We talk about labor a lot in the world of building a business and a life.
The labor of showing up consistently. The labor of doing the work when you don’t feel like it. The labor of building something from scratch, of managing a team, of raising kids and running a home and still finding time to grow.
That kind of labor gets talked about. It gets celebrated. And it should.
But there’s another kind of labor I don’t think we talk about nearly enough.
The Labor That Happens in You
Think about childbirth for a second. Not as a metaphor you’ve heard a hundred times, but as a real, physical reality. Labor in childbirth is not productive in the way we typically define productive. You’re not checking things off a list. You’re not making progress you can measure from the outside. You are going through something that is hard, and relentless, and asks everything of you, and there is no shortcut through it.
And yet. Something is coming.
That is the kind of labor I want to talk about today. The labor that is happening in you, not just around you. The kind that’s forming something, producing something, building something in your character and your faith and your resilience that cannot be manufactured any other way.
We are so conditioned to push through hard seasons as fast as possible. To get to the other side. To come out and say, okay, that’s done, what’s next. But I think when we do that, we miss something.
We miss what the labor was doing while we were in it.
Count It All Joy. All of It.
Paul says in James 1 to count it all joy when you face trials of various kinds. Not some of it joy. Not joy once it’s over. Count it all joy.
That’s a statement that can feel almost impossible when you’re in the middle of a really hard season. But Paul wasn’t someone who said things he hadn’t actually lived. He wrote from prison. He wrote from shipwrecks and beatings and seasons of being completely misunderstood and rejected. He knew what trials felt like from the inside.
And he still said count it all joy. Because he understood what the trial was doing.
He goes on to say that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And steadfastness, when it’s had its full effect, produces something complete, something that lacks nothing.
Read that. Lacks nothing.
The labor is not purposeless. It is producing in you the exact things you’ve been praying for. Grit. Resilience. A joy that doesn’t depend on your circumstances because it was formed inside of circumstances that were really hard.
What You Get Out of the Hard Stuff
I want to be really direct about this because I think it matters.
There is something you get out of the hard stuff that you simply cannot get any other way. You cannot shortcut your way to deep resilience. You cannot Google your way to genuine joy that holds up under pressure. You cannot read enough books to build the kind of steadfastness that only forms when you stayed in something hard long enough to let it finish its work.
The grit that you want? It comes from this.
The capacity to lead well under pressure? It comes from this.
The ability to hold peace in a room that’s chaotic because you’ve learned how to be rooted in something that doesn’t move? That comes from this.
Hard seasons are not detours from becoming who you’re called to be. They’re often the most direct route.
Sitting With It Instead of Rushing Past It
I’m not saying stay stuck. I’m not saying don’t pursue healing or growth or movement forward. I’m saying don’t be so quick to dismiss what’s happening in you in the waiting, in the hard, in the season that isn’t resolving the way you hoped.
Ask the Lord what He’s producing. Ask Him what’s being built. Ask Him what this labor is for.
Because if your faith is being tested, something is being made steadfast. And that steadfastness is worth more than a quick exit from the difficulty.
You Don’t Have to Navigate This Alone
If you’re in one of those seasons right now, the kind where you’re in the labor and you can’t yet see what’s coming, I want you to know something. You don’t have to sit in that alone trying to make sense of it by yourself.
This is a big part of what I walk through with women in coaching. Not just the business strategy and the building, but the inner work of navigating hard seasons with faith and clarity and someone in your corner who sees what’s being formed in you even when you can’t see it yet.
If that’s where you are, let’s talk. Connect with me here and we can figure out what working together could look like.
And if you want this kind of conversation as a regular part of your week, come find me on the podcast. Laughing Over Tomorrow is where I go deeper on all of this, faith, building, the hard seasons, and the joy that comes out the other side.
No Comments