Of Ugandans, Malaysians and the Importance of Watering Your Flowers

Invisible Children

Does it seem a little odd that within an hour after viewing the KONY 2012 video, which opened my heart and mind to the agony of the Ugandan people, I met a new friend on Facebook who happened to be from....Uganda?

{What is KONY 2012? Long story short, it's a film and campaign by a U.S. NGO called Invisible Children that aims to make Ugandan terrorist Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice. Watch the 30 minute video here and read my blog post about it here.}

I don't have any other friends from Uganda. This man added me randomly a couple weeks ago. I added him back but we had never talked before. Since my Facebook wall was groaning under the weight of links, images and status updates about the KONY 2012 campaign, he began by asking me about my interest in Joseph Kony. When I explained how the video was going viral, and how my heart and mind had been opened to this tragedy, he seemed quite surprised and genuinely touched that people in America would care about people in Uganda.

Edit: Please refer to this post for an update on my Ugandan friend.

After our conversation ended, I fell deep into thought about the way Facebook has brought people from all over the world into my life, changing me and the way I see myself and the world. I thought, for the billionth time, about my Malaysian friends and how another chance meeting has taken my life down a path that I never dreamed of. And I wondered, as I often do, if there is a deeper purpose to my Malaysian connection,  or if this sort of thing is just a lovely serendipity of postmodern life.

This is Amy and Pjoe. They are from Malaysia and I met them on Facebook too. 

With my mind jumbled full of such thoughts, I decided to chill a bit by spending some time on Pinterest. Most evenings, I wind down by just randomly scrolling through feeds of interesting images, without any focused plan or goal in mind. But this time, within the first few minutes of my session, I suddenly felt an impulse to start a new board of all things floral. Although I love flowers in the garden, when it comes to design issues, I'm not really a 'floral' person. But for some reason, I was compelled, and in less than an hour's time, I had over 60 new pins of floral fabric, floral art, floral arrangements, floral cupcakes, floral furniture, floral clothing, floral DIY projects...you name it. Thoughts of my Ugandan and Malaysian friends were still floating through my head, but after filling my eyes with dozens of beautiful flower-y images, I felt calmed and grounded . I was ready to finish off the day by reading my favorite online daily devotion from the Upper Room.

Big Pop Floral I by Ricki Mountain

Verdant Acres by Anthropologie

Wallflowers from Mathews Family Happenings

Onesie dress from Barefoot in the Kitchen

Children's art from Multiples and More

So, does it seem weird to you that as I opened the devotion on my phone, the first word I saw was...  "Malaysia?" Backing up, I read the whole sentence:


"In East Malaysia, volunteers are currently working to develop an Iban language audio format of The Upper Room in an effort to make the devotional guide available for those who do not know how to read."


I felt a rush of wordless emotion that resurfaced all my ponderings about the connection I feel to this country, and the unformed idea that maybe, like these volunteers, I have something to contribute to the people there. Or maybe to the Ugandans. And maybe..no, quite possibly, they have important things to teach me in return.

And maybe I'm stretching here, but as I went on to read the main article of the devotion, the topic was...flowers. Yes, flowers. The author wrote about her patio full of flowers that droop and sag when unwatered, but grow full and lush when given a drink each day. She used this truth as a metaphor for our need for daily prayer, suggesting that our spirits needed the same daily 'watering' to thrive and grow.

Daily habits matter.

So let me recap:

• A Ugandan friend pops into my life just as the Kony story breaks wide open. 
• A report about volunteers in Malaysia echoes my thoughts about how I might be involved with that country.
• A sudden preoccupation with flowers is followed by a blog post that uses the image of flowers to underscore the need for daily prayer. 

Three striking coincidences drop into my life over the course of maybe three hours. Were these patterns the work of my overactive imagination, or maybe just the result of cosmic rolls of the dice?

Or was God once again using synchronicity to wake me up and show me something important.

I don't know. But he sure has got my attention.