Guest Interview: Leslie Newman

On Wednesdays in my Meeting God in the Garden series, I will feature guest interviews with other Christian gardeners.  Today I want to introduce you to my friend and fellow blogger Leslie Newman.

Leslie is a wife, mother, friend, heart-encourager, and recovering perfectionist. She spends her days home educating, writing, and hunting wildflowers on her farm in rural Kentucky. Drop by and visit her at her blog, journeytoimperfect.com, where you’ll find her talking about faith, prayer, and letting go of perfect.

Q: Tell us about your own garden. What is your favorite kind of gardening (flower, vegetable, container, etc.) and why?

By far, my favorite gardens are flower gardens. I love the simplicity and beauty of them. Cultivated flower gardens are lovely, but my favorite kind of garden grows in its natural habitat every spring on our farm. It’s God’s garden, so to speak, since the flowers I’m referring to are wildflowers. They’ve been blooming on this farm for generations on end.

From early March to mid-May the bluff and creek bottoms are full of a colorful collection of tiny wildflowers arranged so beautifully by the hand of God who created them. I enjoy looking for wildflowers and have come across some of the most delicate and intricate creations of nature that I have ever seen as I walk in the
woods on my wildflower hunts.

Q: What spiritual lessons has God taught you through gardening?

It’s hard to imagine how lovely the spring wildflowers are. Even the photos don’t do them justice. They are so colorful, delicate, and beautiful and there is such a wide variety of them. They have done nothing to earn their beauty. The are beautiful because God made them that way. They are unique and individual and colorful, and they are found in many different shapes and sizes. Their beauty and individuality is a gift given to them by their creator.  He created them with such variety because He wanted to. It pleased Him.

Sometimes though, you have to search long and hard before you see the beauty right in front of you. Although many wildflowers are out in the open where they can easily be seen, others hide away in the nooks and crannies of the woodland or they camouflage themselves with colors that match their surroundings. This is what makes wildflower hunting so intriguing. Every year I find something new.

Spiritual Parallels

I see many spiritual parallels. As women, we can’t imagine how lovely we are to God. We can’t do anything to earn God’s love. That is a gift He gives us. He created us beautiful and lovely, full of individuality. We come in as many different varieties as those sweet little wildflowers. He made us this way because it pleased Him. We are His precious creation. His love is a gift that can’t be taken away. It should be what defines us and gives us confidence. It’s where our real beauty comes from.

However, the beauty in our lives can be difficult to see at times. It hides in the recesses of our hearts and lies dormant just like the flowers in their winter seasons. But God, because of His infinite love for us, gives us all that we need to thrive and find the beauty hidden inside. He provides the soils of His word as our firm foundation, and He sent his Son to die for us so we could receive a life we didn’t deserve. He brings the rains of His Holy Spirit to water and refresh our souls, to teach us the truth and to help us through our cold
winter seasons.

When we fix our eyes on Jesus (Hebrews 12:1-2), we can push away the old dead leaves of winter and bloom with the confidence and beauty we’ve been given because of the grace of God. We can glorify Him in our day-to-day lives just like one of these tiny and delicate blooms that rises up year after year in the early spring sunshine.

Consider how the wildflowers grow: They don’t labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these!  Luke 12:27 HCSB

Q: In this year’s gardening season, what challenges do you face? How do they correlate with your faith?

In this year’s spring wildflower season I have struggled with setting aside the time it takes to do the looking. It’s a quiet, slow sort of walking with lots of stooping and searching and photo taking. I’m usually in the woods for a couple of hours when I go wildflower hunting. If I let my to-do list take over, I lose time with God in nature that I can never get back. It will roll around again next year, but the beauty of this particular season will be gone.

It is good and healthy to take time out to rest and do things we take pleasure in. When we do this, we enjoy the season while we are in it and we get the added benefit of seeing God in ways we may have never expected!

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Thank you Leslie for this lovely interview and these gorgeous photos!

Visit Leslie’s social media links:
Facebook  Twitter  Pinterest  Instagram

Questions for reflection:

How do wildflowers inspire your faith?

What kind of beauty is right in front of you today? What do you need to do to see it?

When will you stop and rest in God’s presence today?

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