I love this photo of me and the kids standing in a field of lilies. But my husband isn’t in it. It’s just me and our little crew, smiling in the sunshine and surrounded by flowers. It’s sweet and soft and captures the moment.
In military life, you get used to snapshots where someone’s missing. Holidays, birthdays, first steps, and backyard soccer games. But you also learn something sacred in the middle of it all: the moment still matters, and the season still counts. Not because it’s perfect, but because it’s given.
“Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.” -Luke 12:27
Lilies don’t grow because they try harder. They grow because God made them with beauty, timing, and purpose already built in. Their beauty isn’t dependent on their surroundings. It’s rooted in the One who provides for them.
And maybe it’s the same for us. Maybe this season isn’t about waiting for their return. Waiting for “normal.” Maybe it’s unfolding exactly as God intended.
In the everyday, in the quiet, and the in-between.
And even in the long days when you are stretched thin, it’s still beautiful because He’s here and wastes nothing.
So here’s to the spouses holding space in a season apart, to the moms showing up for the small stuff that feels big, and to the moments that may look ordinary but are anything but.
You are not on pause but rather blooming where He planted you.