was as fulfilled in our marriage as I was.  I thought his values were the same as mine.  I thought he was doing what he said he was doing.  I never even considered the possibility that he might be living a life completely unknown to me.  Seriously, it didn’t even occur to me that he wasn’t on the exact same page as me. 

So when I finally learned about what was really going on, I was devastated, not just because of the nature of his actions, but perhaps even more because I felt so stupid.  I felt stupid for trusting someone who was obviously so untrustworthy.  I felt stupid because so many other people knew what he was doing but I didn’t.  I felt stupid thinking I must have missed obvious signs.  I felt stupid for having been duped so readily, so easily, and so frequently. 

But is trusting someone stupid?  Would I rather trust and risk it being violated again, or choose to live a life where I never trust anyone ever? 

I had to wrestle with that issue for a long time.  Finally, though, I had to face the fact that I could go through the rest of my life having “trust” issues, or I could figure out how to move forward.  One of my favorite verses reminds me that “the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy but that Jesus came to give me life, and life to the fullest.”  (John 10:10).  Those words empower me to face whatever challenge is before me since I’m unwilling to succumb to the alternative, namely, allowing Satan to have victory in my life. 

So to face this challenge, I had to come to terms with the fact that it was his behavior that was wrong and his behavior that needed to be changed.  He was not trustworthy.  He took advantage of my trust.  He betrayed my implicit confidence in him. The answer to his untrustworthiness was not for me to never trust again.  Certainly, I could be “wiser” in trusting people in the future, but making a vow that “I’ll never trust anyone again” simply could not be the answer. 

But we often make vows like this:  vows that are borne out of extreme hurt, pain, or disappointment; vows that can shape our entire future life course.  These vows have great power.  But I don’t want the rest of my life to be shaped by someone else’s actions, by somebody else’s brokenness, or by their wrongdoing.  Trust is necessary, in varying degrees, in all of my relationships.  It only makes sense that the enemy definitely wants to “steal, kill and destroy” those relationships by keeping me from ever trusting again.  But that’s not the life Jesus died to give me.  And it’s not the life I choose to live.