Sometimes the providence of God can be seen only when we look backward.
At the time, life may feel ordinary. A winter morning. A car buried in snow. A young nurse pulling on boots and facing another bitter day in northern Wisconsin. A quiet prayer half spoken and half sighed. But years later, we begin to see that God was working through all of it—the weather, the longing, the people, the memories, the restlessness, and even the questions.
That is how I think about Naomi’s journey to Buckhorn.
I recently found a few pages of Naomi’s writings from nearly fifty years ago. In those writings she used the name “Ann.” I do not know all the reasons why, but I can almost see her there in that story—young, thoughtful, practical, and quietly listening for the next step God had for her.
“Please let this be my last winter in all this cold and snow,” Ann half prayed and half sighed as she pulled up her hood, shoved on her high boots, and pushed open the door to check how much digging would be needed to get her car cleared off after last night’s fresh snowfall of eight more inches.
She stepped outside and took in short, gasping breaths of crisp, bitterly cold air. The sky above was brilliantly blue. The snow clung to the trees. The ground was covered with a shimmering, clean blanket of white. It was beautiful. But it was cold. Another twelve-below-zero day, the weatherman had said.
Naomi liked the farming country of northern Wisconsin. She liked the people. They appreciated her nursing skills, and that meant something to her. She had a nurse’s heart long before I knew her. She was not simply doing a job. She cared about people. She cared about their needs, their hurts, their families, and their dignity.
But something in her began to stir.
She wrote, “If I like this type of nursing so well, why not move to an even remoter area where there is a greater need for nurses?”
That thought may have seemed simple. But I believe it was one of those defining moments in her life. Not dramatic. Not announced with trumpets. Not debated in some great theological way. Just a thought, a question, a prompting.
Why not go where the need is greater?
When I think about Naomi now, I do not believe she spent months agonizing over whether she should serve. It seemed like the natural thing to do. It was the thing God called her to do. A real calling. She had the training. She had the compassion. She had the courage. And she had the willingness to go.
That willingness did not come out of nowhere.
Naomi had a Christian background that shaped her deeply. Her roots mattered. Her family mattered. Her childhood mattered. The people God placed around her mattered. One of those people was Gretch, Naomi’s older sister, who was eleven years older than Naomi.
When Naomi was about eleven years old, Gretch took her on a road trip to California to visit distant relatives. I do not remember all the details, and I may still find documents someday that fill in more of the story. But I do remember Naomi telling me about that trip several times. It must have opened her eyes to a wider world beyond her immediate surroundings.
Gretch also worked as a nurse at Children’s Hospital. Naomi was around Gretch’s life and heard the stories she brought home. Stories of children. Stories of families. Stories of suffering and care. Stories of what a nurse could mean in the life of another human being.
I cannot prove exactly when Naomi first thought, “I want to be a nurse.” But I believe those years with Gretch were part of God’s providence. A big sister. A road trip. Stories from a hospital. A young girl watching, listening, absorbing, and perhaps beginning to sense that God had a path for her too.
When we talk about calling, we often want it to sound spectacular. We want a voice from heaven or a detailed map of the future. But much of God’s guidance is quieter than that. He uses memories. He uses people. He uses needs. He uses circumstances. He uses the examples of those who go before us.
That is what I see in Naomi’s life.
Her decision to become a nurse was not just a career choice. It was connected to her heart. It was connected to her faith. It was connected to the kind of person God was forming her to be. And later, when she began to wonder about serving in an even more remote place, that too was connected to the providence of God.
The cold Wisconsin winter may have been part of it too. Naomi could see beauty in the snow-covered trees, but she also felt the burden of another long winter. “Please let this be my last winter in all this cold and snow.” That prayer may have sounded like a complaint. But maybe God was using even that longing to move her toward the next chapter.
Sometimes God uses discomfort to loosen our grip on where we are.
Not all discomfort is bad. Sometimes it is a holy restlessness. Sometimes it is the first movement of providence. We become less settled in one place because God is preparing us for another. We begin to ask new questions because He is opening a new door.
For Naomi, that door eventually led to Buckhorn, Kentucky.
Buckhorn was not glamorous. It was not easy. It was not the kind of place someone chose for comfort, convenience, or recognition. It was a place of need. A place where a nurse could matter. A place where the roads and hollers and mountain communities required more than technical skill. They required courage, compassion, patience, and love.
Naomi had those qualities.
This was before I knew her. This was before we were married. I only came to know her later, when she reluctantly returned to Milwaukee. But looking back now, I can see how God was writing her story long before I entered it.
That is another part of providence. God is always at work before we arrive.
Naomi’s journey to Buckhorn was not isolated from the rest of her life. It was connected to everything before it and everything after it. Her childhood. Her Christian roots. Gretch’s influence. The nursing stories from Children’s Hospital. The farming communities of northern Wisconsin. The cold winter prayer. The thought about going where nurses were needed more. The willingness to serve in a remote place.
One defining moment led to another.
I believe that is how God often works in our lives. We may not see the whole pattern while we are living it. We only see a step. A conversation. A memory. A need. A burden. A door. But later, when we look back, we begin to see the thread of God’s faithfulness.
Naomi and I were very different in some ways. I did not have the same Christian background as a child that she had. Not like Naomi’s. That is part of another story—how we met, how God brought us together, and how His providence shaped our marriage. But in many ways, we thought so much alike. We both came to believe deeply that God guides, provides, calls, and uses ordinary people for His purposes.
Naomi’s journey to Buckhorn reminds me that calling is not always complicated. Sometimes it is simply seeing a need and saying yes. Sometimes it is using the skills God has given us where those skills are most needed. Sometimes it is taking the next faithful step without knowing the whole road ahead.
Naomi did not go to Buckhorn to become famous. She went because people needed care. She went because nursing was more than a profession to her. She went because God had shaped her heart to serve.
And perhaps it all began, or at least became clearer, on a freezing northern Wisconsin morning when a young nurse stood in the snow and prayed, “Please let this be my last winter in all this cold and snow.”
God heard more in that prayer than she may have realized.
He heard the weariness. He heard the longing. He heard the willingness. He heard the heart of a nurse who was ready for a new assignment.
And in His time, by His providence, He led her to Buckhorn.
When I look back over Naomi’s life, I see more than memories. I see a trail of grace. I see the hand of God. I see how He used family, faith, work, weather, longing, and love to guide her steps.
That gives me hope for my own journey too.
Even now, after Naomi has gone to be with the Lord, I am still learning from her life. I am learning that God wastes nothing. I am learning that the small moments matter. I am learning that a simple prayer in the snow may become the beginning of a whole new chapter.
And I am learning again that providence is not just a doctrine to believe.
It is a story to remember.
It is Naomi’s story.
And it is ours too.
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