The Calling: A Manifesto of Trust Movement
The First Compromise
I didn’t drift into bad decisions; I fled to them.
Growing up between homes, amid ongoing conflict in my teen years, taught me that taking a stand—even for something I believed in—meant being pulled into storms I didn’t know how to navigate.
By the time I reached 'adulthood,' I wasn’t looking for a purpose. I was looking for a hiding place. I just wanted a life that was quiet, carefree, and free from the weight of the conflicts I’d navigated for years.
When I made the choices that led me to where I am, I wasn’t being passive; I was desperately trying to avoid the flames that burned me years earlier. I chose the path of least resistance, thinking if I just kept my head down, conflict wouldn’t find me.
That was my mistake. I thought I could avoid the war by refusing to fight. I was wrong. War doesn’t care if you participate. It finds you regardless.
The Wreckage
Now, life is stressful, and my kids are often the ones paying the bill for my past stupidity.
From the way I parent, to finances, to just every-day-life, everything is harder than it needs to be.
My family lives in the fallout of choices I made decades ago—choices I made when I had no real bearing in life or armor to defend myself with.
There is no escaping the reality that when you build your life on a foundation of “whatever,” you end up with a life that is broken by design. Everything—the stress, the division—is the price I’m paying for a lack of spiritual training.
I didn’t know how to stand, so I fell; and now, I’m spending my life picking up the pieces.
Intellect Without Training
Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know then: I had the intellect, but I lacked the training.
I grew up in church, sat through years of mass, but came out the other side familiar with rituals yet untrained for the fight ahead of me.
When I left for college, my stepdad—a man I love dearly, who is gentle, strong, and steady—said to me:
You’re going to have to learn how to be a bitch.
That B word hit me like a physical blow. It was so jarringly out of character for him to talk like that that I didn’t even ask what he meant. I missed the point entirely. Years later, I realized he was speaking to my total lack of defenses. He saw that I was walking into the world unarmed, knowing full-well what I'd inevitably be up against.
He was trying to tell me I needed to be hard, but he didn’t have the words to point me to the armor of God. He saw the danger; I just didn’t know how to listen.
Then all of a sudden, there I was: an “adult” with no weapons, fighting a hellish spiritual war.
What I needed wasn’t a technique. I needed Biblical tools for making decisions and addressing conflict. The good news is: I found them in Ephesians 6. Unfortunately: it took me twenty-four years.
Why Trust Movement Exists
That’s why Trust Movement exists. Not because I figured out something novel. But, because I spent decades living what happens when you don’t have the right tools for the job. Not knowing how to make decisions that honor God, or why it even matters. Unable to recognize conflict or address it without destroying myself and others.
The tools the world offers are band-aids for gaping wounds. And they don't answer the only question that actually matters: why bother?
Why? Trust Movement is for God. For His glory. Because His armor saved this wretched soul.
And, because, we live forever—and where we spend eternity depends on the choices we make right here, right now, in the middle of the messes we've made.
You’re in the Right Place
If your life is a mess.
If you’ve made choices you’re still paying for years later.
If you’ve tried the world’s tools and found they don’t go deep enough.