Read alongside the book
Choose a reflection below and walk through Through the Wilderness one poem and one honest devotion at a time.
Get the BookYour eight-week path
Every poem in the book has its own place in this journey. Open one week at a time, or view the complete poem-by-poem path.
Explore by what you’re walking through
Choose a path from the guide at the end of the book to see its corresponding poem devotionals.
Week 1
Follow the book’s progression through each journey moment in this week’s theme.
Poem Devotional · Through the Wilderness
There are moments when you have missed the version of yourself who laughed more freely, trusted more easily, and did not examine every good moment for signs that it might disappear? Maybe life taught you to build walls so gradually that you forgot what your heart felt like before them.
Poem Devotional · Through the Wilderness
You might recognize what it is like to have looked back at an ordinary day and realized it became one of the memories you treasure most? At the time, nothing announced that it mattered. It was simply laughter, conversation, or someone you loved being close enough to reach.
Poem Devotional · Through the Wilderness
Somewhere in your story, you may have grieved something you never actually had—the marriage you pictured, the home you planned, or the future that felt so real you had already begun living inside it? Losing an imagined life can hurt just as deeply as losing something you once held.
Poem Devotional · Through the Wilderness
You might recognize what it is like to have discovered that God was protecting, preparing, or carrying you long before you knew to ask Him? Looking backward can reveal prayers, people, and moments of mercy that your younger self could not yet understand.
Poem Devotional · Through the Wilderness
Have you ever reached for the phone, remembered a familiar voice, or wished you could tell someone one more thing—only to feel the ache of their absence all over again? Grief can return inside the smallest moments because love still remembers.
Poem Devotional · Through the Wilderness
Somewhere in your story, you may have realized that someone taught you how to live without ever sitting you down for a lesson? Their habits, work ethic, faith, or steady presence became part of you simply because you stayed close enough to watch.
Poem Devotional · Through the Wilderness
Somewhere in your story, you may have wondered whether being chosen can carry even more meaning than being expected? Family is not formed by blood alone. Sometimes love becomes most visible in the person who had every opportunity to leave and decided to stay.
Poem Devotional · Through the Wilderness
When you picture home, do you remember the building—or the person who made you feel noticed inside it? Often it was a meal, a favorite treat, a laugh from another room, or a quiet act of care that made a place feel safe.
Through the Wilderness Journey
You might recognize what it is like to have worried that forgetting the sound of someone’s voice or the details of their face means you are losing them again? Time can soften memory, and that can feel like a betrayal of someone you still deeply love.
The thought of forgetting a loved one’s face can feel like losing them again. Time may soften the sound of a voice or blur details that once felt permanent.
Perhaps memory was never meant to carry everything. The mind may lose details, but the heart remembers safety, compassion, and the way we care because someone once cared for us. I find comfort believing heaven restores what time has blurred.
Love is held in more than exact details. It remains in the comfort you offer, the values you protect, and the ways your life was changed by being loved. God’s memory is not fragile, and what time blurs is never lost to Him.
You’re not alone in Scripture
At the empty tomb, grief blurred Mary’s recognition until Jesus spoke her name. God remembers us personally, even when grief and time cloud what we can hold.
Read their story: John 20:11–16He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. — Revelation 21:4
What memory of someone you love do you never want to lose?
Until the next step
Whether you are reading along in the book or joining these reflections here, thank you for allowing me to walk beside you.