Festival in the Desert: Learning to Rejoice in the Difficult Seasons of Life

By Laureen Alexa Trujillo

Life is often filled with trial, heartache, grief, and struggle. But, perhaps there’s a treasure to be found in those difficult seasons and that treasure is intimacy with God Himself. That should be reason enough to rejoice. So, how do we take God’s command to Pharaoh in Exodus 5 to “Let my people go so they may hold a festival for me in the desert” as a holy invitation to be stripped down and made whole, while still worshipping the one who allows the stripping?

Through vulnerable and transparent stories, Laureen Alexa Trujillo shares her personal testimony of hardship and trial and all that God taught her through suffering. She highlights the faithfulness of God and brings attention to the purpose of her struggle: To learn dependency on God by being exposed to the barrenness of the desert, surrender the false comfort of our personal Egypt, and come out stronger and more refined for the Promise Land we were created to inherit.

Through Festival in the Desert Laureen walks you through the question that confronted her: how do we learn and truly embrace the fact that God can and will work all things together for good as we seek Him and choose to love Him through uncertainty, fear, and hardship? The stories and interactive prompts will point us to the heart of the Father, reminding us that God is faithful, present, trustworthy, and more than capable of making a way for us when there doesn’t seem to be one, ushering in freedom, comfort, and renewed hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Oct 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664206632

Laureen Alexa Trujillo

Laureen has a background in acting and fitness, a heart for Jesus and passion for helping people live their best lives physically, mentally, and spiritually. She currently lives in Los Angeles and is part of a church in Downtown LA called For The PØPË Church. When she’s not working, writing, creating, studying, working out, or being a social butterfly, you’ll find her cuddled up with her dog and a cup of coffee (or two).

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ISBN: 978-1-6642-0664-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-0663-2 (e)

WestBow Press rev. date:  10/19/2020

To my Grandma, Rose, who spoke in faith that I would live

and to my family who has been on this crazy journey with me ever since.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

1   SHAKEN

2   SILENCE

3   GO

4   DIRTY DISHES

5   THE LONG WAY AROUND

6   RAINY DAYS, LONELY NIGHTS

7   WANTED

8   NORTH

9   LET ME SLEEP

10   CAVES

11   WHITE FLAG

12   ALABASTER JAR

13   HOMEWARD

14   FIGHT

15   OUR WAY MAKER

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FOREWORD

L ike many of you, I am no stranger to pain, I am no stranger to hardship and I am no stranger to suffering. I am no stranger to rejection, I am no stranger to loss and I am no stranger to the sanctifying burn of the refining fire.

In turn, I am no stranger to the complete and utter goodness of God, I am no stranger to the comfort of His Spirit and I am no stranger to the power of the blood Christ shed on the cross.

That is why when I first met Laureen, and heard just a fraction of her testimony, I knew we would connect on a deeply profound level. Joined together by something greater than our experiences, God gave me the eyes to see her. Joined together in and by the person and work of Christ, God gave me a heart to love her. In His infinite wisdom and abundant grace, He divinely orchestrated our connection.

I remember the first time I met Laureen.

It was September 1st, 2019 in the living room of my home here in Los Angeles, California.

My husband Travis and I started what we would end up calling Kingdom Chaser Sundays. A way to train and grow a team as we walked into the planting season of what is now For The PĒØPŁËŠ Church.

I remember feeling prompted by what I believed was the Holy Spirit to pull her aside. As soon as the gathering concluded, I pointed to her, asking her if she would come with me. We made our way to the sundeck of my apartment building to have some privacy and there I shared the following words:

I just want you to know that I will never stop fighting for your life. There is nothing you could ever do that would make me give up on you. I also want you to know that even though you have felt set aside, know that in Christ you have been set a part. You have been divinely set apart by our perfect and Holy Father and out of my love and obedience to Him I will never stop fighting for your life and I will never stop loving you.

I remember in that moment her eyes began to fill with tears, and before I could reach over to hug her, I started crying too.

Little did I know what these words would mean to her soul. Little did I know that she was stepping out of what had been an elongated season of pain, healing and divine renewing. Little did I know that God would use these words to confirm a promise He had given her about community in the context of His Bride, here in Los Angeles, long before we would meet.

From there we cried together, laughed together, shared our war stories with one another, celebrating the person and work of God together.

That was the day that I met Laureen.

At the time, I did not know her story to know the significance of the words I felt led to share, but God knew, He was and is in the details. God’s kindness and mercy were so evident and on display in that conversation He gave us. We both still cherish and reference that moment to this day.

By the unifying power of the Holy Spirit, I knew her first in Christ before I would go on to know her personally and amongst many other things, have the gift of calling her my sister.

If you have not had the honor of meeting Laureen yet, let me give you a little introduction.

Laureen is a child of God, who is energetic, strong, talkative, passionate, caring, analytical, driven, outgoing, resilient, compassionate, thoughtful and has deep and grounded faith in Jesus. By the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, this faith has been shaped by Scripture and sanctified through the things He has walked her through. Many of which you will have the gift of journeying through with her in the pages of this book.

The humility often found in the midst of the pain of refining fire, has given her the eyes to see the hearts and minds of both people who are madly in love with Jesus and those who do not know Him.

It takes that kind of sanctified heart to serve the great city of Los Angeles that we are privileged to call home. It is also why she is the perfect person to write a book entitled Festival in the Desert.

In this book you will read stories that give account of how the Lord not only made Himself known to her in the midst of suffering but also how He carried her through, reinforcing the foundation of her faith in Him.

You will see how He spoke to her through the pages of His infallible Word, patiently reminding her of His character and His work in the people of the Bible who came long before her.

These pages have been prayed over, labored over, cried over and intentionally written for our Father’s glory with you in mind. Yes you, the person who takes a moment to read the foreword and those of you who don’t.

While her deepest ministerial passion is for women, her unique way of communicating will foster equal profit for men who read it.

As I conclude this foreword and leave you to read this book, I encourage you to grab your Bible, notebook and tissues because you will likely shed some tears.

Know that I am praying over the words in this book that Laureen felt called by God to share. That Jesus would foster a hunger in you for His truth, pointing you to His perfect and Holy Word. And it is there, that He would reveal and illuminate Himself to you, kindly convicting you to lead a life that honors Him.

Here’s to rejoicing in the midst’s of suffering,

Your sister in Christ,

Kyra K. Gold,

Lead Pastor’s Wife

For The PĒØPŁËŠ Church

INTRODUCTION

I t hit like a hurricane. My entire world was thrown into chaos, leaving me in a heap on the floor of my shower. Somehow, I had gone from washing my hair to rocking myself and wailing as the water mixed with my uncontrollable tears. It took my sister ripping open the shower curtain and screaming at me to get up for me even to realize where I was, her shouts barely breaking through the war going on in my mind. She had died. She had died, and I didn’t say goodbye. She had died, and I had felt her going, but was told not to fly home. My grandmother was very stubborn. Just two days prior, I spoke to her on the phone as she laid in a hospital bed, laughing at me for panicking and asking if I should get a flight out. I’ll be out by Monday, don’t worry baby, was what she said. Well, she was right. Early Monday morning, she went to be with Jesus. Early Monday morning, February 6 th , 2017, I experienced grief in a way I have never known before.

It’s amazing, isn’t it? That it can feel like your heart is actually breaking in your chest. That the pain is so unbearable that you vomit. You reason with yourself, you try to reason with God, you run through every if only scenario you can think of that could’ve changed the outcome. You scream, you wail, you sob, and then, eventually, you stop. For a split second, the world goes very quiet; exhaustion sets in, and there’s nothing left. Then suddenly, grief emerges once again without warning. You are certain of one thing; it’s not supposed to be like this. Our world is broken. Death was never God’s plan.

That thought process spun in my head like a whirlwind for days, maybe months on end. God, it was never supposed to be this way. Anger began to creep in. Anger at who, I was unsure. I didn’t want to be angry at God, for I believe He is good always. However, there it was, anger. Anger and disappointment perfectly paired together and utterly undeniable. There was just this sense of wrong that hung thick over me like a weighted vest making each step laborious. C.S. Lewis wrote in A Grief Observed, …there is spread over everything a vague sense of wrongness, of something amiss. Like in those dreams where nothing terrible occurs—nothing that would sound even remarkable if you told it at breakfast-time—but the atmosphere, the taste, the whole thing is deadly. So, with this. (Lewis, 1961, pg. 35) It hung over me, my frustration only increased with every unintentionally unhelpful word given from others—the cliché statements pouring in from people trying to comfort me. God bless them for their efforts. I didn’t need words-Words didn’t help-I needed tears. I needed to be able to sit and process and accept without being hurried on to healing. I needed a hand to hold, perhaps even squeeze until I couldn’t. I needed sleep. I needed the rest of the world just to stop and shut up for a second. I needed to feel Jesus’ presence comforting me. I just…needed.

But I didn’t give myself time. I didn’t take the space to sit and process and accept. I didn’t know-how. Things needed to get done. Life was continuing. Other people were still hurting. Bills still needed to be paid. I told myself I had to continue to be responsible, like always. Little did I know that I was nowhere close to being done with grief or disappointment. This event was the catalyst to my journey into the wilderness. At that moment, I didn’t know I was being refined, or that refinement felt like complete brokenness. That epiphany wouldn’t come until much later. I believed God never intended for there to be death, yes, but I hadn’t yet learned that He knows how to use it to reach us, to get to the very core of us. To shatter the pretty alabaster jar¹ that we present ourselves in, to reach the more valuable contents and pour us out at His feet-our very lives offered up as a pleasing aroma.² To take us from a faith that is built on a house of cards, to one that is built on the solid rock of Christ, if we allow Him.

God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down. — C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (pg. 52)

This was blow number one. Perhaps, phase one of the tear down that would drive me into a season where I would find myself with no choice but to sit and be with God. Haven’t I been doing that for pretty much my entire life? Sure, I had spent the last 20 years of my life learning to pray, learning to hear God’s voice, reading the bible, experiencing heartbreak, and then mending at the hand of the Great Physician.³ But isolation? The allurement to come away with Him into a season of what seemed like wandering? Up until 2017, that was fairly uncharted territory. All the years of learning to lean on Him were building me up for this; Much like years of gathering prepares you for the years of famine. Years of building with Him, of learning about God and His character enabled me to recount and recall all I know of Him as I wrestled and wailed my way through two years of grieving, tears becoming one of the most consistent parts of my life. Some days tears were the only water I drank and the only food I ate. How have so many before me traversed the terrains of both the physical and metaphorical wilderness and found joy in their suffering? In scripture, these people spent days, even years in the actual desert, eventually finding themselves by encountering God. Most did not rejoice. In fact, some wanted to rebel, or lay down and die entirely, but rejoice? Have a festival? Enjoy it? This is where God’s ways and thoughts are clearly much higher than our own (Isaiah 55:8-9).

But perhaps, it’s not so impossible. Perhaps, it’s actually beautiful. Maybe there is an actual oasis tucked away in the barren landscape of the desert. What if it’s not isolation, but an invitation to meet with Jesus without any distraction? What if that oasis is God Himself? What if maybe, just maybe, the season of aloneness is actually the beginning of complete wholeness? What if our sovereign God and good Father is providing the space that is necessary to strip away every falsehood, lie, and fake comfort from our lives? What if the purpose is to empower us to find the warrior within so we can take hold of the actual Promised Land we were created to inherit? That’s what Festival in the Desert is all about. Taking the journey through the difficulties of life with eyes that look for God’s hand, choosing to see Him, to meet with Him, to be led by Him even when it makes absolutely no sense to you or maybe even any other human being. To understand that it is not for mere isolation, but for consecration to God Himself.

I’m learning that it is, in fact, a sweet gift that is a gift of grace in learning how to face the fires of life with unshakeable faith. To be able to stand in the flames and allow them to wash over you, creating the purest shine that reflects the face of the maker himself = refinement. To reach a point of trust in your commander that winning a battle merely requires you to stand firm, while He wages war on your behalf = dependency. In this wilderness, perhaps even battle, it is true liberation from not only your enemy but from every internal adversary that begs to steer you away from your true identity = freedom. It’s the testing ground for learning how to surrender and walk-in obedience = devotion. To truly trust God, that is what true belief is = trust. To release false truths, false identities, to abandon idols and the things that vie for your heart and assume priority in your life by walking with God in accordance with His will = repentance. To wander in what seems like isolation as you learn to fully depend and rely on a faithful God to lead, guide, and provide for you = obedience. It’s a training ground for leadership. It’s the perfect place to build character. For a period of about three years, I was in this very spot. Continuously drawn to the stories of fellow desert wanderers found in scripture–Their journey’s brought truth, lessons, revelation, comfort, and hope to my weary soul, and in turn, I hope to do the same for you.

My heart and hope are to use my personal wilderness, alongside the seasons of wilderness experienced by those in scripture, to bring comfort, healing, hope, and perspective to those currently trudging through the desert, perhaps fighting so as not to give up completely; To see God as good even amid a life filled with hurt, pain, disappointment, and death; To learn how to encounter Him there and go deeper with Him. How do we take God’s command to Pharaoh in Exodus 5 to Let my people go so they may hold a festival for me in the desert as a holy invitation to be stripped down and made whole, while still worshipping the one who allows the stripping? To give up the false comfort of our personal Egypt, be exposed to the barrenness of the desert, learn true dependence on God, and come out stronger and more refined for the Promise Land we were created to inherit. How do we learn and truly embrace the fact that God can and will work all things together for good as we seek Him and choose to love Him through uncertainty, fear, and hardship?

Sure, being allured into the desert and spoken gently to, much like Gomer was in the book of Hosea sounds romantic, doesn’t it? Oh, sweet friend, it’s painfully beautiful. The intimacy and vulnerability that is produced in the wild courtship between God and man during the most barren of times can be challenging. Still, they will far outweigh the heavy burden of our soul’s deepest pains as we wholly surrender to His process, causing fruit to emerge from the broken ground of our exposed hearts that have been watered with tears. May we learn to yield to the process and not fight it.

This book is meant to be interactive. I recommend buying a notebook or a journal to go along with it to take notes and write down the things that really speak to your heart. Scattered throughout these pages will be opportunities to stop and reflect/recount God’s faithfulness, scriptures that encourage you that I recommend you take time to meditate on and commit to memory, prayers, and prompts to go deeper into scripture. These prompts in the book will be:

MANNA MOMENTS

: Opportunities to list how/when God has provided or how He is currently providing.

MOMENTS OF RECOUNTING

: Intentional recall of God’s faithfulness and goodness.

REASONS TO REJOICE

: The lessons that you are learning through the hardship.

POWER THOUGHTS/VERSES

: Scriptures and Words of wisdom to build your faith & change perspective.

THE REMNANT

: A special place for you to identify and give thanks for the people who are with you in the desert championing you on to victory to help remind you that you are not alone.

STREAMS IN THE DESERT

: Those dig deeper moments where you have the chance to study more in depth the chapters from which these scriptures are pulled and find refreshing for your soul.

When you are in the midst of the storm it can be difficult to find peace. The ravaging winds of the hurricane-the moments of deep pain and grief, the confusion, the unknown-tossing you back and forth, tearing you apart, at times becomes so overwhelming that it is sometimes impossible to see its end. I have found from personal experience that these very things have been life changing for me and have helped me see God in the midst of it all. My faith has grown, my trust has grown, and my mind is healed. After all, heart posture and perseverance are everything in the difficult seasons and we can choose how we get through the tough times. God’s intention for the desert is not for you to get stuck! It’s for you to experience Him. To experience the very nature of God and His attributes of justice, faithfulness, mercy, and holiness. It’s for you to be able to go through it and come out stronger on the other side because you have learned that the great I AM is with you and nothing is outside of His control. There are incredible take-aways that can only come from being in it-vital truth and wisdom, lessons, the testimony itself that comes from testing. If you are in the desert, yes, let God take you through it, but don’t forget to remain focused on Him while you’re in it. There are reasons to rejoice.

So… shall we learn to dance in the desert together?

CHAPTER 1

Shaken

H ave you ever had one of those moments in life that shakes you? One of those moments that throws everything else in your life off and you can’t seem to figure out how to find your normal again? I often refer to these moments as snow globe moments. At key points throughout my entire life, there has been a shaking that happens. By this, I mean, that my life gets shaken up and change is forced. Almost as if my life were happily encased in a beautiful snow globe and God allows it to gently flip over, sending my perfectly placed little flakes fluttering about as I frantically and sometimes fearfully try and catch them and return them to their original spots on the snow globe floor only to realize that they all will eventually land again, the little storm will end, and I am still in my Father’s hand. It’s taken plenty of shakings for me to learn, and I’m still learning, to fully trust God and not allow my peace to be shaken even if the world around me seems to be in chaos. Note that I said, I’m still learning!

My life started in chaos. Literally. At 7 months I came into the world feet first and caused complications for my mother and stress for my loved ones. Doctors warned my family that I wouldn’t survive my premature birth and declared that I would have disabilities if I did. The outlook of my life seemed dark. Right before being separated from my mother and airlifted to the Neonatal hospital in another city entirely, my grandmother begged the doctors to let her hold my weak and tiny body. When told again that I wasn’t going to make it, my grandma took me into her hands. As the story goes, I reached my hand out and took hold of her pinky finger and squeezed