God – Laurel Luehmann

Eighteen – My Mid-Term Reflections

January 11, 2021by Laurel LuehmannLeave a Comment

I’ve hit the half-way mark in my eighteenth year.

Did it meet my expectations?

Uh, no. Big no. My little-kid self assumed that when one turns eighteen, one magically becomes an adult, assumes adult responsibilities with ease, has everything figured out in life, and does big things.

Maybe that happens to everyone else… but it sure didn’t happen to me.

Looking back, I see that much of this slice of life was spent just trying to get the hang of life as a graduated adult with work instead of school, and a whole lot of things to figure out. I did a lot of journaling. And crying. And laughing. And praying. And thinking. And writing. And smiling. And farming. Lots of little things filled my life – and joy – to overflowing.

I had big plans to write my novel, take writing classes, and probably stop mixing feed for the cows on the family farm. (No offense, cows…) I wanted an orderly lifestyle with few or no complications. Ha.

Instead, I grew to love the crazy diversity that defines this season of my life. I fell ~~mostly~~ in love with my job on the farm and decided to keep it. I got to take on some babysitting. I didn’t take many writing classes. I didn’t make as much progress on my novel as I had naively planned. I got shoved into situations that stretched me…

But am I happy with how the last six months have panned out?

Absolutely.

They most certainly did not go according to my tidy, boring little plans. Oh, no. Instead, they gave me the opportunity to experience a huge, crazy mash-up of joy, pain, humor, irony, sacrifice, stumbling, disappointment, failure…

And fulfilment beyond my wildest dreams.

When God starts to change my plans, my first response is to wail, No, God. You don’t understand. This is how it’s supposed to go. Really.

To which He gently, but firmly, responds, Ah, but this is how it must go. Just wait and see… and soon you’ll know why.

I’m not at the end of my story, but I can already see some of the blessings that have come because God turned my plans upside down. I’m not holding so tightly to the security offered by things, plans, circumstances, or even people anymore. I’m not as scared of trying new things. I want Him more.

And I’m actually excited to hand Him the pen for these next six months – for the rest of my life – and to watch in breathless anticipation as He continues to write my story for me.

What are some things that you learned in your eighteenth year of life? Or are learning? Or wish to learn?

Photo credit: Jonna @thru.t.h.e.lens

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God and Current Events – My Thoughts

January 7, 2021by Laurel Luehmann3 Comments

If my emotions depended just on the news…

You probably don’t want to know.:)

But honestly… I think that no matter where a person stands on politics, coronavirus-related policies, etc., every single one of us has a fairly legitimate reason for being sickened/depressed/frustrated by the news. America just left an epic year of division and unrest in the dust… and by the looks of it, 2021 isn’t looking promising, either.

Honestly, I’m pretty frustrated.

I want my nation to be indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Most of all, I want America to be one nation under God… but she’s not. She’s broken and hurting and sinful, spitting in the face of the One who has been so patient with her.

This wasn’t my plan, God.

In the past year, the one truth keeping me at peace with what’s going on in our nation is this:

God retains complete control over everything.

When I find myself getting worked up about what’s happening, I come back to this and calm down. There is nothing else that brings me more peace than this fact – that the One who loves me more than I can fathom is the One with whom nothing is impossible. The One who has all of what I see as a mess ordered in His perfect will.

I wanted to remind you of this today… just in case life has you in the dumps. Come on out of there, friend. God’s got this. He’s working all things out for His glory and the good of those who love Him. Rest in Him. ❤

-Laurel

life

Take My Life, God… Really?

December 14, 2020by Laurel Luehmann7 Comments

It’s a song I love. It’s a song I love to sing. But it’s a song that’s really hard for me to live.

Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.

There are days when I don’t really want to live this. Instead, I end up living an oxymoron. In the morning, I come to God and re-surrender my life to Him. Here, God, it’s Yours. I live for You.

Fast-forward a few minutes to where He’s taking me up on my offer. I’m suddenly snatching my life back and clenching it in my fists.

God, You know that conversation is going to get really stretched out, and I don’t want to give that much of my time…

You want me to love them??? Didn’t You see how they hurt me???

God, it was a long day and I’m exhausted… I don’t want to go on a walk with her.

But anyway… take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.

I’ll sing it, God… but I won’t live it.

You are near in their mouth but far from their mind. – Jeremiah 12:2b

It breaks my heart when I find myself living this awful oxymoron. How can I claim to love God, yet trample over His desires for me in pursuit of my own? Christianity can’t work this way. It doesn’t work this way.

Surrender is surrender. No bones about it. When we surrender ourselves to God, we give Him everything. Literally everything.

We give Him our time and the way we spend it. We give Him our family and friends and our interactions with them. We give Him all of our possessions and what we do with them. We give Him our talents and the way we use them. We give Him our longings, our passions, our hopes, our dreams…

We give Him everything.

And we don’t take it back.

That’s what it means to be an all-out disciple of Christ.

I don’t wanna spend my life stuck in a pattern
And I don’t wanna gain this world but lose what matters
And so I’m giving up everything because

I wanna be different
I wanna be changed
‘Til all of me is gone
And all that remains
Is a fire so bright
The whole world can see
That there’s something different
So come and be different in me

-from Different by Kyle Lee and Micah Tyler Begnaud

Photo by Edwin Andrade on Unsplash

writing

Psalm 138 In My Own Words

December 10, 2020by Laurel Luehmann2 Comments

With all that I am, God, I will praise You. In the face of all that seeks to turn my eyes from You, I will sing Your praises loud.

I worship You, Lord – because of Your tender affection. Because of Your truth. Because You have magnified Your word above all Your name.

When I cried out, You answered me; You filled my soul with strength and made me fearless.

When the rulers of the world hear Your words, my God, they will cry out in praise of You.

Yes… they will sing of Your ways, for great is Your glory, my King!

Though You are exalted above all, my Lord, You still take interest in the lowly. With the proud, however, You do not have intimate fellowship.

Even though I’m walking in hardship right now, You will revive me – with Your hand You will ward of the wrath of my enemies – You will save me with Your right hand.

Lord, You will bring to perfect completion all that weighs on my mind. Your mercy endures forever, my God – do not forsake those You have created.

reading, writing

The Problem with Christian Fiction

December 7, 2020by Laurel Luehmann10 Comments

Shocked you again, didn’t I?

But seriously, though… today I want to share with you about the problem I have with many works of Christian fiction.

They force a message/moral on the reader.

I don’t know how many times I’ve been turned off of a Christian fiction book because of preachiness. A stiff sermon in the form of fiction really frustrates me. If you really want to write an essay on Christianity, please just go do it. ‘Cause that’s what your exposition should be. Please don’t mask it with fiction.

I firmly believe that fiction should not be a platform for preaching. Tell your story and let it do its thing.

Disclaimer: please understand that I’m not knocking sermons or essays… I love them. I’m just saying that they have their own distinct place… they don’t need to masquerade in fictitious literature.🙂

Believe it or not, it’s possible to glorify God through fiction without preaching at your readers.

The people who influence us most are not those who buttonhole us and talk to us, but those who live their lives like the stars in heaven and the lilies in the field, perfectly simply and unaffectedly. Those are the lives that mould [sic] us. – Oswald Chambers

I believe this applies to fiction, as well. I can’t tell you how many works of fiction have made me stop in my tracks and evaluate my relationship with God and how I live it out… without being preachy. The writer just let the story play out… and let me, the reader, learn from the natural flow of the story.

In my opinion, writing a story to teach your readers a lesson is stepping into dangerous territory.

A couple of years ago, God was teaching me something amazing. My natural reaction was to share my new-found knowledge with others. And so I thought…

Why not write my (beloved) Civil War story so the main character learns the lesson I just learned?

So I started doing it. I planned to put my main character through a series of disastrous and depressing events (which is something my writer’s heart morbidly enjoys doing), and have her come through this scarring experience with the realization that Jesus was enough for her, no matter what.

Thankfully I set that project aside for a time. When I came back to it, having learned more about the writing craft and just life in general, I realized I had messed up.

I was trying to force my story into a preconceived mold. A preachy mold.

I know people laugh when writers complain about their characters getting out of control and doing things the writer never meant for them to do… but it’s a real struggle. A well-developed character should surprise its creator and do things that it was never “supposed” to do. Annoying as this is, letting the characters live their lives authentically is one of the best things a writer can do.

Trust that your readers can learn from your characters’ experiences without preachy interference.

I’m certainly not implying that stories shouldn’t have themes and morals… they should. True stories have these! In short, I’m saying that the stories you write can (and should!) be meaningful and convicting without being awkward and preachy.

Let your story be just that – a story. Trust the incredible power of fiction… let your story play out and let your readers glean from it what they will… just like they observe real life and glean from it without exposition.

This is my opinion… what’s yours? Do you agree with me? Disagree? A little bit of both? Please share… I always love feedback and discussion.:)

life, Personal

I’m Thankful for 2020

November 25, 2020by Laurel Luehmann1 Comment

My writing community is doing a Thanksgiving Shower today – any members of the community who would like to participate are posting about one thing they’re thankful for.

I was thinking about what I wanted to share…

And I decided that I’m thankful for 2020.

2020 has been one of the craziest years of my life. In 2020 I’ve gone through valleys I never saw coming. I’ve growled and made faces at current events. I’ve come sobbing to God with the weight of… life. I’ve faced the raw, unfiltered depths of my heart and winced at what I’ve found.

But I’m thankful for 2020.

Consistent with what I’ve found before, God has used the hardest times of my life to draw me closer to Him. To show me that I am truly nothing, and that He is truly everything.

I’ve learned that my life is not mine. It’s His.

I’ve learned that my future is not in my hands. It’s in His.

I’ve learned that I don’t know it all. He does.

I’ve learned that I’m not at all worthy of praise. He is.

Sometimes I’ve doubted my purpose. I’ve wondered how God could use someone so seriously flawed as myself for His glory. And He’s showed me that He can – that He’ll use even my brokenness for His glory.

What I’ve written so far makes it seem like 2020 has been a miserable year for me. Quite the contrary! God simply flooded my life with amazingness this year… I don’t even know where to start.

I’ve had the opportunity to build so many new and incredible relationships. And develop and further build old ones.

I’ve been able to move on from home education and push myself into taking my writing seriously.

I’ve journaled like crazy.

I’ve gained many new experiences (and therefore tons of new story material).

I’ve grown closer to God, worked through the rubble of my heart, and been able to keep coming back to focus on Him.

2020 has been amazing.

I’m so grateful God’s given me 2020.

Personal

The Unexpected Journey of a Letter

October 8, 2020by Laurel Luehmann10 Comments

Over a year ago I wrote my brother a letter. For awhile we were on a letter-writing spree, and this letter was simply a response to one of his. Nothing too out of the ordinary…

Yet something felt different about this one. I don’t usually save copies of the letters I write, but for some reason I wanted to save a copy of that one. I really felt like I had expressed my heart well in that letter, and I wanted to share it with others. But I felt like God was telling me that wasn’t a good idea. This letter was for my brother, not the world. Right?

So I took a picture of the letter, slipped the letter into an envelope, stuck the envelope in my brother’s Bible, and didn’t think too much more about it. Life went on.

Then, a couple of months ago, this same brother got up to speak at my graduation ceremony. As he was talking, I saw him pull a familiar red envelope out of his pocket, and instantly I knew what he was about to do. Oh, my gracious.

I think I bawled through the whole thing.

It was incredible to see how God had taken a simple letter, said no to my first impulse to share it, and then a year later brought it before many dear people. It was a huge blessing to me and a reminder of God’s beautiful, beautiful timing. I was thrilled.

But God wasn’t done yet.

One of my aunts asked for a copy of the letter, and my uncle shared it in a sermon. Then the sermon got circulated by family members. My letter was reaching people I had never seen.

Do not underestimate God.

He will take the simplest thing and use it in the most unimaginable way.

I wanted to share this letter with you today, because I keep coming back to it and being convicted. As the author, I feel a responsibility to be living out and exemplifying the principles I’ve laid out here… and I constantly need to be reminded of them.

This letter is reminding me to bring my focus back to the right place – and I hope it does the same for you.

The excellency of the power is certainly of God, not us. The more I live, the more I realize how desperately sinful I am. Any good that comes of anything touching my life is certainly of God. He is so, SO worthy of our praise! He has loved me with a love that I simply cannot fathom. He truly must increase as I myself decrease.

More and more God shows me that He wants my priority to be my relationship with Him – not even evangelism, relationships with others, or any other sort of good works. Those will flow from my relationship with Him. He looks at the heart, and if all my feeble attempts to serve Him don’t come from an earnest desire for Him, they are filthy rags to Him.

It is so, SO important to guard our relationship with Him from all that threatens to destroy – even if it means we are called radicals. This love is more than deserving of radical defense. It demands our souls, our lives, our ALL. It calls for action.

Are we acting?

Personal, writing

Less Than Two Months In… Three Things I’ve Learned While Pursuing My Writing Seriously

September 28, 2020by Laurel Luehmann2 Comments

Way-way-wait what??? Less than two months in???

Wow.

Let’s just say that these have been two of the fullest months of my life. So far. 🙂 I look back and wonder how so much could be crammed into a mere sixty days. But it happened, folks. It happened. And it’s still happening.

About two months ago I graduated from high school and jumped into pursuing my future as an author seriously. Here are three things I’ve learned about the writing life in this time.

#1. I will not always feel inspired when it’s time to write… and that’s okay.

I was working on the second chapter of my current project the other day. I was at rock bottom. It was bad, guys. All I could force myself to type was he said this, she said that, he did this, she did that…

I wanted to bawl, Where is my creativity? My brilliant descriptions? My adjectives? Everything? Here go my writing dreams – right down the drain.

The fact is, I’m going to have these days… and that’s perfectly normal and fine. Because some days I feel like I’m churning out great ideas and brilliant descriptions and witty dialogue like crazy. These two extremes balance each other out.

It’s super important for me to just plug away at writing, even if I feel like what I’m writing is trash. If I write only when I feel like it, I’m not a writer at all – I’m just someone who writes for fun. I wouldn’t be a farmer if I only worked on the farm when I felt like it, either. Part of doing something professionally is doing your best even when your best seems awful.

In short, I’m learning that writing isn’t all fun and games… like any other occupation, it comes with its hard days. But I’m fine with that! There’s still enough awesome about it to keep me wanting to be a professional writer someday.

#2. Lists make life better.

I used to laugh at my mom and her lists… but I guess she converted me.

Nearly every day when I sit down to write, I make a list of what I want to accomplish that day. I try to get as specific as possible so I have more to cross off. It makes me feel more productive. 🙂 Also, just having a tangible list of what I want to accomplish is so much easier and productive than having a dozen plans ricocheting around in my brain.

#3. It’s a challenge for me to keep “writing stuff” in writing hours.

I’ve been setting a certain amount of hours each week day to work on my writing projects and other writing-related things. I’m not going to lie; it’s been a struggle to keep my writing restricted to those hours. It’s all too easy to let it seep into all the other areas of my life and suck my focus away from relationships and home responsibilities… and most importantly, my responsibilities as a daughter of God and ambassador for Christ.

God and people need to have first dibs on my attention. Writing can’t.

This has probably been my biggest struggle – even bigger than staying motivated and sticking with my writing projects. Hopefully the next two months will find me a little more on top of these priorities than I am at present. 🙂

But God’s grace is enormous. I daily encounter my faults, my failings, my weaknesses… and He daily reminds me that He is sufficient, and that He’ll use each one of my problems to bring Him glory.

And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. – 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

How great He is!

Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash

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Happily Ever After… Really?

September 21, 2020September 21, 2020by Laurel Luehmann2 Comments

Why is it that the fairy tale always ends immediately after the picture-perfect wedding?

Why does the curtain close on the adventure right after the bad guys are defeated… before they can recuperate and strike again?

How come the narrative ends after the race is won?

What is the truth about happily ever after?

One of the “happily ever after” dreams I cherished from grade-school days until earlier this year was graduating from high school. I could hardly wait until the day I was freed from the not-altogether-unpleasant-but-still-incredibly-binding chains of schoolwork to do whatever it was I felt called to do. Freedom. Aaahhhh…

Ha.

The challenges that came with my schoolwork were suddenly removed… and twice as suddenly replaced with the challenges that come with… this season. What is it called? There must be some fun and creative term for it. Hmm…

Why is it that our “happily ever after” dreams rarely meet the standards we set for them?

We live in a world warped by sin.

God designed this world to be one great “happily every after”. He wanted to live in fellowship with us, the people He created in His image. He wanted us to live beautiful lives in perfect fellowship with one another. But we chose to ignore Him and go our own direction.

Our foolish choice resulted in twisted, sinful lives… with precious few “happily ever afters”. The truth is, sin destroys our dreams of a perfect life on this earth.

If we seek to find our joy in anything in this world, we will, inevitably, be disappointed.

We could let this fact make us gloomy pessimists. But really, we need to let it point us to the even greater fact that this mangled world is not all there is. God loved us so much that He took action to give us the greatest “happily ever after” there could possibly be.

He became a perfect man, and took the entire disgusting weight of our sin on His shoulders.

He gave everything for us.

He crushed death and removed its power.

Look at the beautiful sneak peek He’s given us of what is soon to take place.

Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people.

God Himself will be with them and be their God.

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” – Revelation 21:2-4 (emphasis mine)

This, friends, is the ultimate happily ever after. All of our other hopes of perfection will be dashed; this one will not.

Let’s live our lives in anticipation of this incredible event… it’s coming soon!

Photo by Foto Pettine on Unsplash

Uncategorized

10 Blessings God Has Given Me

September 17, 2020by Laurel LuehmannLeave a Comment

Why do we have to wait until November to start thinking and sharing about being thankful?

Ooh… we actually don’t. So let’s do it!!!

“In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” – 1 Thessalonians 5:18

I tend to get caught up in trying to discern God’s will in the “big” things in my life… rather than obeying His clearly stated will in this small thing – giving thanks.

I’d like to share with you 10 things for which I’m thanking the Lord today. Some of them are huge things, and some of them are just those little blessings that He crams into my life, just because He wants to make me smile.

HIM!!! Truly the greatest blessing ever.
My incredible family
The gift of hearing
Words
Coffee 🙂
A wonderful church family
A job for which I don’t have to wear a mask 🙂
Clean water
The purpose He infuses in my life
The opportunity to throw my words all over the world

Whoa… I serve an incredible God. He doesn’t have to give me any of these things – I certainly don’t deserve them – and yet He pours them out freely. He is truly worthy of all the praise I can give!

It’s your turn now! What are 10 things for which you can thank God today?

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash