Each one of us is a living representation and summation of our past experiences, triumphs, tragedies, joys, sorrows, and inherent personality characteristics that date back to our childhoods. For some of us, that includes some very challenging and painful memories. These are our personal traumas and, in many ways, they shape us, influence us, and impact how we see the future. Sometimes this turns out to be a good thing. Sometimes, it doesn’t.

In some cases, these past experiences can result in a heightened sense of caution regarding the unknown future. We might be apprehensive about repeating those hurts and so we will do everything we possibly can to prevent them from happening again. Taken to an extreme, this can cause us to feel a great deal of fear.

In other cases, we could ignore or try to completely forget that they happened in the first place. We might actively bury those feelings down deep so that we don’t have to confront them. Unfortunately, we can develop some bad habits and tendencies to mask what lies buried down inside.

And then there are the cases where we confront those traumas, often with some help from others. In these situations, we can learn from them and better process how those experiences impacted us. And those past traumas can make us stronger, better able to help others, and more inclined to face the future with confidence, despite all of its coming challenges.

But this is an article about faith, not psychology. I include this topic here because these past experiences can significantly impact our beliefs and relationship with divinity. For those with a higher sensitivity to fear, we can see faith solely as a way forward that helps us avoid the coming potholes in life. We know they are up ahead, so we focus on avoiding them. We hope that God will help us do exactly that and even get mad at him when he doesn’t.

For those of us who have not fully processed our past hurts, we might have a harder time accepting and trusting in a loving, caring, creator God who has taken a keen interest in… us personally.

I’ll draw from the lessons of Exodus and Moses here. He, a runaway slave, was asked by God to do two impossible tasks. First, he was asked to seek an audience with the most powerful man in the world, the Pharaoh, and request that he release all slaves. The slaves were the backbone of the Pharaoh’s power and ambition and so how could Moses possibly prevail? And then, assuming the Pharaoh might concede, Moses would then have to lead the people through an unending desert… without water and food.

In both cases, when Moses threw his hands up in the air and declared that these were impossible requests, God told him that all would be well. Why? Because God promised to be right there with him every step of the way.

Potholes in life happen. Our past traumas can influence how or even whether we approach them. But in our faith, we do believe that our loving, caring, creator God has taken an interest in us personally. And that he promised, through his son, that he would be with us every step of the way from this point forward. That means when… maybe especially when… those potholes in life arise.

He is with us.

Always.