It was meant to be a quiet morning. I was out with Sunshine, recording my morning prayer as I often do while we walk the park. The air was cool, the ground still damp from the night before, and everything felt in its usual rhythm. Then I looked up — and she was gone.
No sound, no movement, no trace. One moment she was trotting alongside me, the next, she’d vanished. I stopped the recording, called her name — “Sunny! Sunshine!” — and began walking the same loop again, listening, scanning, circling back. It’s a strange feeling, the stillness that comes when something that should be there suddenly isn’t.
As I walked, I found myself half praying, half calling. “Lord, You know where she is. Keep her safe.” I kept retracing my steps, hoping she’d reappear around the next bend. Then, just as suddenly as she’d disappeared, she was there again — bounding up beside me, tail wagging, as if nothing had happened. I could almost hear her saying, “What’s all the fuss about?”
I clipped her lead on for a while. Not as punishment — she’d come back, after all — but as reassurance. For both of us. It struck me that this is what God does with me. I wander off at times — distracted, preoccupied — and then, when I come running back, He doesn’t scold. He simply holds me close until I’ve settled again, and then, in time, lets me roam a little once more, but never out of His sight.
Earlier on that same walk, my mind had been wrestling with heavier things. I’d been thinking about the state of the country, the spiritual confusion of our age, and how truth seems under attack from all directions. I’d been trying to work out how to respond — how to apply truth to lies, how to stand firm without being swept into endless arguments. It was just as those thoughts were circling that Sunshine disappeared.
Looking back, it felt as if God used that moment to remind me: Don’t get lost in analysing the darkness — keep your eyes on the light. It’s easy to become so focused on what the enemy is doing that I lose sight of what God is doing. Recognising deception has its place, but I can’t live there. My calling isn’t to stare into the fog, but to walk beside the One who leads me through it.
It reminded me of the storm on the sea — how the disciples panicked when the waves rose, forgetting that Jesus was right there with them in the boat. I can be like that too, easily drawn into the noise of the storm. Laddie has always represented security for me — the steady companionship that reminds me of God’s faithfulness. Sunshine, it seems, is teaching me about distraction and return. Together they’ve become living parables: Laddie, the assurance of presence; Sunshine, the grace of being found.
I’m learning that the strength of my faith doesn’t lie in how firmly I hold on, but in how faithfully He watches over me. Just as I didn’t lose sight of Sunshine — not really, not in my heart — so He never loses sight of us, even when we vanish from view.
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.
And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish;
neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.” — John 10:27–28
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