Lindsey Nordby

A few years ago, a friend of mine asked me what my favorite element of nature was.

Weird question, right?

Honestly, I don’t remember what answer I gave that night. It was almost 4am and I had been working on papers and homework assignments since like dinnertime that night.

But a years later, this question is still bouncing around in my head.

I learned, shortly after that night, that this question is actually part of a psychological test. It turns out that your favorite part of nature actually sheds light on what your favorite characteristic of God is.

I have asked many people this question since that night. There is something about it that is so intriguing to me. I have learned a lot about others through it, because what typically happens is this question becomes a springboard for some other conversation. This one simple question has opened a door for me to know people and understand people deeper and more intentionally.

When I am asked this question, a million things come flooding into my mind. There are so many aspects about nature that I love; the beach, the smell of rain, the changing fall colors, the expanse of the mountains, sunsets, the smell of salt in the air on coastlines. I think the physical world is truly a beautiful place. Although, I always seem to circle back to wildflowers.

Wildflowers are beautiful and pure. They grow out of dirt, and also in meadows, and also between rocks. There’s never one that’s alike the next. They’re imperfect in every way, but they’re also beautiful and mesmerizing at times.

I think we, as people, are a lot like wildflowers.

But here are my thoughts:

We are all made different. All in the image of God, yes, but each differently. We all have different beliefs, values, thoughts, physical attributes, passions, interests. I can go on and on, but this is just to say that not one person is exactly the same as another. An elementary concept, yes, but I think we often forget that. I know I find myself comparing myself to others, almost on a daily basis. I compare every part of me to other people and this is where my need to be perfect is rooted. We don’t always see other people’s imperfections, so we see these “perfect people” and we want to be just like them, we want to BE them in some cases. We think they have no issues, no daily struggles. We see a strength and a joy in them that we don’t necessarily see in ourselves. And we want that. But we are stuck as our imperfect selves. We neglect, then, to tell ourselves that we are perfect in God’s eyes because He made us exactly as He wanted. All we see is the imperfections in our eyes. But not one living, breathing thing is exactly like the other. Sure, some people or nature elements or animals may look very very similar, but everything is different. Though, I find a parallel between us and wildflowers more than anything else. I do so because wildflowers grow in the wild, obviously, and as they begin to grow not one even looks remotely the same. Typically, you have flowers of different shapes, sizes, and colors all growing in one patch, together. They spread easily and are also destroyed easily. Wildflowers are imperfect, and like us, not one is the same as another. They can grow in a group, or on their own. They are created uniquely, and someone may find beauty in one while someone else finds beauty in another. But each one has something about it that makes it beautiful, even if everyone doesn’t see it. Looking at us, we are people growing in the same place, yet are all different in the same way wildflowers are. We can grow the human race, and at the same time we are losing members of the human race. One person may find a particular person beautiful, while another person may not. We can be a part of groups, or we can be individuals.

I find such beauty in wildflowers, but I don’t see the same beauty in myself. Wildflowers being just one example, there are many things that we all find some sense of beauty in that we neglect to see in ourselves. Even though the things we find as beautiful and perfect were created by the same God who created us. A God who sees us as beautiful and perfect the same way I see wildflowers.

I have this beautiful image in my head of these two worlds colliding – it plays out like one of those flashback movie scenes in my mind.

It’s dusk, there are rays of light shooting towards a girl who is running through an open field. She stops suddenly when she comes across a huge patch of wildflowers, and amazed she stops to admire them. She picks a few and then walks through the large flower field, looking at the flowers in her hand, smiling and laughing and dancing.

The last part is what’s stuck with me. This girl, she in in awe of the beauty and imperfection she finds before her. So much so that she begins to smile and laugh and dance. And it just makes me wonder, why can’t I find the same joy in my imperfection?

This concept of walking among wildflowers has stuck with me. The need to be perfect has also stuck with me, though. Separating the two, picking one and running with it, has proven itself to be much harder than I would like it to be.

Accepting imperfection is hard. But being imperfect is exactly what we were created to be, even if we don’t believe it.