Learning to Trust

Exercise for Spiritual Muscles

A Year with the Contemplative Pilgrim 2025

“For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him”

2 Chronicles 16:9

I’m taking a break from the series on The Serenity Prayer to give a report on a short retreat that I took last week. December 12, 1989 is my sobriety date. This was my first full day without drinking alcohol and 2025 marks year 36 for me. I often celebrate my spiritual “birthday” and this year I traveled back to The Cottage in the Woods in the Hill Country of Central Texas. The weather was good for mid-December and I was able to sit out on the porch of the cabin and reflect on life.

One of the joys of being a contemplative is being able to “take a long, loving look at the real”. Walter Burghardt coined this contemplative phrase and I consider this as fundamental in my own life. I desire to live in reality, not my self-created illusions and taking time away from everyday life assists in this process. Retreat for me is a way of considering contemplation and the practices it inspires as “experiential awareness of reality” and a “way of entering into communion with reality.”

As I took time to simply quiet my mind, and look at the world around me I begin to notice reality in a new way. I was sitting on the porch of the cabin, reading and looking out into nature when my eyes were drawn to the stone porch itself. I noticed a solid stream of ants, traveling across the porch. These were large red ants and many of them were carrying leaves, some small and many that were several times bigger than the ant itself. As I observed I felt a new awareness of life itself. This process of nature “doing its thing” goes on constantly and I am unaware of it until I slow down and reflect. I wondered how many ants I might have stepped on before I became aware of their active presence. I continued to observe them at work and felt a holy presence, the presence of God as I heard him telling me that He is always at work and that I am the distracted one. This was not a voice of condemnation but of assurance. God was letting me know through my opened eyes that He was working in ways that I do not know and so my task is to trust him.

As I continued to reflect on my life of sobriety I became even more aware of the awesome power of God who worked and is working in my life. I think of my wife Beth and her faithfulness in standing by me in my sobriety. We worked through many 12-Step studies together as we grew in recovery. I remember my long-time sponsor Bill and how we met. He has been a faithful companion through much of my recovery time. My clients, my other recovery partners and so much more ran through my mind as I reflected and I felt praise to God coming from my lips. I am so grateful.

Learning to trust that God has my best interests in mind comes only through practice. I need to exercise my spiritual muscles and God allows events in my life, events that seem bigger than I, to help me develop. I think of the ants who were carrying loads that seemed so much bigger than themselves and yet, along they went, being encouraged by the other stream of ants that they would encounter, making sure that they would not get lost along the way. I felt gratitude once again fill my heart.

Trust must be exercised in order to be effective and this only happens through testing. A contemplative mind, looking lovingly at reality, understands that trials and struggles are actually opportunities to practice trusting the Ultimate Reality, the one I call God. God alone can carry me through all of the events of life and will finally carry me on to my eternal experience with him. There is no need for worry or anxiety as I remember to focus on trusting God.

Until next time,