Trust Must Be Radical: Flying with God

Christine Hanus tackles that ancient conundrum: how to trust in our Heavenly Father when we are afraid.

Seven months pregnant with my first child, I was flying back home from Nicaragua where my husband and I had been teaching. As a pregnant woman, I had reached the end of my third-world-country rope, so while my husband stayed in Managua to finish out the school year, I headed back to the States.

On the second stage of the journey, I found myself traveling in a 20-passenger plane. Turbulence shook me and the other passengers like dried peas in a tin can. Frantic, I tried to say my Act of Contrition while at the same time scribbling some last-minute goodbyes in my journal, imagining tearfully when it would be found, partially charred, in the wreckage. After panicking for a while, a sense of calm finally came over me, and I sat there quite peacefully with my unborn baby and my guardian angel. There was nothing I could do. I was in God’s hands now.

I do not always make the choice to trust in God. No one can completely escape fear. As human beings, it flows constantly like a subterraneous river under the surface of our minds. If we don’t learn to recognize it and deal with it, it seeps into almost everything we do.

3 Ways to Fight Fear

Perhaps what causes us moderns the most dread is our ability to prevent certain kinds of suffering. When we begin to think that by our own methods we can somehow protect ourselves and those we love from suffering, we become more afraid than ever.

Turning to our phones or some other sort of coping mechanism when anxiety and apprehension start to niggle at us only stunts our ability to cope with the realities of life. The sooner we learn how to face our fears and get some of the tools we need to battle our fears, the better. We need to teach our children at a young age to do the same. Here are three ways to engage in spiritual warfare surrounding the issue of fear and trust:

Speak the truth out loud.

“God loves me and has a plan for my life. He is faithful and worthy of my trust.” Repeat the grace-filled, life-changing words of Scripture, such as, "I command you: be strong and steadfast! Do not fear nor be dismayed, for the Lord, your God, is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9).

Sit down and write out a list of the ways that God has been faithful to you.

Get it on paper in front of you. Moving forward, it is a great practice to jot down the moments when God signals his presence in your life, so that you can glance back at these narratives and remember his goodness to you more easily. Can’t think of any? Ask the Holy Spirit to open your eyes.

Read, discuss, and reflect on other people’s stories.

Ask someone who has a close relationship with Jesus to tell you about the ways God has worked in his or her life. Read a book like the one I just finished, Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles. Mediate on Psalm 105: the Israelite people had to wait 400 years to be delivered from slavery in Egypt, but, at the right time, God showed up in a big way.

Satan, our enemy, will try to convince us that such simple methods don’t accomplish anything, but these are the everyday ways we engage in spiritual warfare, believing that God has given us weapons with which to kill fear and learn to trust in our good, good Father.

God’s Grace Helps Us to Choose to Trust

In some ways, fear is a good thing. It can motivate us to do what is necessary. But fear can slowly become the basis for the majority of our decisions. Distrust of God will lead us into compromise and sin, and undermine our intimacy with God. This is the only outcome we should every ultimately be in terror of.

A trapeze artist in a high-flying circus performance, with no safety net, lets go of the bar and launches toward the person they have learned to trust — this is a good image of the reckless confidence we are called to have in God. It isn’t good enough to hold on with one hand and reach out with the other. Our trust must be complete or we risk falling. But remember, unlike the trapeze artist, we have supernatural grace to help sustain us in unshakable confidence that comes to us through prayer and most especially through reception of the sacraments.

Pray With Me:

Lord God, as we move through this difficult earthly life, please help us to know and understand more and more who you really are, a Trinty of Persons who wants us to share in your own divine life and be happy with you forever in heaven. Help us to use the weapons of prayer and truth that you have given us so that we might fight the temptation to fear and develop radical, supernatural trust in you. Amen.

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Copyright 2026 Christine Hanus
Images: Canva