By Heidi Gray McGill @HeidiGrayMcGill
Rain or shine, I make myself get outside. Three times a day, if I can manage it. Depending on the weather, that might mean a thousand steps down the street and around the cul-de-sac, or two miles of gentle hills. Some of those short walks I take without shoes. I couldn’t tell you exactly why. Something about the cold or the heat and the roughness under my feet wakes something in me when the rest of me has gone numb.
I’ve been in a hard season lately. Emotionally, these are heavy days. I’m doing everything I know to stay afloat. Sleep on a schedule. Actual food instead of whatever’s fastest. Exercise. Time with people who matter. Time alone with the Lord. That last one has been the hardest part. I count my blessings. I thank Him for His goodness. But lately I ask more than I’m used to.
Last night I asked Him to answer. I’ve never heard God’s voice out loud, but I’ve experienced Him in ways I couldn’t deny were Him. Still, I asked for more.
On my walks, I tend to look down at my feet instead of ahead. Being visually impaired, that habit cuts both ways. A low branch, someone approaching before I catch the sound of their steps, a goose that gives no warning until the honk sends my heart racing, any of it can catch me off guard. But looking down has given me things too. A single blue flower in an entire field. A dragonfly skimming a puddle. A leaf.
What a Barefoot Walk Taught Me About Showing Up as a Writer by @HeidiGrayMcGill on @BRMCWC #Writing #Writinglife #BRMCWC Share on XToday, the leaf was the answer.
Every other leaf on the ground was dry, curled from weeks without rain. This one was bright red. At the end of August in South Carolina, that’s not something you see. I picked it up. Even though it had already fallen, it was soft in my hand, not brittle like the rest.
Death was the first word that came to mind. The end of something. I stood there turning that leaf over, sure a tree drops its leaves when it’s dying, or at least when it’s shutting down for good.
But that’s not quite right, is it? A tree that loses its leaves in a hard season isn’t dying. It’s dormant. It’s storing up what it needs underground, out of sight, so that when the season turns, it can bud again. Nobody looking at a bare tree in January would call it finished. They’d call it waiting.
I’m still in the show up and do it days. Still walking, whether or not I want to. Still opening my Bible on mornings when it feels like talking to a wall. Obedience hasn’t gotten easier just because I’ve been at this a while. Some days faithfulness looks like nothing more than doing the next right thing with no proof it’s making a difference.
Writers know this season. The one where the words don’t come the way they used to, or the response to your work is crickets, or you keep showing up to the page with no sense that anything is progressing. It’s tempting to read a dry season as proof that the calling is over. I did the same thing standing over that leaf.
But dormant isn’t dead. And a season that looks empty from the outside can be the exact place something is being built that you won’t see until it’s ready.
I still don’t know when this season turns. I haven’t gotten the audible answer, not yet anyway. But I picked up a red leaf on hot pavement in the middle of a drought and found something that looked like Him anyway.What’s the one small, easy-to-miss thing in your writing life right now that you’d catch if you started looking down instead of past it, a sentence that surprised you, a scene that finally worked, a reader who wrote back? And if the season still feels dormant instead of over, what’s one thing you could do this week without waiting for it to end, whether that’s opening the document, jotting down a line, or finally answering the email you.
Heidi Gray McGill is an Amazon bestselling, award-winning author of Christian historical and contemporary romance, ranking #1 in Christian Historical Fiction, Christian Historical Romance, Christian Romance, Western & Frontier Romance, Frontier & Pioneer Western Fiction, and Religious & Inspirational Fiction. She is a Selah Award Finalist, a top honor from the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference, and a five-time NEST Award winner, with additional recognitions from the AWSA Golden Scroll Awards and the Kudos Awards. Her books have earned more than 3,500 five-star reviews on Amazon alone, with an average 4.6-star rating across Amazon, Goodreads, and BookBub. Writing under the tagline “Fusing Faith and Fiction™,” McGill builds characters who carry readers through heartbreak, healing, and the moments where grace breaks through.
