\u201cI trust you.\u201d<\/p>\n
I never knew how important those three words were until today.<\/p>\n
\u2026I trust you.<\/p>\n
More important than saying I love you is knowing that in a\u00a0relationship there is trust.\u00a0The only thing missing from some of my past relationships\u00a0was that one crucial ingredient.<\/p>\n
Trust.<\/p>\n
I loved. Oh, how I loved. I cared, more than any one person\u00a0had a right to care. I could give away my heart and I could\u00a0sell my soul, but the one thing I refused to give to anyone\u00a0was my trust. So many times betrayed, so many times\u00a0broken, discarded, abused.<\/p>\n
Trust meant nothing more to me than opening myself up one\u00a0more time to be treated as though I was less than worthy of\u00a0compassion, companionship, honesty, integrity, caring\u2026unworthy of faithfulness and fidelity.<\/p>\n
Sure, I might give myself to another, and might even do so completely, but I could never fully accept them in return\u00a0because I did not trust myself or them enough to let them\u00a0inside of me.<\/p>\n
For the longest time, I sought to trust others by learning how\u00a0not to mistrust them.\u00a0But I was wrong.<\/p>\n
Trust is earned and so is mistrust. Neither is usually\u00a0extended immediately to anyone.\u00a0By not extending trust to another, that doesn’t automatically\u00a0mean that person is not worthy of my trust. In fact, many\u00a0times, trust is internal and has little to do with the other\u00a0person at all.<\/p>\n
I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to explain in the past\u00a0to others, “\u2026it’s not that I don’t trust you,” but they didn’t\u00a0understand. And I tried so hard to make them understand.\u00a0It’s important to me to be understood. One doesn’t have to\u00a0agree with me, but I need to be understood completely. I will\u00a0talk circles, repeating myself, until I feel I have been\u00a0understood completely.<\/p>\n
But you\u2026 You were different. You didn’t care that I didn’t trust you. You didn’t care about\u00a0the past or even much about the present. Your eyes were\u00a0focused on our future. You knew my trust had to be earned,\u00a0and you never once felt you were above proving you\u00a0deserved that trust.\u00a0You waited patiently until I came to a point where I too could\u00a0see in front of me and stop looking behind me.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t an easy process.\u00a0You had years of walls to knock down. You had scars to\u00a0soothe away. You had a ghost of the past haunting your\u00a0every move while the shadow of the present day was\u00a0hanging over us both.<\/p>\n
Other men had tried and failed.\u00a0You refused to fail.<\/p>\n
Other men gave up, not just on love and trust, but on me.\u00a0They gave up on me.<\/p>\n
You are the only person who never gave up on me.<\/p>\n
Tonight, as I sit here waiting for you to come home, talking\u00a0about you with a friend, I had to stop a moment and catch\u00a0my breath when I realized\u2026.<\/p>\n
\u2026I trust you.<\/p>\n
I trust you.<\/p>\n
I am not only willing to invest all of myself in you, but I find\u00a0that I have opened myself up to you and have allowed you\u00a0into those places where no other has walked. No one has\u00a0touched those parts of my heart, my soul\u2026 ever.<\/p>\n
Just you.<\/p>\n
Not because you are so wonderful, or special, not because\u00a0you are better than all the rest, not because there is\u00a0something about you that makes you different.<\/p>\n
Sure, this may all be true.\u00a0But that’s not why.<\/p>\n
I let you in because\u2026<\/p>\n
\u2026I trust you.<\/p>\n
Completely.<\/p>\n
And in realizing that I trust you, I found an even greater\u00a0gift.<\/p>\n
I trust myself now too.<\/p>\n
There is no doubt in me. Fear? Sure. I’m scared. There are\u00a0things that terrify me about the path we travel together, the\u00a0plans we’ve made, the dreams we hope to share. But trust\u00a0isn’t the absence of fear.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it is the absence of doubt.\u00a0There is something so surreal about sitting here tonight\u00a0waiting for you and realizing this inside of myself.<\/p>\n
I’m tired now, and I’m going to go to bed, and I know that\u00a0soon you will come in, slide under the blankets next to me,\u00a0kiss me gently on the forehead and hold me in your arms\u00a0throughout the night\u2026<\/p>\n
And I trust that this is a scene that will play at many times in\u00a0our coming years together.<\/p>\n
But tonight is a night I will mark in my mental calendar,\u00a0because tonight is different for me. Special.<\/p>\n
You may never know just how much this realization inside of\u00a0me means to me right now in this moment. I could try to tell\u00a0you, but I’m not sure even then you would completely\u00a0comprehend the relief, love, warmth, and safety that knowing\u00a0I can trust you brings me.<\/p>\n
So before I drift off to dream of you and awake to those\u00a0dreams being a reality in my life, let me just take a moment<\/p>\n
to say the three most important words I can ever express to\u00a0another.\u00a0No, I won’t say I love you, though I do. Tonight, I say goodnight, by saying, “I trust you.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cI trust you.\u201d I never knew how important those three words were until today. \u2026I trust you. More important than saying I love you is knowing that in a\u00a0relationship there is trust.\u00a0The only thing missing from some of my past relationships\u00a0was that one crucial ingredient. Trust. I loved. Oh, how I loved. I cared, more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n