I was out looking for wild horses that day.
That sounds more adventurous than it felt at the time. It sounds like gravel roads and open fields and some wide-eyed search for beauty, and yes, there was some of that. There usually is, if you get far enough away from the noise.
But the truth is, I was not out there because I felt brave.
I was out there because I felt like my life was coming apart, and I needed somewhere to put myself where I did not have to explain anything.
So I took Penelope and went camping.
That is what I do when the walls start closing in. I go where the trees do not ask questions. I go where the road turns to gravel and the air feels a little less crowded. I go where I can walk without pretending I am fine.
It was autumn, or close enough to it that the leaves had started thinking about changing. Not all at once. Just little hints here and there. A yellow edge. A rusty patch. A few leaves letting go before the rest of the tree was ready. That in-between kind of season where everything still looks mostly alive, but you can tell change is already underway.
I felt that in my own life too.
Something was shifting. Something I did not feel ready for. I could see change laid out in front of me, and I did not like the shape of it. I wanted answers. I wanted control. I wanted someone to tell me exactly how things would turn out, preferably with a guarantee and maybe a written timeline.
But life does not usually hand us that.
Most of the time, change does not arrive with neat edges. It comes in pieces. It shows up in conversations you did not want to have, decisions you did not want to make, realities you hoped would soften before they reached you. It comes like autumn does, one leaf at a time, until suddenly the whole tree looks different.
That day, I was scared.
Not “a little uneasy” scared. Not the cute kind of nervous people talk about when they are starting something exciting. I mean the kind of scared that sits heavy in your chest. The kind that makes every small task feel bigger than it should. The kind that makes your thoughts run laps until you are exhausted and still standing in the same place.
I was walking with Penelope, probably watching my feet more than anything else. She was doing her usual important dog business, sniffing every blade of grass like she had been hired by the county to inspect it. I had my camera with me, because I almost always do, but I was not really chasing a shot in that moment.
I was just trying to breathe.
Then I saw it.
A little leaf hanging from a tree.
It was small, lonely-looking, and shaped like a heart.
Not a perfect Valentine’s heart, because nature has better sense than that. It was a little uneven. A little curled. Starting to change colors at the edges. Still holding on, but clearly not the same green thing it had been a few weeks before.
And for whatever reason, it stopped me.
I paused right there.
There were no horses in front of me. No dramatic sky. No grand view. No big answer written across the clouds. Just one small heart-shaped leaf hanging in front of me while my life felt uncertain.
And I smiled.
It surprised me, honestly. I had not felt like smiling. My thoughts had been too loud for that. But this tiny little leaf broke through the noise in a way nothing else had that day.
It felt like being loved.
I am careful saying things like that, because I do not want to turn every oddly shaped leaf into a sermon or act like God is hiding secret messages in every acorn and cloud. I do not think faith needs to be stretched until it becomes silly. Sometimes a leaf is just a leaf.
But sometimes, God uses ordinary things to get our attention because ordinary things are what we are actually looking at.
And that day, I needed something small enough to receive.
Not a full explanation.
Not a five-year plan.
Not a sudden removal of every hard thing.
Just a small interruption.
A little mercy hanging from a branch.
A reminder that I was not as alone as I felt.
Zephaniah 3:17 says:
“The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.”
There is a lot in that verse, but the part that sits with me is this: “in the midst of thee.”
Not far off.
Not waiting at the finish line.
Not watching from a safe distance until I get myself together.
In the midst.
God is not only present after the fear passes. He is present in it. He is there when the road is still gravel, when the change is still scary, when the questions are still unanswered, when the dog is tugging at the leash and you are trying not to fall apart in the woods.
And He is mighty there.
That matters to me because I do not always feel mighty. Most days, I do not even feel especially steady. I can look strong from the outside and still feel like I am held together with twine and caffeine. I can say the right things and still be terrified of what comes next.
But Zephaniah does not say I have to be mighty.
It says God is.
That is a relief.
I think a lot of us carry fear like we are failing by having it. We think if we were more faithful, we would not be scared. If we trusted God better, we would not feel shaky. If we were stronger Christians, change would not hit us so hard.
But fear is not always proof that we lack faith.
Sometimes fear is just proof that something matters to us. That we are human. That we do not know the future. That we have been hurt before and do not want to be hurt again. That we know what it feels like to lose something steady.
God knows that.
He does not look at our trembling and say, “Well, call Me when you calm down.”
He says:
“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God...”
— Isaiah 41:10
That verse does not pretend fear is imaginary. It speaks right to it.
Fear thou not.
Not because nothing hard will happen.
Not because every change will be easy.
Not because every road will lead exactly where we hoped.
But because I am with thee.
That is the difference.
I would love for God to calm every storm before I have to walk through it. I would love for Him to make change feel safe before it asks anything from me. I would love for the next step to light up like a runway so I can see exactly where I am going.
But most of the time, He gives enough light for the next step. Sometimes less than I would prefer, because apparently He is not taking suggestions from me on lighting design.
And sometimes, instead of a full map, He gives a leaf.
A small heart in the middle of a hard day.
It did not fix anything. That is important. I did not see that leaf and suddenly have all the answers. My circumstances did not rearrange themselves into something easier. The change in front of me was still there. The fear was still real.
But something shifted in me.
Not everything.
Just enough.
Enough to pause.
Enough to breathe.
Enough to smile.
Enough to remember that God’s love is not only found in the resolution. It is also found in the middle.
That little leaf was changing too.
I think that is part of why it caught me. It was not bright spring green. It was not fresh and new and untouched. It was autumn-colored, already surrendering to the season. It was becoming something else whether it wanted to or not.
I understood that.
Change can feel like loss because, in some ways, it is. Even good change can require letting go. A leaf changing color is beautiful, but it is also a sign that the season is ending. Something is being released. Something is being prepared for winter.
We love to talk about new beginnings, but we do not always give enough room for how unsettling they can be.
A new thing may be from God and still feel frightening.
A door closing may be mercy and still hurt.
A season ending may be necessary and still make you grieve.
A change may be right and still leave you standing in the woods, scared out of your mind, holding a dog leash and trying to make your lungs work normally.
Faith does not erase that.
Faith gives us somewhere to stand while we feel it.
That day, the little heart-shaped leaf did not tell me, “Everything will go back to the way it was.”
It did not tell me, “This will not hurt.”
It did not tell me, “You will understand all of this by next Tuesday.”
It simply reminded me: You are loved here too.
Here, in the uncertainty.
Here, in the changing season.
Here, while you are scared.
Here, before anything is solved.
That is not a small thing.
There are times when the love of God feels like a deep theological truth, something we know in our heads and can quote when needed. Then there are times when it becomes very personal. Very quiet. Almost embarrassingly simple.
A leaf.
A breeze.
A dog beside you.
A patch of light through the trees.
One small thing that makes you feel seen when you were starting to wonder if you had disappeared.
Zephaniah says God will “rest in his love.”
I like that.
Not fuss in His love.
Not panic in His love.
Not hold His love over us like something we have to keep earning.
Rest.
There is steadiness in that. A settledness. God is not nervous about loving us. He is not pacing the floor, unsure if He should continue being faithful today. His love is not fragile like ours can be. It does not evaporate when we are afraid. It does not become less real because we are struggling to feel it.
He rests in His love.
And if God is settled in His love toward us, maybe we can learn to be a little more settled in receiving it.
That is hard for me sometimes.
I can believe God loves people in general. I can believe He loves the world. I can believe He loves the lost, the hurting, the broken, the repentant, the weary. But when it gets personal, when the sentence becomes “God loves me, right here, as I am walking through this,” something in me wants to argue.
Are You sure?
Even now?
Even like this?
Even when I am scared?
Even when I do not know what I am doing?
Even when I feel like I should be handling everything better?
And then there is a little heart-shaped leaf hanging in front of me, minding its own business, making me smile when I did not think I could.
I do not know how God decides what to use to reach us. I only know He is kind enough to meet us in ways we can understand.
For me, that often happens outside.
Not because nature replaces Scripture. It does not. Creation is not the gospel. A leaf cannot save me. A horse cannot redeem me. A river cannot forgive my sin.
Only Jesus can do that.
But creation can point.
It can remind.
It can quiet me down long enough to hear what Scripture has already said.
That day, the leaf pointed me back to the truth I already knew but was struggling to hold onto:
God is with me.
God is mighty when I am not.
God sees me in the middle.
God’s love does not disappear when life changes.
God can steady a scared heart without explaining the whole road.
I kept walking after that.
Penelope kept sniffing everything. The woods kept being the woods. The horses were still somewhere else, probably doing whatever wild horses do when they are not being found by people with cameras and emotional problems.
But I was different than I had been a few minutes earlier.
Not healed of all fear.
Not suddenly brave in some impressive way.
Just reminded.
Sometimes that is enough for one day.
We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to have big spiritual moments. We want the breakthrough, the answer, the sign, the confirmation, the open door, the perfect peace that makes no sense. And sometimes God gives those things.
But other times, He gives us something small enough that we could miss it if we are moving too fast.
A lonely little leaf.
A shape that looks like love.
A pause in the middle of panic.
A smile we did not manufacture.
I am learning not to despise those small mercies.
They may not look like much to anyone else. Someone could have walked past that leaf and never noticed it. Someone else could have seen it, thought “cute,” and kept moving.
But I needed it.
And God knew that.
That is what makes me emotional when I think about it now. Not the leaf by itself. Not even the heart shape. It is the timing. It is the fact that I was in the woods because I was scared, and there was this little reminder waiting along the way.
God did not remove the change in front of me.
He reminded me I would not face it alone.
Isaiah 41:10 continues:
“I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”
Strengthen.
Help.
Uphold.
Those are not distant words.
Those are close words. Hands-on words. The kind of words you need when your knees feel weak and your future feels like fog.
I do not know what change is sitting in front of you right now. Maybe nothing dramatic. Maybe something huge. Maybe something you have not told many people because saying it out loud makes it feel too real. Maybe you are in that awful in-between place where you know life is shifting, but you cannot yet see what it will become.
I do not know.
But I know this: God is not absent from the in-between.
He is in the midst of thee.
He is mighty there.
He is loving there.
He is steady there.
He is not waiting for you to become fearless before He comes near.
So maybe, today, the invitation is not to figure out everything at once.
Maybe it is just to pause long enough to notice what God is placing in front of you.
Not to force meaning into every little thing.
Not to pretend pain is easy.
Not to call fear faithlessness.
Just to slow down and let yourself be reminded.
You are loved.
You are not forgotten.
You are not walking into change alone.
You are allowed to be scared and still be held.
That little leaf eventually fell. I am sure of it. Autumn does not stop for sentiment. The tree let it go when the time came, and the season kept moving.
But for one moment, on one hard day, it hung there like a tiny heart in the woods.
And I saw it.
I smiled.
I breathed.
And I remembered that the God who holds the seasons also holds me.
