Over the next few weeks I will be focusing on a word of the day drawn from a list created at the beginning of January. Each word was chosen to serve as a guide to inspire and inform my steps through 2020. If you are just joining me now and want to look in on earlier posts on this topic, you will find links to each at the end.

TRUSTING

To trust is to put one’s trust in, have faith in, have every confidence in, believe in, pin one’s hope on, something or someone. It is a choice made in the here and now, without knowing what will happen in the there and then. Trusting is an act of faith.

This is what trusting looks like.

When I was twelve years old my parents, sister and I took a trip to Mexico. We spent a few days in Puerta Vallarta, but the real prize was a week in the then—and kind of still—undiscovered tiny village of Yelapa. At that time there was only one small “hotel”, a tiny village on the nearby cliffs, and the only way to get there was by boat. Prior to our trip, and trusting in the recommendation of a family member, my dad made arrangements with Andres, a well known commercial fisherman, to ferry us from the pier in Puerta Vallarta to Yelapa. We had no reason to believe that those arrangements would do anything but work out as promised.

Once in Puerta Vallarta, Dad attempted to contact Andreas to finalize the details of our trip, only to discover that Andreas had left a few days earlier on a fishing trip and wasn’t expected back anytime soon. Just because we trust something to work out is no guarantee that it will, but just because something doesn’t isn’t a reason to stop trusting. Not one to give up on a much anticipated adventure easily, the next day Dad and my sister Margie (who spoke more Spanish than the rest of us combined) headed down to the fishing pier to see if there might be someone who would be willing to transport us to Yelapa. That’s where they met El Pedio, who would be happy, he said, to transport us to Yelapa.

El Pedio was a fisherman too, but not of the fancy, commercial, well-known sort like Andreas. He fished from a small wooden vessel he built himself that looked more akin to a canoe than a commercial fishing boat, and in which we, along with our luggage, would ride on the two hour trip. (Today it takes less than 30 minutes by water taxi.)

El Pedio’s boat sat so low, we were able to dip our hands in the clear blue water, as hand on the tiller he pointed out sea creatures, and motoring close enough to a manta-ray that we could see every detail as it slowly sank deeper below the surface.

Eventually we rounded the low rocky shoreline, entered a small quiet cove, and caught our first glimpse of Yelapa. We unloaded our luggage on the beach and waved goodbye to El Pedio who had agreed to return 7 days later to pick us up for the return trip. Watching him until he disappeared from view, our only option was to trust in the word of a small, quiet fisherman.

For a week we slept in grass huts at the Hotel Lagunitas, woke up to the sound of a fire fueled by coconut shells to heat water for our showers, swam in the warm waters, made friends with the locals from the village who also provided much of the fresh seafood we ate at almost every meal, and tried to imagine all of the wildlife that called the jungle behind the village home.

Seven days later we stood on the beach, our luggage ready and waiting for the trip that would eventually take us back home. More than 50 years later I can still remember the moment when that small wooden vessel, more akin to a canoe than a commercial fishing boat rounded the rocky point. As it turned out, El Pedio, who was anything but a fancy, commercial, well-known fisherman, was a man upon whom one could pin one’s twelve year old hopes.

That’s what trusting looks like.