LEARNING TO TRUST by Robert Soto

April 6, 2010

LEARNING TO TRUST by Robert Soto

Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight."

Two weeks ago I decided to start walking a mile and a half to two miles daily. I'm not sure why I decided to do this but maybe because of my recent heart problem which had nothing to do with my health or maybe because our people a long time ago were runners and walkers. I hear they could run and walk for two days straight without stopping to sleep or to eat and sometimes without water. Nevertheless, I decided to start walking so each day, five days a week, I hit the streets and walk. But today, as I walked via a sidewalk which gives me the right of way, I almost got hit by a car driven by a lady. She saw me crossing the entrance to the parking lot but I guess she decided to prove a point: she had the car and she had the power. I remember when I was a little boy hearing my father say, "Give a woman a car and she becomes a dangerous creature." I'm not sure how true that statement is but if this lady today was the only driver I had to compare with that statement, I would say my father was right.

As I saw her eyes of determination, I decided to slow down and let her go through. But it reminded me of another lady who once decided that a STOP sign did not mean stop. If ever I was at my healthiest, it was that morning. That morning I had managed to bench three hundred and fifty pounds, 49 times. I had also managed to dead lift six hundred pounds with an average of five hundred pound squats. The night before I had sprinted my two miles which averaged six minutes and forty five seconds a mile or thirteen minutes and thirty seconds for both miles. I won't tell how much I curled. But that morning a lady decided to run through a stop sign while I decided to make a complete stop and I discovered what should be a scientific principle that says, "A man on a motorcycle cannot compete with a 1980 Lincoln Continental." She was late for church so she gave me her license number and insurance company phone number and took off. It took ten months of physical therapy to recover from an accident that almost left me a quadriplegic because of one small broken bone in my neck called the C1 or Atlas. I must confess, the next ten months were not the favorite months in my life. I discovered that PT actually means Pain and Torture. But I write about this time of my life because no matter how many times I heard, "You could have become a quadriplegic," it also reminded me that it was not meant to be because it was not God the Creator's plan for my life. In the midst of pain, Proverbs 3:5-6 was still in the Bible and all I could do was hang onto the promise that said, "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight."

Robert Soto, Lipan Apache and pastor of:

McAllen Grace Brethren Church
The Native American New Life Center
Chief of Chiefs Christian Church