Can you still trust Him when it feels hopeless?

For He has never failed you yet...

In 2020, I graduated college. I studied film at a small Christian school, determined to move back to my hometown, Chicago, once I finished (God had other plans).

By the end of the fall semester of my senior year, I couldn’t deny that I wanted to stay, but I had made plans since my freshman year to complete my last semester doing an internship in Chicago. 

My heart to stay and forget my three-and-a-half-year plan was strong, and I genuinely considered throwing it away. But after praying a lot about it, I didn’t feel enough clarity to forgo plans. So, I went to Chicago, made some forever friends, and got shut down by COVID six weeks later. 

Since 2018, I’ve had a word of the year (the first one being “growth”). I remember God putting the word “trust” on my heart in December of 2019 as my word for 2020 and the verse Proverbs 3:5-6 to go with it. 

2020 ended up being an entire step-by-step year of trusting… for everything.

My roommates in Chicago and I were forced to go back home with half a semester remaining, no one knew what was going to happen, we couldn’t have a graduation ceremony and we were shoved out into the workforce that didn’t have jobs and was relearning how to work from home, and while most people lived in fear, I still had the desire in my heart to go back to Grand Rapids (the city my college was in). 

As chaotic and uncertain as it all felt, God was always in control. Trust. Through a miraculous series of small victories and events, God made a way for me to go back to this city. My friends were willing to let me live with them, my internship from Chicago got extended through the summer and I was able to work remotely.

With nothing but one suitcase of clothes, my mom and I met my best friend halfway between Chicago and Grand Rapids, and that was my first step to moving to Grand Rapids. 

It was not a glorious move. For the first month or so, I was living out of my suitcase on the floor and sleeping on an air mattress in the basement, but I was just grateful to be there. I remember praying throughout the summer, “Lord, if you are willing, please allow me to stay in Grand Rapids. I trust you.”

One of my favorite things to do since college has been to go on daily walks. I don’t usually listen to music, I just spend the time thinking and praying.

One day that summer, I was walking by some tennis courts where I used to live and saw that the park’s sign read, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” –Proverbs 3:5-6. 

I stopped in front of it and thanked God for seeing me before I walked home. By the end of August, my internship was extended one more month, and I was able to stay with my roommates through the fall. I look back on that year and realize that God was forcing me to trust Him quite literally one season at a time. 

He didn’t give me a corporate job that allowed me to live in my own luxury apartment the moment I moved back; He gave me exactly what I needed for each day. 

As my internship officially wrapped up, I was offered a full-time job as an RFP writer in Grand Rapids (and I still have the photo of the moment I read the offer email with my sister on Facetime). 

My housing also ended up carrying over through spring and God provided me with a roommate and apartment for the next year of living. I’ll stop the story there, but God hasn’t stopped providing for my daily needs.

Fast-forward 4 years, a lot of life has happened, and sometimes it makes me miss the simple summer life of 2020 (at least that was my story).

Right now, I’ll just say I’m in a season where I really feel the weight of not knowing what’s going to happen.

As the days turn into weeks, months, and pushing over a year, it’s easy to feel like, “God where are you? Do you hear me? See me? Care?” Can I be honest enough to admit that I said, “if prayer is powerful, why does it feel like it’s not enough right now?” 

There are weeks when it feels like all I do is cry, or that when I try to pray, my mind feels like it’s exhausted all words and it’s tempting to feel like, what’s the point, I’ve tried everything, I don’t know what else to do or say. 

Recently, I experienced a day where I wondered how much longer I could take feeling unheard and having no answers. Feeling equally restless and exhausted, I went for a walk just after dusk. As tears dripped off my face I said, “God, I don’t know what to do or say. Please help me.”

I suddenly felt the urge to run and before I knew it, I was sprinting down the path, picturing myself sprinting to the cross (that’s where all I wanted to be). I don’t run… so it didn’t last long, but when I stopped running to catch my breath, I was standing 10 feet from the same tennis sign that I stood in front of 4 years ago; “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your path straight” –Proverbs 3:5-6.

At the same time, the lyrics to the song I was listening to in my ears read “walking around these walls, I thought by now they’d fall, but you have never failed me yet” (Do It Again by Elevation Worship). 

There were no epiphanies, nor trials solved, but the Lord reminded me who He is, what He has done, and that He truly has never failed me yet. And perhaps for the first time in a while, I felt the peace the Bible talks about, that surpasses all understanding. Sometimes that peace is worth far more than questions being answered. 

I think we can all relate to a time in our life where we truly don’t know what tomorrow brings. We feel forgotten by God, and that we need to fend only for ourselves. I assume most people thought either their life, or a season of their life, would look different than what it was or is, and as painful as it feels, those are the places where true faith is built. 

Life isn’t about day after day joy and simplicity; while it includes these days, it’s about grief, doubt, change, suffering, and allowing those things to teach you who Jesus is and how to rely on Him. 

I’ll be honest, I was a little embarrassed at how I let my anxiety for tomorrow fog my realization that Jesus has provided everything I need for each day. I don’t know what tomorrow, next month, or next year may bring, but He does. 

And even though trust was my word for 2020; it’s a discipline we can benefit from practicing everyday with Jesus. 

For He said, never will I leave you, never will I forsake you. (Hebrews 13:5)