Why I Take Pictures of Flowers

Hi Friends,

In case you're wondering why I'm always taking those flower pictures wherever I go, well, here's the answer:

Flowers, Flowers Everywhere!

There is a common beauty found all over the world. A splash of color, a hint of sweet scent. Familiar, and foreign. Like home and a half a world away.

I discovered this beauty on a narrow street in a small country town in the hills of France. My older daughters and I had travelled to France with their school group, and now we walked cobbled streets surrounded by stone buildings older than anything we could find in the United States.

Halfway down a street, across from a cathedral, I saw it. Simple, really. A short pot filled with bright red tulips. 

I stopped, grabbed my phone, and took a picture.

My eldest daughter paused in front of me and frowned. “What are you doing?”

“I’m taking a picture of these flowers to send to Jayden.”

She huffed. “That’s dumb. Take a picture of the cathedral instead.”

I shrugged. It may have been dumb, but I did it anyway. My son, Jayden, seven at the time, loved flowers. When he was little he called them “fowlers” and would always gather me a bunch when the wildflowers bloomed on our property in the spring. When we went to parks, he stopped to appreciate all the pretty petals. When we went to the store, he would want to pick the flowers in the pots outside. Of course I didn’t let him, but he could smell them and touch them and fill his soul with their beauty, 

So it only made sense now to text him pictures of France’s flowers so he would know I was thinking about him. 

I took another picture of the tulips. Then I snapped pictures of the bright yellow daffodils at the park a little ways down the street. I took pictures of tiny purple wildflowers across from the statue of Denis Diderot in Langres, climbing lavender wisteria at the Château de Chenonceau, cherry blossoms in Paris, and tiny little white flowers that looked like daisies on the walk to Napoleon’s tomb. 

I took pictures of flowers everywhere. Yellows, oranges, purples, pinks, and blues. As lovely as the paintings in the Louvre. After all, they were flowers in France!

Then I came home. But I kept seeing flowers, splashes of beauty in the most mundane places. In a pot outside the supermarket. Poking up in a crack in the parking lot of an apartment complex. Alongside the sidewalk, growing wild, on the way to my favorite restaurant. At home, among the weeds, yellow flowers. 

            So I’ve continued to take pictures. My daughters laugh at me still. They think it’s silly. Maybe it is. 

But the flowers remind me of God’s grace. They remind me of his wonder. They pop up in the places I least expect. They give beauty in the places that seem too mundane to notice.

I want to notice. I want to be intentional, intentional enough to take a picture, to remember, not just the flowers but the ways in which God reveals his beauty, his glory, his wonder in all the unexpected and ordinary places in my life. I want to see him as I rush into the grocery store, as I walk to my favorite restaurant, as I hurry through the apartment complex parking lot to set up a party for the low-income kids there. I even want to see him, glory in him, at home when life seems full of the weeds of weariness, discouragement, and everyday hurry. I want to see him there most of all.

Jeremiah 29:13 (NIV) says, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. ALL your heart. All my heart and with everything I am. Not just when I’m having an amazing vacation halfway across the world, but when I’m home and tired and just don’t want to bother. To seek him then. To see him.

I love the flowers of France. And lately, I’ve come to love the flowers in my local Prunetree shopping center too. There is common beauty found all over the world, waiting to be discovered in the most overlooked places of life. There is a beauty that points to the breath-taking wonder of a God who will be found by us if only we pause to seek him, to see, and to breath deeply of his grace in the most unimpressive places of our lives.

So I think I will keep taking pictures of flowers in everyday places … no matter how often my daughters sigh and shake their heads. Because in doing so, I might just see God.

When All You See is Muck

 Hi Friends,

I've been pondering this story lately. For anyone who is stuck in muck and nothing seems right ... here's hope!

What's in the Muck?

It looked like mud. It smelled like mud.  It sloshed like mud.  But my 12-year-old daughter, Bethany, insisted it was just a vial of pond water she was supposed to study for her science class.

She set the vial on the kitchen counter.  “This is going to be awesome.”  

I scowled.  “Awesome? You’re studying mud.”

“Teacher says we’ll  be surprised at what we see.”

“I see mud.”

She laughed, then jogged upstairs for the cheap microscope we’d bought her for Christmas.  Her voice floated back down to me.  “Just wait, Mom.  You’ll love pond scum.”

I shook my head.  “We’ll see about that.  Now hurry up.”

A moment later, she trotted back down the steps, set up the microscope, and carefully placed a drop of dirty pond water between two slides.  She slid the sample in place and bent over the eye piece.  Her hand fiddled to adjust the focus.

I waited.  Surely there was nothing good to see in a bunch of mucky water.

“Oooo, I knew it.”  Bethany leaned closer to the eye piece.  Then, her head shot up.  A huge grin spread over her face.  “Ha!  Told you so.  Look at that!”  She stepped back and jabbed her finger toward the microscope.

“I still see mud.”

“You won’t when you look through the lens.”

I moved toward the microscope then peered into the eye piece.  I caught my breath.  Bethany was right.  I didn’t see mud anymore.  Instead, I saw life.  The water teemed with amoeba, paramecium, and tiny specks of who-knew-what.  The creatures waltzed through the water in a silent dance that was, indeed, awesome.  Tiny legs swooshed.  Tiny bodies floated with exquisite grace.  As the creatures continued to glide and spin, I glanced up at Bethany.  “I had no idea there was so much life in a little bit of muddy water.”

Her voice softened.  “You wouldn’t see that in clear water.”

“I guess not.”  But I’d wanted clear water - water that was sparkling, pretty ... and lifeless.  It was in the murk, in the mud, in the guck, that real life was found.  

Bethany again moved toward the microscope and bent to look through the lens.  As I watched her, I remembered all the years of infertility I’d endured before she was born.  Month upon month, turning to year upon year, of soaring hope followed by crushing disappointment.  Over a decade filled with painful procedures, failed tests, miscarriage, and a thousand questions about God’s love and faithfulness.  Back then, life was a lot like that drop of pond water.  Nothing was clear.  Nothing made sense.  I didn’t know how I’d see my way through.

But in that moment, as I looked more closely at those 11 years, I could see life.  I could see how God was at work, breaking me of the need to measure His love by my happiness, using every bit of muck and mud to form me into the person He wanted me to be.  Despite all the murkiness, those years teemed with life and growth, even when I couldn’t see it.  Even when all I could see was the mud.

Faith, then, is like a microscope.  Hebrews 11:1 (NIV) says, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”  Faith allows us to look into the muddy, murky, stinky, yucky places of life and see God at work.  Through faith, what may seem like pond scum can become a thing of beauty.

In the 13 years since Bethany’s birth, I’ve found that life has a lot of murky moments.  Things rarely go as expected.  Plans go awry.  God’s workings are often unclear, difficult to see, and hard to understand.  But when I look at life through the microscope of faith, through the lens of hope -- when I focus in on God and his truth, then I truly see.  God is moving.  There is life in the murkiness, and there is purpose even in the muck.

And while I still prefer my water clear, I’m learning, little by little, to appreciate the pond scum. I’m learning to focus in through the muck, see the waltz of God’s workings, and whisper, “Oooo, I had no idea there was so much life in a little bit of muddy water.”