Going Out With Flair!

Welcome to the adventures of Kari before she even set out on her trip to Eastern Europe!  Warning: the following account may be slightly violent and possibly includes blood and needles.

Okay, to give you a little background, I have an awesome “family” at His Ranch and the church in our small community.  Three other people join me to make the core staff at the ranch this season, and we have basically been together for three summers now.  We have an amazing bond in Christ and in our common experience in the day to day operation of the ranch ministry.  But we have plenty of room for the many short-term and long-term volunteers and friends who come to take part in the blessing.  Then we have Shannon and Susan, who started the ranch and provide the authority under which we work.  All of my friends in the community are excited that I have this opportunity to go to Romania, but they have made sure I know that I am going to be greatly missed.  Now my ranch family in particular has been on my case all summer about the fact that I’m leaving them for a whole month.  I know it’s their way of telling me how much they appreciate me and will miss me.  Around the ranch, we pretty much give anybody a hard time about leaving.  We get attached. 

So, Monday morning at ranch staff devotions, people were joking about me thinking I’m actually going to leave today.   We use something called Ungame in our devotion time.  It’s a deck of cards with questions designed to get know people better and share thoughts and feelings about life and deeper matters.  We have the Christian version, so it’s all questions about God and the Christian life.  One person reads the question for the day and we go around the circle, so everyone gets a turn to answer.  This can start some great thought-provoking discussions sometimes.   And other times it elicits a lot of laughter when someone gives a not-so-serious answer. 

So the question that morning was, If you could ask God to do three things for you today, what would they be?  Right away Ben piped up and said his answer would be that I not leave.  He came up with a serious answer later, but I have quite gotten the point that they are letting me go very reluctantly!

I had not planned to work on the ranch that day, since I had a few things left to pack and get done.  But I thought I might take one student after lunch, since she’s one of my regulars and I would have everything done by then.  But the kids on the schedule for that session were not able to come, so I decided to go out and take one last ride before I left.  Call it my horse fix that has to last me a month. 

I worked with Cash in the round pen for a few minutes to focus his attention, and then we saddled up and I rode him in the pen for awhile.  Cash belongs to Ben, who is the most horse-savvy person on the ranch staff.  This horse has been on the ranch since last summer and is available to use for lessons, but I had not worked with him much until this summer.  After sticking to the horses I’m most comfortable with for the first few weeks, I realized it was time to challenge myself and build up my experience by working with a different horse.  So I have been working with Cash and using him with a lot of my students for the past month.  When I ride him, I do it in the round pen because it is a small, controlled space.  Cash is a powerful guy with the capacity to go really fast, and he used to barrel race, so he’s programmed to make fast and sharp turns.  I know I’m not ready for that kind of speed on turns, so I’m starting out easy.  But since I’ve cantered him in the round pen a few times, I wanted to try it out in the arena, in a bigger space, and see what he feels like running straight.

After warming him up in the pen, I took him into the arena, and after a few turns I gave him rein to run.  Well, he started off and then went into double time!  This is more speed than I’m used to, and I was concerned about being able to control him on the turns without making it too sharp and falling off.  And he was running straight toward the arena gate.  My attempts to slow him fell short, and since I was worried about turning too fast, I didn’t try hard enough, so he decided on his own to turn as we got right up to the gate.  We’re still going at a pretty fast clip, and I felt myself losing my balance.  There was really nothing for it….I slipped off and crashed hard into the metal gate!  By the way, I was wearing a helmet because I knew falling off was a good possibility in this situation.  I hit the gate with the side of my chin and my left leg.  When I got up, I thought I was just going to be sore and bruised, and I was ready to get back on my horse and regain control.  Then I looked down at my throbbing leg and saw that my jeans were ripped and blood was soaking through.  Oops.  What on earth did I do?  I didn’t look the gate over, but there must be something on it that ripped into my leg.  I had a fairly deep gash.  It wasn’t bleeding too badly after the initial tear, but I wasn’t sure if I could fix it with a bandage.  Then as I’m checking out my leg, my lip starts dripping blood in the dirt.  Wonderful.  I still want to get back on the horse for a bit, but maybe that’s not such a good idea.  So I tie him up and meet Ben, who’s just walking out of the barn.  When he saw the gash on my leg, he thought it would probably need stitches.  It’s about 2:45 now.  I need to leave by 5:00 at the latest to catch the train at 5:30.  All I need now is a trip to the emergency room.  After getting a few other experienced opinions, it was decided that medical attention would be needed.  Two hours later, after five stitches in my leg, three in my lip, and a tetanus shot, I was set to go.  Two of my wonderful girlfriends gathered up my luggage and managed to grab most of the remaining items still waiting to be packed, without me even telling them what I wanted, and met us at the ER with everything, as there was not really time to go back home at that point!   One of the girls drove me straight to the train station and we made it with time to spare and even found a place to change out of my bloody jeans.  And that’s my story. 

You see, I knew everyone was sad to see me leaving and the mood was too subdued.  So I decided I may as well go out with a bang and give my friends some excitement!  I’m quite alright and very thankful that it wasn’t worse and I still made it on the train and my awesome friends took great care of me!  And I figure it will make a great story when I get to Romania and maybe help break the ice with the new people I meet!  We have an enemy who I’m sure does not want me going to Romania, seeking to know God better and love people in a different country.  But God has been leading and providing for me all the way up to the start of this journey, and the incident with Cash just proves that He’s carefully watching over me and He is not going to stop now!  Join me in thanking Him for His love and protection, and keep praying, because He is listening!

Stay tuned, there’s more to come!