When I was a silly little girl, I often walked backward. I liked
to play even when walking. I also loved to talk, and walking
backward helped me face the one I was talking to, eyeball-
to-eyeball. Daddy always said, “Look people in the eye when you’re talking to them.” Plus, I was a show-off, especially around my older sister. I wanted Grace to see I could walk backward without stumbling on our rocky dirt road. Besides, walking backward was just plain fun.
Now that I’m in my NINTH DECADE, as my husband Bill is prone to remind me, I’ve quit walking backward. (And yes, his voice seems to capitalize NINTH DECADE to drive home the fact that I’m in my eighties now and need to watch where I put my feet.)
Yet, in my mind and soul, I still do it. I still walk backward. To me, it’s come to represent the childhood joy and wonder I still crave. Back then, it took so little to please me or make me laugh. Riding down a slender young sapling in the woods to make a one-person see-saw was a pleasure. So was kicking a fist-sized rock during the long mile walk to school or slurping the sweet juice of a honeysuckle blossom. A clumsy, iridescent June bug fumbling its way through the air in search of nectar and pollen made me smile. Small things, but good pleasures.
In Flowering of the Cumberland, Kentucky author Harriette Arnow said, “It is a long road to the end of wonder, and some of us never reach it.” But I want to. I want to reach and relish the wonder of what God did in six days of Creation.
This morning, a young deer — a doe — bounded into our backyard alone. She gamboled around, cutting capers for a few seconds, then bolted into our creek, up the far bank, and farther into our wooded hillside. Her frolics looked like pure joy. She made me laugh.
A while back, my friend Missy texted: Go outside and look up. The sky was deep blue except for magnificent snow-white Cumulus clouds. Jubilation! God’s creation — “the dust of his feet,” Nahum said (1:3). The Lord had been walking that day, maybe backward, kicking up dust. Maybe He wanted to give us amateur cloud-watchers an extra dose of joy.
When I think of walking backward, I come back to Phyllis McGinley, poet, essayist, and children’s author. Many years ago, she said, “Children don’t walk like people. Sensibly, staidly, in a definite direction. They canter, they bounce, they slither, slide, crawl, leap into the air, saunter, stand on their heads, swing from branch to branch….I seldom recall seeing a child just plain walk.”
She’s right. Our three-year-old great-grandson never just walks unless an adult is holding his hand too tight for him to leap and bounce like he wants to.
McGinley went on to lament we “outgrow being children.” We “turn into people,” she said. We keep aloof. We speak and act rationally. We lecture, condescend, criticize, and become lonely. We lock ourselves away from playfulness, wonder, and joy. She’s right. I need joy. I need to cut capers in the Lord’s gracious and wondrous creation. I need to walk backward.
Last spring, two resident robins made a nest of twigs, mud, and dry grass on our east downspout. I watched from our kitchen window. Soon, Mrs. Robin began to sit on it for hours. One day, Mr. Robin flew up to the nest and sat beak-to-beak with her for a few moments. I imagined he asked, “How’s it going, dear?” Maybe she chirped back, “It’s boring, but soon it will be worth it.” He quickly flew away, probably to fetch her a fat worm or juicy bug.
Days later just at daylight, three tiny heads on scrawny necks stuck up from the nest. Their beaks gaped, begging for seeds, bugs, or worms. Mom and Dad came and went with food. Mrs. Robin was right — it was worth it!
I celebrated ten or twelve days later when the fledglings left their nest and flew away to a life on their own. For two days, they had practiced standing on the rim of the nest, flapping their tiny wings and flexing their legs up and down, but always dropping back into the nest, exhausted.
“We’re not quite ready yet,” I imagined they said.
Then, early one morning they were gone, and I had missed their flight. For days, our Lord’s “birds of the air,” as Jesus called them, gave me great pleasure. It was like walking backward all over again. Add to that the pleasure I’ve had in our eastern blue birds, northern cardinals, pileated woodpeckers, and the downy woodpeckers that dash up and down and around our dying sycamore, pecking here and there. I can’t forget the wild tom turkey and his hen that meandered across our yard. Above all are the glorious northern flickers that occasionally come by. I celebrate our feathered friends.
“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork,” David said (Psalm 19:1). This shepherd-turned-king knew. He had seen and heard the work of the Lord’s hands with his own eyes and ears.
Last June we had a snapping turtle in our creek, flat, round, and small, but with a big attitude. And later, a strawberry moon, as Algonquin tribes once called it — full and golden, amber (not red). It lay low on the horizon and was exquisite — God’s fourth-day creation, a “lesser light to rule the night” (Genesis 1:16). It declared His glory and proclaimed His handiwork.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning said it better than I can in her long novel-poem, Aurora Leigh, (Seventh Book, ll. 821-825):
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware.
Yes, earth is crammed with God’s gifts and glory. We simply need to be aware. May we see and take off our shoes in praise to Him who gifted us with it all. He enumerates these gifts
and adds (twice) “I have given you…” in Genesis 1:29-30. Let’s not forget.
The Lord does so much. He gives mercy, forgiveness, salvation, grace, compassion, hope, help, courage, guidance, strength for the day, a heavenly dwelling place for tomorrow — whenever that tomorrow comes. But as He reminded the suffering Job, He made earth for our home now, and the whole universe for our present pleasure.
Job had asked badgering questions, but at last promised silence (40:4). That’s when the Lord turned the tables and badgered Job with more than 70 of His own questions: “Hast thou an arm like God….Canst thou thunder with a voice like him?” (40:9) God spoke of His creative power, intentions, “works,” and above all, our human limitations.
Job acknowledged, as we must, “I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not” (42:3).
In our century, we see the Lord in His Word but also in His creation, the “work of His hands.”
Early each morning, I go first to His Word to see Him. Later, I linger at our big kitchen window or on our deck and look out on His creation and wonder what I’ll see today that shouts, “This is the work of the Lord’s hands!” In both, I have the joy of “walking backward” with awe and gratitude for my gift-giving Lord.
Join me, won’t you? Upgrade your joy. Watch for the work of His hands. Embrace wonder. Form a gratitude habit. Laugh. Celebrate. Be a child again. Walk backward. “Make a joyful noise unto God...make his praise glorious” (Psalm 66:1-2).
About the Writer: Brenda Evans lives and writes in Ashland, Kentucky. You may contact her at beejayevans@windstream.net.
