Vantage Point {When Your Life Is Too Easy}

Meet Laura Parker, guest blogger, cyber friend, and ridiculously talented writer. Currently, Laura and her family are living overseas in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where her husband is directing a Christian Orphanage for girls, who are targets for the sex trade industry.

This guest post stems from an idea Laura had. What if two people living very different lives on opposite ends of the world, wrote on the same topic? Posted below is Laura’s message on our topic When Your Life Is Too Easy. After you finish reading, I would love for you to click over to Laura’s, and read what I had to say about my life being too easy. Here's Laura-

I wasn't sure what to tell her, and honestly, I think I botched it.

In essence, she wanted her life to be harder. She recognized that sometimes God is known best in the struggle, and by her calculations her 19 years had seen too much cush and not enough trial. She'd heard friends share gritty pasts or dramatic rescues, and she wanted a story like that. A story with more conflict, more suffering. A story with less silver-platter.

And I sat across from her in the tropical heat outside a coffeeshop in Thailand, and I told her that I got it. I told her my story at her age was much like hers-- bumps in the road, sure, but not much more than that in the way of really walking through the painful. I told her that I remembered wanting a better, more dramatic story, too. I remembered hearing about how character is developed and faith grown in the fire, and I remembered wondering why I hadn't tasted much of the heat. Comfortable, middle-class America. Christian family. Good girl. Generally successful. Grades and sports and teams. Married young. Happy and healthy. And I remember wondering often if maybe I didn't have what it takes to endure a "real trial" and if maybe that's why God wasn't giving me one. And my young friend confessed to wondering the same thing.

And we sipped our iced coffees {that simply don't touch Starbucks back home}, and I told her what I have told myself--that God hasn't made a mistake in your story, that there's still a lot of life left, and that suffering is guaranteed to show up, eventually.

But, then, just this week, as I was reading from Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest, I found a paragraph that answers both of our "life-has-been-too-good-s0-far" questions. He compares suffering in life to the crushing of the grape to produce wine. And he talks about the fruit that comes from intense suffering--not the "darn-I-can't-find-a-parking-space-kind," but the "I'm-about-to-die-and-I-am-beyond-desperate-kind." And then he reminds us that

God always chooses the when and the how of the crushing.

Chambers goes on to say, "If you are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you anyway, the wine produced would have been remarkably bitter. "

In other words, sometimes the when of the trial is one of the most critical pieces.

And if I had that mentorship moment back, if I could push re-wind and give another answer to my young, fellow-easy-road sister, I would say,

God is preparing your grapes, friend. He is preparing you now, for the crushing, the suffering of then. Trust and grow and reject apathy and wake up and pursue and love-radical. Because there will come a time when God's divine fingers will squeeze.

And the fruit that is produced in the suffering is being prepared right now in a life thriving in the sunshine on the vine.

Yup. That's what I'd say if I had it to say over again.

By Laura Parker

twitter: LauraParkersays

web: http://www.lauraleighparker.com

ministry: http://www.destinedtraveler.com (mentorship minsitry)

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to bounce over and check out my post!