Spring's Invitation to Beauty and Spiritual Depth

Season two begins with an invitation to slow down, step outside, and notice what God is doing—both in creation and within your own heart.

As winter gives way to spring, we reflect on how God brings healing and renewal through the natural world, and how moments of stillness can open the door to deeper intimacy with Him.

In this episode, Bethany shares from her own “wilderness” season and the quiet hope found in the first signs of life returning—reminding us that even when things feel frozen or uncertain, new life is still unfolding.

Wherever you find yourself—emerging from a hard season or still walking through it—you’re invited to come along, slow down, and rediscover the steady, restoring love of God.

Thanks for listening! I'd love to connect on Instagram at @beautiful_purpose_writing or Substack at Wildflowers in the Wilderness. You can also reach out on my website, bethanypeck.org.

Transcript

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Hi, this is Bethany, and welcome to the Beautiful Purpose Podcast. Together, we'll explore how God brings healing and peace through his creation. When we tend to our bodies and rest in the beauty of nature, our hearts can awaken to the steadfast love God has for us. That's the beautiful purpose I believe he invites each of us into. Well, hello, friends. Welcome back. It's season two of the Beautiful Purpose Podcast. This is Bethany, and I'm so glad you're here. I'm excited to be here and to continue this conversation about growing deeper in our relationship with the Lord as we spend time in nature. The first season was back in December. It was Advent and we were talking about waiting, how to wait well, who we are waiting for, Christ to come again. And now spring is right around the corner. We've mostly made it through winter. I'm hoping and praying that this season will be contemplative, an inspiration to pursue beauty and creativity, and an invitation to grow in intimacy with God during the season that He's putting on a full-blown majestic display of His plan for resurrection. I'm going to bring you along on my spring adventure, on my journey with the Lord through Scripture, while we reflect on what God is teaching us with spring. And I hope we can do this together. God designed us to be connected to the earth. I hope this conversation can be an encouragement for each of us to spend time in the spring, to go slowly, to notice the beauty around you, and to notice what's happening within. Maybe the winter has caused a little numbness. I truly believe that when we get out in nature, the activation of our senses enlivens us. It helps us to notice what's going on within, too, where your heart is and what's happening with your emotions. And of course, as a side note, there is a great deal of research that shows that actually being out in nature, outdoors, truly is good for our physical being too. Being in nature activates our parasympathetic nervous system. That's like the background systems, the network of nerves that aids our body in all of the processes that we need to live, to survive, to be healthy and well, nature can have a calming effect on us. So really, I think that noticing is just more natural and quite frankly easier in nature. But rather than just looking inward for the sake of self-reflection, when we bring our emotions, our heart, the rumblings and our soul to the author of creation himself, we can experience a deeper intimacy with him as he walks with us in the garden. And then that slowness that creation calls us to, it's the perfect time to also listen to him. Because we can get really good at this, right? With practice, noticing your God-given emotions, reflecting on challenges, even talking to the Lord about it, going on and on and on. But a relationship only grows with two-way communication. God wants to speak to you, and he can do it through the stillness of nature and even through his actual creation. And I think that growth in intimacy is how the healing happens, how we keep becoming who he's created us to be. I've seen it in my life slowly, slowly, slowly through time. And I want to encourage others to experience the same. And I want to share this quote with you from author Dallas Willard. I'm reading his book on hearing God right now, just desiring to learn more about what it means to be in conversation with God. And so this is what he says: In this life with God, his presence banishes our aloneness and makes real the meaning and full purpose of human existence. This union with God consists cheaply in a conversational relationship with God, while we are consistently and deeply engaged as his friend and co-laborer in the affairs of the kingdom of the heavens. Isn't that lovely? This is what I am continually longing for myself and for you, my friends. Yes, let's keep writing poetry. Let's keep documenting what we're learning during our time in nature, what the Lord is teaching us, what he's doing in our hearts, and what we're hearing from him. I loved doing the December once-a-day poetry challenge. I haven't kept up all winter with that, I definitely admit. And so maybe I'll try and get back to it this spring. I really just always see when I work to keep that as a habit, that I am just more reflective and I feel closer to the Lord. It really, it really is a practice of the examine. It's something that Saint Ignatius created a long, long time ago. So it's nothing, it's nothing new and nothing that I've created, but just taking that daily inventory of your heart and where you're at with the Lord. And why not do it through poetry as you're inspired out in nature? So we're kicking off season two, just as it's about to officially turn to spring, but it it has actually still felt like winter for me. And I think probably for a lot of people. And what a winter it's been. Winter can just really feel like a wilderness type landscape, I think. And maybe that's even where you're at in life, coming out of the wilderness. It's where I've been for a little bit now, rescued from a dark night of the soul, but still wandering, still looking for beauty out of what's felt very broken. And maybe you are still in the wilderness. But spring will still come. That's just a fact. The flowers will still bloom, the trees will bud and uh fill with leaves. So let's talk about how this season can bring hope and healing to our wilderness wandering hearts. As each of us, no matter where we're at on our pilgrimage journey, become more of the child of God he's created us to be. I believe the spring can help us to truly feel his love. That's that's just who God is, that's what he's made us for, and we even have Easter coming up here soon as a reminder of the depths of his love and what he has done for you and me. So my winter was quite the literal wilderness here in Maryland, in the Northeast, we had multiple snowstorms. There was one that was snow, and then a layer of several inches of ice. It really, really felt like winter, compounded by the freezing temperatures for weeks on end, so that we had snow for I think it was almost four weeks. It really was an Arctic wilderness, it felt like here. Oh, and I was I was getting tired of it. Even though I tried to make the best of it, and you know, that's another conversation. If you read my Substack, you'll see a story that I shared about building an igloo with those pieces of ice. But the longer it went on, the more I just kept feeling my heart longing for warmth again, longing for more sunlight, more daylight, um, the world to feel alive again and to be able to spend more time out in nature. So finally, after weeks and weeks of the snow and the ice, and then another few inches of snow, it was mostly gone, and I noticed a snowdrop blooming. Snowdrops are one of the first flowers that bloom. Some years I've noticed it like the first week of February. This year it was kind of mid to late February, but sure enough, still with some snow in the flower bed, sunshine pouring down on it on one nice February day, there was a lone snowdrop blooming. And wow, isn't that just the first beautiful metaphor of spring? That what once looked dead and frozen over could yield life again, that beauty could come up again. So, something else that's been happening this winter, along with the snow and the ice and the freezing cold temperatures, is that I have been co-leading a women's support group. It's a group for betrayed women. And that's my story, and many women unfortunately have that as part of their story too. And so in the evenings, every Wednesday, this group of women, we get together and just have this opportunity to feel less alone, to bring the pain of our stories and uh to just be seen and known by one another. And it's been a really, a really beautiful thing for me. It's certainly brought back up a lot of pain from my story that sometimes now is a little bit more in the background. And then hearing the pain uh from these women with everything that they're experienced, my heart, my heart has just been aching again this winter. And yet I see resilience and I see faith and I see strength and I see hope in these women. And so after I saw the snowdrop and we had a group session one evening, I wrote this little poem. It's about the snowdrops, and it's what I want to share as we kick off this season and we look to uh nature, as we look to the spring to help us to grow closer to the Lord and uh be encouraged by his truth and what he speaks to us through creation as well. So here's this little poem to the snowdrops through the cold earth, seemingly lifeless, dark and dense, iced over, snow-covered, frozen winter soil, you were blooming. Through the heavy days, lonely and unseen, raging and grieving, then a desperate numbing from petrified pain, you were blooming. Through the jaw-clenching, sleepless nights, adrenaline spikes, heart-racing panic, and our mind fighting fog, you were blooming. Through the long season, rebuilding messy questions, tender longings, and believing the winter will end, you were blooming. Friends, I'm not an expert here to say, let's just overcome, and it's going to be an endless spring, and life will always be a bouquet of flowers. No, I know that's not reality, and you know it too. Really, in fact, even though the Lord has brought me out of the depths of the wilderness, the spiritual warfare and the mental battles that I still face are the very reason I need this podcast for myself. Self-doubt, self-contempt, shame, these are things I battle still every day, nearly. And you probably do too. Because the fact is, until the Lord calls us home, the evil one is going to try and defeat us. He can't snatch you away from Christ as a child of God. He cannot do that. But of course, he's trying to stop us from fulfilling our purpose, from bringing beauty to the kingdom of God, from preaching the good news, from creating and making and loving and having beautiful embodied relationships. So we need the spring each year to be reminded of all of this and to keep pursuing beauty, to keep creating beauty, to keep being beautiful ourselves. And so I hope that we can just do this together. I'm I'm excited to do this together and yeah, to write some poems along the way or do some journaling or whatever type of writing you might need to do to just dive more deeply into the season that you're in. So I want each of these podcasts to be an opportunity to meditate on some scripture as well. And so this very first episode, I'm gonna read Psalm 104. It's one that has come up in my reading the past few days, and it has a lot of uh nature references, and so it just really struck me as we're coming up upon spring. I really love the reference towards the end of this psalm to creatures that look to the Lord and uh to give them their food at the proper time. And isn't that just such an allusion to the wilderness as well and how the Lord provided manna in the desert in the wilderness for the Israelites? And as we're coming up out of this wilderness of winter, he's about to provide us spring. And I pray that the beauty will be manna for our souls, really. All right, so let me read Psalm 104. Praise the Lord, my soul. Lord my God, you are very great. You are clothed with splendor and majesty. The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment, he stretches out the heavens like a tent, and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot, and rides on the wings of the wind. He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants. He set the earth on its foundations, it can never be moved. You covered it with the watery depths as with a garment, but at your rebuke the waters fled. At the sound of your thunder they took to flight. They flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them. You set a boundary they cannot cross. Never again will they cover the earth. He makes springs pour water into the ravines, it flows between the mountains, they give water to all the beasts of the field, the wild donkeys quench their thirst, the birds of the sky nest by the waters, they sing among the branches. He waters the mountains from his upper chambers, the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work. He makes grass grow for the cattle and plants for people to cultivate, bringing forth food from the earth, wine that gladdens human hearts, oil to make their faces shine, and bread that sustains their hearts. The trees of the Lord are well watered, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. There the birds make their nests. The stork has its home in the junipers, the high mountains belong to the wild goats. The crags are a refuge for the hyrax. He made the moon to mark the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down. You bring darkness, it becomes night, and all the beasts of the forest prowl. The lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God. The sun rises and they steal away. They return and lie down in their dens. Then people go out to their work, to their labor until evening. How many are your works, Lord? In wisdom you made them all. The earth is full of your creatures. There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number, living things both large and small. There the ships go to and fro, and Leviathan, which you form to frolic there. All creatures look to you, to give them their food at the proper time. When you give it to them, they gather it up. When you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. When you hide your face, they are terrified. When you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. When you send your spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the ground. May the glory of the Lord endure forever. May the Lord rejoice in his works. He who looks at the earth and it trembles, who touches the mountains and they smoke. I will sing to the Lord all my life. I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. May my meditation be pleasing to him as I rejoice in the Lord. But my sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more. Praise the Lord. My soul, praise the Lord. Isn't that beautiful? I hope that was a moment you could meditate on God's word, friends, and we'll do that in each of these episodes. And I'm just really grateful you're you're here. I'm excited for the spring. There's just so much coming up. Let's let's do this together. Let's do this spring together. The daffodils, the cherry blossoms, the magnolia, the bluebells, a personal favorite of mine. The tulips, the trees coming alive again, the sunshine. Let's keep pursuing beauty. That's how we defeat the darkness. So let's do it together. Thank you so much for being here, friends. I'm so grateful you're a part of the Beautiful Purpose podcast. It means a lot to me. And if you'd like to connect more, you can find me on Instagram at BeautifulPurposeWriting. You can also find me on Substack at Wildflowers in the Wilderness. If you enjoy the podcast, I'd love it if you would share with a friend or even leave a review that helps other people find this. And I'm just I'm just so grateful for you. You can send me a message, let me know what you think, what you'd like to talk about, your favorite parts of spring. Send me one of your poems. I want to hear about it all. I will be back with you next week. Bye bye.