The Frog and the Tree

A sacred return to the breath, the body, and the trust that saves us

I picked up the frog on my run.

Small, still, earthy.

Alive and soft, like a prayer waiting to leap.

I didn’t capture it.

I carried it.

As an offering,

not to own, but to return.

To the magnolia tree

that held me the night I almost left.

The tree that watched

as my throat closed

and the world blurred.

The one that steadied me

while I dug my hands into dirt

and remembered how to stay.

I placed the frog

between the palms

at the base of the tree

at the altar of breath.

But it jumped from my hand.

Fell to the concrete.

Froze.

It was okay.

But I heard the message instantly:

This is what we do, isn’t it?

We leap from God’s hands

the moment we feel

the shift,

the change,

the unfamiliar air of becoming.

But if we trust the hold

even when it’s strange,

even when it feels like falling

He will place us exactly

where we are being called

to root.

We are not meant to stay in the known.

We are meant to surrender to the unknown.

To trust that when Spirit holds us,

it’s not to control,

but to return us home.