The Thing with Muscles

January/February 2010

by Sue Gamelin

If hope is “the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune—without the words, and never stops at all,” as Emily Dickinson wrote, then trust is the thing with muscles that grabs our hands, and hangs on tight—and will not let us go.

Trust is as tangible as that small hand reaching up to ours when we make our way through a crowd at the state fair. Trust is as real as the words that reach across the gap between tuxedo and wedding dress: “I will be faithful to you as long as we both shall live.” Trust is as concrete as car keys jingling from one wrinkling middle-aged hand to eager 16-year-old fingers, still smooth and taut. Trust is a blessing when we share heart-to-heart with a good friend.

But what happens to trust when that small hand slips from ours and types a hasty text message of bold lies about why she’s not home by midnight? Where does trust go when words dripping with deceit and anger fill our lives, and hands shaking with rage slam doors—and sometimes faces? Can trust survive a traffic ticket that says that he was going 70 in a 45-mile-an-hour zone? Can trust live when a shared confidence becomes a revelation on someone’s Facebook page?

Trust is the thing with muscles that grabs our hands, and hangs on tight—and will not let us go. Trust knits together bones and tendons and 98.6 degrees of warmth from one hand to another so that we can make our way through darkness and light together. But what is the recipe for trust? What knitting needles knit it together? What happens when one hand drops another’s in disgust or disappointment or despair?

Sick and tired

Questions, questions, questions. I brought these questions and more to one of my favorite Bible study groups. It’s a group I’ve been part of for going on three years now. We get together every Tuesday evening except the third, when another program takes priority for these guys. Yes, guys. Fourteen of them. Young and old. Guys with a variety of skin colors and backgrounds. All of these men are recovering drug addicts, and they live in a transitional housing complex in my town. Each of them has been through an alcohol and drug rehabilitation program, and each has chosen to live in a 12-step, highly structured environment for one to two years. The guys know that they need this structure to help them continue choosing to live clean and sober, one day at a time.

When I ask them what got them off the streets, they say that they got sick and tired of being sick and tired. And they got sick and tired of lying. They got sick and tired of betraying their families and their friends. They got sick and tired of living without trust and living without being trustworthy. You see, trust needs both truth and respect to survive.

These men jump into Bible study with both feet. They are convinced that the forces of evil that call to them from the doorways of crack houses and bars can only be shut out by hearing God’s voice. Every Tuesday evening we tackle a topic that is vital to choosing life, not death. You won’t be surprised to learn that trust is a topic that we’ve jumped into on more than one occasion. I invite you to join our conversation on one of those Tuesday evenings.

We’re in the gathering room of the complex where the guys live. There’s a courtyard just outside, and on each side of it are the bedrooms and baths that they share, two by two. But right now, we’re gathered around the long dining table that has been cleared and scrubbed after dinner, a meal prepared this evening by Ron and his team. So let’s sit down and talk, once again, about trust.

We got into the topic of trust this evening because of a remark that James made at the end of our session the week before. He said that, when he was using drugs, he stopped trusting anyone because even the drug dealers who relied on his trade would cheat him. “It’s pretty bad when you can’t trust the guy who needs you to buy from him,” James laughed. His laughter had a painful edge to it. James is a big guy, with a face and eyes that are growing clearer with honesty the longer he’s been clean. And honest he was, as he described his difficulty in trusting the leaders of the rehab program he had entered 15 months earlier. He knew that they didn’t have ulterior motives for him. They seemed honest, worthy of respect, and respectful of him. Yet he had become so untrusting that it was hard to put his hand in the hand reaching out to him. “I’ve had to learn how to rebuild trust. I’ve had to change my attitude.” James said.

Uncovering trust

As I sat there, I thought of our biblical sisters and brothers who had loosened their grip on the hands around them because they couldn’t trust them any more. Job sat on his pile of rags, his boils oozing, while his wife and friends condemned him. He couldn’t trust them. The woman with the hemorrhage watched Jesus as she struggled with the despair that had grown during 12 unsuccessful years in the hands of expensive physicians. Could she trust him to heal her? Hannah’s tears for a child were met with Eli’s accusations that she belonged in rehab herself! Her prayers were heartbreaking. Her empty hands seemed to mock her. So, too, the hands holding the cell phone, the divorce papers, and the car keys.

Zach answered James that Tuesday evening. Zach’s a weight-lifter and he looks it. People listen when this guy talks. “I don’t have to rebuild trust,” he announced. “I have to uncover it.” He told the group that he had learned to put a scowl on his face to cover himself up. A scowl seemed to make people back off. A scowl gave him time to watch them and then figure out if he could trust them. He smiled a great Zach smile when he told the group, “It feels good to uncover the trust that’s inside of me. It’s like the trust that a baby has when you pick him up and he leans right into you, right against your shoulder. We can trust like that and lean right into God. After all, it all starts with God. It’s a God-given thing inside of us.”

I listened to Zach and thought about Peter watching Jesus, very sure that his talk of death was ridiculous. Peter may well have had a scowl covering up his face, or, at the very least, a look of total disbelief and disappointment distorting it. But by the Sea of Tiberius, the Risen Lord filled his life with fish, bread, and a threefold forgiveness, and Peter learned once and for all that he could trust Jesus.

The woman at the well in Samaria covered herself up with words, words, words until she realized that Jesus wasn’t playing that game. Instead, he trusted her with the truth that he was the one whom God had chosen, the Messiah. What might have been a smirk on her face at the beginning of their conversation turned into a face so bright with excitement that the people who knew her all too well followed her back to see this rabbi. Both learned that we have to be vulnerable in order to stretch our hands out to the hands reaching toward us. Trust requires vulnerability, not a scowl, to grow. Can we trust again, when someone—or many someones—have betrayed us? When someone has disappointed us? Can we let ourselves be that vulnerable?

Hang on tight

Brandon is a quiet guy, and deep. He waits until everyone is thinking, not talking, and the table is quiet. Then he takes his turn. “I had to learn how to trust myself again. In my addiction I couldn’t trust myself with money, with other people’s money, with other people’s property. I squandered their trust of me.” Brandon told us that he is building back his trust in himself to do the right thing. And he knows that it is taking a long time for the people whose trust he violated to trust him again. That trust-building—all trust-building—takes time.

Then Bibles were flipped open and we started calling out to each other verse after verse that we saw as part of trust. We remembered Paul telling the Philippians, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (4:13). We laughed over the story of Saul putting his armor on David—until David couldn’t walk! He had to trust what he knew and who he was as he met Goliath. He got rid of the armor. Five smooth stones were enough. We remembered Job’s joy, the hand that dared to touch the fringe of Jesus’ robe, and the ecstasy of Sarah and Hannah, Elizabeth and Zechariah, when those longed-for babies leaned up against them. Finally, we turned to the words of Hebrews 13:5-6: “For he has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’ The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?”

God’s hand reaches out to us with power, pulling us up dripping wet from death to life. God’s hands stretch out to ours, the marks of the nails on them beautiful to behold. These strong hands will not let us go. We can trust God. And we can choose the abundant life that Jesus brings, and that draws us into trusting relationships with each other.

Our discussion about trust that Tuesday was “messy,” as Bible study conversations usually are. We went from topic to topic, sharing with honesty and vulnerability, and reaching out to each other with encouragement. We held each other’s warm hands tightly and prayed together earnestly before I left. We trusted each other that evening.

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” Trust is the thing with muscles that grabs our hands, and hangs on tight—and will not let us go.

The Rev. Sue Gamelin and her husband, Tim, are the pastors of Emmanuel Lutheran Church in High Point, N.C. She wrote Lutheran Woman Today’s 2005-2006 Bible study, “Act Boldly in the Fruit of the Spirit.”