Do I Trust My Instincts?

Some days I want my instincts clean and whole, like the poison-dart frog I copied from a 2008 National Geographic—bright, unblinking, gripping its branch as if the whole forest depended on that small act of faith.
The frog never questions itself.
It simply holds on.

Years ago, in a sketchbook I carried to help me notice life more honestly, I wrote:
“There are two of us here.”
Still true.

Most days the two talk over each other, and I am left sorting through the echoes—
like trying to hear one steady note while two radios drift in and out of tune.

Then come my other instincts—my knack for finding the slow way through a day.
I can slip into the only lane where the light holds its red, or where a careful driver in front of me is waiting for the perfect opening, or where a delivery truck settles right into the lane I chose.
I can pick the store line where the card reader malfunctions, the coupons refuse to be recognized, or the person ahead remembers the item they left three aisles back.

And there I stand again, reminded that the world is under no obligation to match my pace.

But every so often a different instinct slips in—quieter, almost shy.
A nudge to trust the student no one else does.
A whisper to keep my mouth shut, even when I am fairly certain my words are right and good and—if I am honest—mostly about me.

This instinct does not announce itself.
It waits.

Later I discover it was mercy doing the waiting—shaping me in the pauses I never scheduled.

I am learning—slowly, stubbornly—that instinct is not the same as wanting.
Wanting is weather.
Instinct is what the weather leaves behind in the soil of a life tended by Another.

The frog trusts because it is what it is.
I trust only when I remember Whose I am.

And the stalled lane, the long line, the silence I finally kept—
these are not interruptions.
They are the small, unchosen classrooms where character takes root,
where pride softens like clods under rain,
where God meets me in the ordinary moments I would never think to call holy.

These are the instincts that walk me home.
And on the best days—
that is enough.

What quiet thing have you been overlooking?

Tags: spiritual formation, instincts, discernment, mercy, slow living, presence, reflection, inner life, storytelling, paying attention, teaching life, art and faith