joy – Laurel Luehmann

Is it my prayer to be made comfortable, or to be made complete?

The topic of joy and trials linked together has been on my mind lately, and since I haven’t shared one of these “on my heart” kind of posts in a while (it’s been mostly poetry, life updates, and trying to convince you to buy my books! XD), I thought I’d try to gather my ramblings into a blog post.

Can trials seriously be an opportunity to rejoice?

In spite of having James 1:2-4 memorized for years, I’ve been reading/recalling it wrong this whole time. In case you aren’t familiar with it, here it is…

My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
James 1:2-4

Honestly, whenever I read or recited this verse, most of the last part was drowned out by the first part: My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials… And to be honest, I pictured this joy as a “grin and bear it” sort of thing. A grimacing endurance of hard times because we know that good things are ahead for us as Christians (see Hebrews 12:1-2).

But in listening to this message and recent sermons and small group discussions, it finally hit me that joy isn’t just something that we’re supposed to cling to as we weather the storms of life. It’s something that can be found because of the storm.

“…count it all joy…knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.”

Sure, the trial itself isn’t any fun. At all. (Unless you love pain.) But we can rejoice in the fact that the trial will refine us, revealing to us our weaknesses and showing God’s strength through us, and ultimately conforming us more purely to His image.

“But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”

I mean, if that’s not encouraging…

And this we also pray, that you may be made complete.
2 Corinthians 13:9b

Then this verse popped up in my Bible time the other morning, and it made me ask myself how often I pray to be made more mature, more complete, and then come crying to God when the very trials that will give me maturity slip (and sometimes pour!) into my life.

Quite honestly, it’s often.

Very often.

But I want to stop living that way.

I want to get in the habit of embracing the struggles. Of choosing to see the end result instead of simply wailing about the current mess, while somehow managing to delight in the lovely moments of now instead of being lost in an eternal chasing of the future.

So there it is…a sort of brain dump of what I’ve been processing lately. It’s by no means an exhaustive essay, but I hope it gets some wheels turning in your head and pushes you deeper into Scripture and prayer like its doing for me.

Stay the course!

❤ Laurel

Photo by Jonathan Ouimet on Unsplash

Don’t you just love this time of year? The weather is cooling down, the flies’ days are numbered (hooray!!!) and I’m loving my sweatshirts, hot coffee, and afghans.

The seasons are changing, and I’m so looking forward to fall.

Spend enough time around me and you’ll learn that it’s my tendency to look forward to things – always planning and dreaming and scheming, picturing where I’ll be next year, in two years, in five years, in ten years…

But that means I can get so caught up in my dreams that I’m tripping over the important things I dreamed about yesterday. That’s a problem.

However, in my mid-teens I was encouraged by several sources – books, a blog, friends – to embrace the season of life I was in at that moment, rather than always dreaming, always planning, always waiting for what was around the corner.

And so I did. While still making my lists and dreaming my dreams, I wholeheartedly embraced a season that brimmed with family, schoolwork, cooking, music, writing, and spunky calves. I threw myself into the thick of it and loved it.

And then I looked up. I was turning eighteen and graduating. The season in which I had learned to delight was deteriorating before my eyes.

My first response? “NOOOOO!!!!!!!”

Seriously. I went into mourning for about a week.

My beautiful life was about to be changed… forever. I would never get back those days of being a crazy little farm kid, of doing school around the dining room table with my mom and siblings, of having the relatively simple and easy life of a child. Never.

(Whaaaaaaahhhhhh…)

What was happening to my life? I liked it just the way it was… why did I have to grow up and graduate, ruining and complicating everything? Couldn’t life just stay the same? Nice and normal and… safe?

I knew that if I was kicking and screaming (figuratively!) on my way to high school graduation, something was seriously wrong with me.

My mindset had become flawed.

Gradually, unwittingly, I had allowed my season of life to occupy a place in my heart that was never meant for anyone or anything but God. I had let it become my delight, my satisfaction and my identity, when only God can truly be those things for me.

This summer God’s been teaching me to embrace, not my seasons, but Him, the never-changing Creator of my seasons.

He’s been instructing me to work heartily at the projects the day lays before me, but to shift gears quickly if need be.

He’s been reminding me to appreciate the abundance of blessings He daily showers on me, but to allow them to turn my eyes to Him, not away from Him.

He’s been revealing to me the glorious truth that with Him, each and every day is brimming with opportunities for growth, productivity, and joy… lots of incredible joy.

He’s been encouraging me to to make Him the very center of my life – in the midst of every crazy, beautiful season and all it contains.

I want to encourage you to center your life around this incredible God.

You will not regret it.

Tag: joy

Comfortable or Complete?

On Seasons