You Belong Among the Wildflowers
a story about the broad place Jesus brought us to
The sky was bright blue, cloudless, and we passed few cars on the road. We drove through the Scandinavian cities of western South Carolina—Denmark, Sweden, Norway. This wasn’t the fastest way to get from Columbia to southeastern Georgia, at least not as the crow flew. But on a Friday afternoon, I-95 turns into a parking lot, and Apple Maps suggested going on a more scenic route to avoid the traffic and get there faster.
It was December 2019, and we were headed to visit a small church about 40 minutes outside of Savannah. Christian had been talking with the pastor and elders there over the past six weeks, but we hadn’t met any of them in person. The church was looking to hire a second pastor. Christian had been looking for a new job ever since September of that year, when the elders at our current church told Christian he had six months left to work there and should start looking to “transition” somewhere else. They never explained this other than to say he wasn’t a good fit. As the months went by, it felt like the elders were more focused on damage control, especially after some church members expressed their confusion and frustration over Christian leaving. By the time we were driving to a small town in Georgia the weekend before Christmas, I was so emotionally exhausted that I was approaching numbness. I didn’t know if this new church would be a good prospect. I was just glad to get out of town and not have to be at our old church on a Sunday.
As we drove, Christian was controlling the music, which was fine with me—while his taste is eclectic and broad, I like most of the same music he likes. A song started playing, and I was proud of myself for recognizing the song and the artist—”Wildflowers” by Tom Petty—but it was a cover, and it stopped me in my tracks. The artist was The Wailin’ Jennys, a female trio from Canada. The harmonies were spot on. It was beautiful.
Having thus been introduced to The Wailin’ Jennys, I added “Wildflowers” to my Liked Songs on Spotify, and, as I think is still the case, your most recent “Liked Song” stays at the top of the list. For the next month, as we visited Georgia again and Christian was voted in as the new co-pastor at the church, I guess I didn’t “like” any other songs, because “Wildflowers” remained at the top of the list.
Our trip to Guyton that weekend was encouraging. We connected well with the elders and enjoyed worshipping with the church body that Sunday. We left for home with both parties eager to continue the interview process, which gave us a hope that we desperately needed.
Christian continued having conversations with the elders, and we visited again in mid-January 2020 for him to preach to the congregation and let the church get to know us. Two weeks after that, the Georgia congregation voted Christian in as a new pastor.
The plan was for Christian to start working at the new church full-time in April 2020, after I had given birth. For the month of February and half of March, he would begin working part-time and commute back and forth a couple times a week in order to get his feet wet at the new church.
My due date with our son, Noah, was March 31, 2020. But because I had gestational diabetes, I was scheduled to be induced on March 24th. I hadn’t had any serious complications with my previous pregnancies, and so when the last month of my pregnancy saw me rotating in and out of the hospital, it was not what I expected.
My first visit to the ER was after we got back from a house-hunting trip to Georgia in mid-February. I was doing my best to stay hydrated, but we were on the go all weekend. All the walking and the stress left me completely exhausted, and I started having contractions. They monitored me for a while and determined it was likely just dehydration causing excessive Braxton-Hicks contractions and I wasn’t in labor. Relieved, I went home.
The second time was less than a week later. I started having contractions only a few minutes apart, so back we went to the ER. This time they determined that I might be in pre-term labor, and because I was just over 35 weeks, they wanted to try to delay Noah’s arrival a bit longer. They gave me steroid injections in case he did come early to help his lungs, and they gave me medicine to try to stop labor. After 48 hours in the hospital, they determined I was no longer in active labor and sent me home.
There was a third time, and I think it was after the pre-term labor trip, but I honestly don’t remember, and I didn’t document it anywhere. While I shared about my other trips on Facebook, by this point I think I was embarrassed that I was going to the ER so many times in such a short time period, and I was afraid I was jumping to conclusions again. This time, though, my concerns were legitimate. I wasn’t in labor; however, I had a bacterial infection “down below” that was causing my body to mimic symptoms of labor. I got antibiotics and went home.
On March 3, a stomach bug hit our oldest son, who was 10 at the time. And because my immune system was compromised due to stress and pregnancy, I also got the stomach bug. That night, Christian slept in the living room, and our son, Stephen, and I, slept in the master bedroom so we could be close to the bathroom. I will never forget sitting on the floor of the shower, feeling like absolute death, while Christian disinfected our bathroom from top to bottom. Because of my gestational diabetes, I was limited in the liquids I could consume to stay hydrated, and I knew I was in danger of extreme dehydration. My OB told me to once again go to the ER, for the fourth time in three weeks, where they hooked me up to an IV and got my body back to some level of stability.
One thing about me that would be an interesting fact for the game “Two Truths and a Lie” is that my veins are, according to many healthcare professionals, abnormally small. When I had an emergency appendectomy in my senior year of high school, the nurse was struggling to find a vein when I came in to the ER, so she sent a nurse to the NICU to get the needles they use on premature babies.
I’ve also been cursed with something called vasovagal syncope1, otherwise known as inexplicable fainting. Some people experience this when they see blood or a needle. For me, watching a needle go into my body makes it worse, but I’ve also actually or almost fainted merely at the sensation of the needle going into my arm. My blood pressure drops, my vision goes blurry, and I feel like I’m going to pass out.
I share these two facts because they worked in tandem with my frequent hospital visits in 2020 to compound my anxiety. Each trip to the hospital meant being hooked up to an IV. Each time I was at least somewhat dehydrated, so my already small veins were even smaller, and it took multiple attempts for them to find a vein that would work. And each poke of the needle meant a possible fainting episode. And while I know that fainting isn’t a life or death situation, the feeling of being about to faint is extremely unpleasant.
Prepared for the inevitable needle pokes, I decided to try to combat my anxiety on the first trip to the ER by bringing along my corded headphones (RIP) and playing music. I wasn’t interested in trying to make a decision about what to listen to, so I just hit “play” on Spotify, which automatically started at the top of my “Liked Songs” playlist. “Wildflowers” began to play. Sometimes I’d go back and listen to it again and again after I’d listened to some of the other songs. From then on, every time I got to the hospital and got settled in the bed, “Wildflowers” was the soundtrack.
You belong among the wildflowers
You belong in a boat out at sea
Sail away, kill off the hours
You belong somewhere you feel free
At first, the song took me back to that drive down the backroads of South Carolina with Christian a few months prior, talking about the uncertain future but grateful for the ways the Lord was caring for us. But the more I listened, the more the lyrics took on deeper meaning for me.
As I laid in the hospital bed, time and time again, I closed my eyes and imagined a wide open field of flowers. I imagined resting there. I imagined a boat on a calm sea, rocking back and forth. I imagined being somewhere where I felt free.
I did not feel free hooked up to an IV, but I also didn’t feel free outside the hospital, either. Everything was chaos and uncertainty.
I had been an avid writer in my journal, but my journal from that period of time is empty. There is an entry from February 21, where I talk about my anxiety about our dog and moving him to a house with a yard that wasn’t fenced in. Then the journal jumps to March 29. By that point, Noah was 2.5 weeks old and we had been in our new home in Georgia over a week. Those days in between were not documented in writing.
And so my memories of those hospital visits and the space between them exist only in my head. I have few pictures. To this day, though, listening to “Wildflowers” serves as a time machine to take me back.
You belong among the wildflowers
You belong somewhere close to me
Far away from your trouble and worry
You belong somewhere you feel free
The song is obviously not written from a mother to a child. But it became a song I was singing to our son. My heart ached for the chaos and transition my older children were already experiencing, and now we were about to uproot our entire family and move to Georgia. Noah wouldn’t remember any of that, of course, but it felt like we were venturing into the great unknown.
I didn’t see a way out of the trouble and worry, even after Noah was born. I felt trapped by my obligations to my family, trapped by what it felt like our church had forced us into, and while I didn’t know it yet, I’d soon be trapped even more by a global pandemic.
Noah ended up coming early, on March 11, 2020. The Wailin’ Jennys kept me company then, too, as I waited for Christian to get back from Georgia in time to be present for the birth of our fourth child. The song became an instant, welcoming trigger for me to dissociate from the present and try to relax.
And sometimes, when I listened to the words, it wasn’t just about our kids and my concern for them. It felt like someone was speaking to me.
The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.
Zephaniah 3:17
Could it be that Jesus was speaking to me? He saw my sorrow and my grief. He saw my deep despair. He saw my worries and my anxiety over money, over the dog, over the new job, over moving, over adding another child to our family.
He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me.
Psalm 18:19
In those moments, I felt Jesus trying to remind me that I did belong among the wildflowers, somewhere I felt free. Not because I had earned it or deserved it. But because that was the whole reason Jesus had come—to bring freedom, to bring relief, to show God’s delight in his children. I could not escape my circumstances, which often felt like they were closing in on me. But the words were like seeing a glimmer of light from the bottom of the pit, a pit I would remain in for most of 2020.
“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
Isaiah 43:19
It has taken five years for me to be able to listen to the song again without the beginning tinges of anxiety. I can tell myself that I’m in a different place, in a different circumstance, but if I close my eyes I am laying in a hospital bed, trying not to get the headphone cord tangled up in the IV, trying not to pass out, trying not to cry, trying not to worry about the future, the words to the song feeling like a cruel joke.
I wish I could travel through time and talk to myself five years ago. I would sit next to that hospital bed and say, You’re not crazy to be afraid—what has already passed has been difficult, and the difficulties are not over. But one day, you will drive down the road to your new church and see the acres and acres of grass and water and trees and you will think “This is a broad place.” You will think of the friends he will give you and you will no longer feel you are in a wasteland. You will look back on these days and weeks and months and still feel deep grief. But you will also be able to trace the Lord’s faithfulness through years of provision. He is with you. He has saved you and is saving you. Hear him telling you that you are safe and loved.
Last week, I was in the kitchen, heating up the cast iron skillet to pan-sear pork chops. The oven was preheating to roast vegetables. My phone rang. It was my friend, Anna. I met her and her family on that very first trip to Georgia in December 2019. In fact, we stayed at her family’s home. Her dad, Billy, was the one who served me coffee in the “Plant Your Hopes” mug in December 2019.
She was calling because my husband had been at her family’s home all afternoon for various pastoral tasks, and her and her parents wanted to know if we wanted to spontaneously join them for dinner. I loaded up the kids and we drove the six minutes to their house for a delicious dinner of breakfast burritos. We stayed at the table long after we finished eating, talking about anything and everything. I reminded her dad about a conversation we had the first morning we were at their house on that first visit. We laughed about something funny our daughter had said earlier that day. We admired Noah’s new Lego sets. At the table there was no pretense. It was us and them and a tangible reminder of God’s grace and provision.
I could never have orchestrated this broad place to which the Lord has brought us. And while I believe that the wildflowers in the new heavens and new earth will be beyond comparison, there are wildflowers here, too.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/vasovagal-syncope/symptoms-causes/syc-20350527
Once again, thank you for your honesty, Chelsey. You always manage to touch the places in my heart that are tender. (And bring the tears.) Love this cover! Love you. ❤️
Your Substack is powerful because it is so personal and authentic. Tom Petty was my favorite growing up - I own the Wildflowers album. Can’t wait to listen to this cover. Do they also cover “I won’t back down?” That may be his most inspiring song. Awesome post Chelsey!