In the months following my hospital stay I found myself on a spiritual roller coaster. As the days and weeks went by, the Lord set me on a course to trust His heart. Everywhere I turned the word "trust" came into the picture. In my daily readings I found Proverbs 3:5-6, "Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will direct your paths," and just sat and shook my head in silent wonder. I looked back over my childhood and saw that I never trusted anyone for anything. I totally leaned on my understanding of situations, and my view of life was distorted. Sure, I gave the appearance of trust, but deep inside trust was never there, neediness became my foundation. Misplaced trust thrust me from one crisis to another.

In January of 1994, I started back to school - I just knew if I plowed ahead, pursuing God's plan for my life, things would get better. In one of my counseling courses we studied about the different schools of thoughts surrounding therapy and one man amazed me with his findings. According to Eric Erikson, a well-known psychologist, life can be divided into eight stages. He believed that the foundation of one stage builds on the previous and so on. The beginning stage, infancy through age 2, is basic trust vs. basic mistrust. His studies found that when this stage develops properly a basic sense of hope is built within the framework of the child. Erikson holds the mother responsible for building this sense of basic trust and hope.

I began to realize that I had accepted Christ as my Savior with sincerity on October 15, 1975, but somewhere I made a detour. I had taken my eyes off of Jesus and at some point began a quest for acceptance from God's people. When our eyes are somewhere other than on Jesus, Christian maturity is evasive.

On September 22, 1994, I started a new job as a temporary secretary at Alabama Power Company. The people I worked with were great and life was good. I kept a journal of my thoughts during dead time and those thoughts became a devotional for new Christians that I shared with the New Christians' class in my church. I began to see a pattern.

In my time of study one theme continued to fill me - I knew my eyes had to stay on Jesus. I began reading a series of books by Joseph F. Girzone about a man called Joshua. The story was a parable of Jesus' life. The picture he painted of Jesus' ministry settled many of my questions and thoughts on God's heart. This series of books drove me to again read through the gospels.

As I read the gospels straight through for the first time in my Christian journey, I felt unsettled joy. Here was a Jesus I rarely heard about or saw portrayed; a man of compassion, courage, and confidence who loved the broken and outcast of His day. A new sense of awe and wonder began to grow inside of me and I fell in love with my Savior all over again.

With the Christmas season fast approaching I looked forward with anticipation to a very special holiday. I was working in a new job with people who loved Jesus - and me. All was right with the world, with God, and with my family. Driving to work one morning, I just started talking to God and asked Him to give me something similar to the 12 steps that would help me keep my eyes on Jesus and trust His heart. Immediately, He gave me an outline using the word trust. I realized these were the exact steps God had walked me through. I broke out with a song of praise to Him. I now call them the Trust Steps and have used them as an aid in turning my journey.

Since that time God pointed out to me that there are three basic levels of trust. The first level is like the trust a baby has for its parents. This is the level new Christians have. I now teach new Christians that they need to:

As God begins to birth His purpose in us, we enter the second phase of trust. At this point the growing Christian needs to:

Then, when God literally starts using you in His purpose for your life you will need to:

This is by no means the end of my story. As a matter of fact, I've written a book, this is but a few excerpts from it. When I get time, and if that is what people want, I will post it!