Under a canopy of leafy green, two of my children sprawled out on top of a plaid picnic blanket. It was a cozy place to embrace a slow start to our morning. My youngest son was already focused on sketching tiny details from the leaf he’d plucked from a nearby tree. Across the blanket, my eldest carefully copied down the bark patterns of an unruly trunk, auburn with little canyons carved in the wood — a pathway for an army of ants to march steadily along.
While the boys were deep into their nature observations, my daughter slowly gathered flowers from around our yard. First, two zinnias of fuchsia and tangerine, their twisting and untamed stems held together tightly in hand. A morning glory of brilliant blue was added as she carefully took it off the vine, then a gardenia with its glorious fragrance, and lastly a marigold as yellow as the sunshine. She delicately laid down her bouquet on the blanket, dipped her paintbrush onto a palette of watercolors, and attempted to capture the homegrown beauty before her.
We’ve accrued quite a collection of nature observations from over the past few years. Most have been documented through rough pencil sketches and painted landscapes, while some have been crafted through poetry and written words. We have been learning to keep our eyes wide open to the detail waiting to be discovered in the wild land we’ve been transplanted into. Situated in rural Uganda, our very backyard is an observatory unlike anything I’ve ever known, and nature journaling has become a foundational teaching tool throughout our homeschooling journey and life abroad.
It’s also provided fertile soil for so many memories to be made. As we’ve explored the world outside our front door, we have found so much goodness. Whether documenting together under an umbrella of a dancing green, or counting tadpoles in a murky puddle of water, or in the unexpected discovery of seventeen colorful spiders tucked within a mud dabbers home — we try to embrace it all with an attitude of curiosity.
Yet, it’s become more than a science or language arts lesson; it’s an invitation to forage for God’s good gifts as we slow down long enough to appreciate His beauty, both hidden and on display. It’s become a guiding path enabling us to root ourselves in wonder of God’s creation and actively search for His fingerprints all around us.
The more I observe the Lord’s handiwork alongside my children, the deeper the words of Psalm 77:12 have engraved themselves into my heart, “I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds.” Yet this verse is not only applicable when we pause in the busy pace of life and stoop to notice a new flower budding on a ruddy branch, but there in the middle of the unknowns, hardships, struggles in this ever-changing life abroad. There is a need to become a forager of His goodness, even when we can’t seem to make headway in our circumstance.
There is such visual beauty capturing this and exuding from the words of the Shepherd in Hannah Hurnard’s beloved book, Hinds Feet on High Places: “[But] always their greatest victories are like the wild flowers, those which one knows about. Learn this lesson now down here in the valley, Much Afraid, and when you get to steep places of the mountains it will comfort you.”
I have been wandering through the wilderness of waiting.
I have been discouraged in the desert of deferred hope and delays.
I have been in the valley, so low in the trenches of uncertainty.
Maybe you have too.
It could be a challenging situation with teammates, struggling with a bout of homesickness as we approach the upcoming holidays, dealing with constant illness, overwhelmed with ministry demands, struggling to raise the needed funds to remain on the field, missing the closeness of dear friends who’ve moved away, or perhaps entering into yet another season of transition yourself.
There’s been a thick fog wrapping itself around me as I’ve pressed on through the paths leading through the murkiness of wondering. I think I’ve always been searching for a glimpse of light beckoning me to follow, one unsteady footstep at a time. When you walk where there is no knowing, you must lean heavy into the only One who does know.
Recently coming out of a long six-year waiting season, I feel a prompting to gather up all the wild words I’ve sown into my multitude of weary-looking notebooks along the way. It’s not to say I’m completely in the clear, for there still is a long road ahead of me, but I’m finding a moment to catch my breath.
My heart is stirred as I still myself beside quiet waters of relief and allow space to flip through page after page of desperate prayers, laments, and poems I don’t even remember having written. Nestled within a stack of well used journals, I reflect on my own scattering of tear-filled entries — planted in faith and right there in the middle of my very own valley of waiting and wondering.
Yet, this gathering of words sown in barren places is already birthing so much new life in me. Like a meadow of abundance, these offerings now sprout up like little fierce green petitions — there deep in the mud and in all the uncultivated places where they were whispered in weariness, cried out in grief, and surrendered in promises buried deep. These plantings are a melody of deliberate praise, a hymn laced together with His faithfulness and having blossomed into a testimony of a trust that will continue to be made perfect in Him.
Whether you also find yourself cautiously walking through a valley of unknowns or clinging to a steep mountainside, know that your Shepherd is with you. Both in the low place or the one that brings us up high, we can proactively look for all the good things He has surrounded us with. When we pause to look deeper within, we can fully embrace the abundance of His goodness waiting to be discovered in times of reflection.
