Enjoy the Journey

It's been an absolutely beautiful week!  The temperature cooled off and we had a great time with the kids on the ranch.  To top it all off, God has brought me back to a place of peace and contentment, and I know once again that Taylor is the right place for me right now.  He's given me such joy and high spirits these last few weeks, and I praise Him for the work He's doing to show Himself in and around me!  The weekend finds me grateful but physically spent.  I was ready for some serious down time.  So today I've done very little.  Oh, I have a list of good stuff I'd like to accomplish, things I feel I need to get a move on, such as writing on this blog!  In the last week I had an inspiration for something to write about, and then a few days later I got some really cool insights on a Psalm I'm memorizing, which I would also like to share.  The trouble is that if I don't have or take the time to write the same day, it usually won't happen.  I begin to lose the train of thought and the inspiration.  When I sat down this morning with the intention of writing, I was distracted and couldn't get started.  I wasn't sure where I wanted to go with these ideas anymore.  So I didn't try very hard.  What I needed most was to sit in the gorgeous mid-70's sunshine on the lake beach and listen to the water lapping the shore and talk to God.  So that's what I did.  After that I messed around for awhile, doing seemingly a lot of nothing.  But it really was something.  I cleaned the shower, which improved my general outlook.  I read a letter from a close friend, which gave me great pleasure.  I spent time chatting with some other friends.  The day was wearing on, and I still hadn't gotten to any of my writing or reading, but I was determined to get out and move for awhile, so I pulled out my bike.  It turned into quite a long ramble over hills and gravel roads and into some lovely secluded spots.  On the way home, as I pushed my tired muscles along, I began to focus on how much time I'd spent away from the list of things I "needed" to do.  I was becoming weary of the journey and anxious to just get home and be done with it.  But I stopped myself and considered what a pleasant ride it had been, and I remembered that I ride my bike because I enjoy the scenery and the experience.  I don't do it to knock off a certain distance and get back home.  And I realized that it's the same way with life...the joy is in the journey.  Yes, we do need to be certain of our destination and intentional in the way we travel.  There is a reward at our journey's end.  Yet what would the homecoming be without the journey?  It's in the trials, triumphs, hardships, and joys of this walk through life that we are being shaped into all we were meant to be.  And God is working through it all to take the emptiness of our lives and turn it into fruitfulness.  Take my day, for example.  God can do as much or as little as He chooses with one day of my life to make an impact on eternity.  Did I make myself completely available and surrendered to His use today?  Probably not.  Have I ever had a day when I did that?  Not that I can tell.  But God is constantly working to bring me and you closer to that goal.  And sometimes, to be honest, we need a day to do absolutely nothing.  A day to breathe deep, lay on the sand, and listen to the sound of water. 

Back to my bike ride.  It matters little how many miles I went or how many times I had to get off and walk up the hill.  The journey wasn't about my speed or my physical strength.  For me, the greatest reward in a bike ride, and in life, is in the times I stop to smell the roses.  It's in making a memory.  It's the sunshine on your face and the wind whipping your hair.  It's stopping on a secluded back road among the trees to listen to the stillness.  It's catching the scent of Fall in the air.  It's hearing the corn stalks whisper as you pass.  It's the excitement of seeing what's just over the next hill or around the bend.  It's drinking in the jeweled blue of the sky and trying to imagine how that color would feel and taste.  It's the crunch of gravel under the tires and the buzzing of the cicadas.  It's the thrilling and slightly scary rush of flying down a hill.  It's singing along to your favorite worship songs in your earbuds, and then turning the music off and talking to God.

Today I spent time with God.  I spent time with people I care about.  I didn't accomplish a lot of tangible stuff.  Maybe I didn't reach my full potential in a lot of areas.  My life isn't long enough to write every inspiration.  And that's ok.  I don't have to try to recapture what was on my heart a week ago.  But I shared what was on my heart today.  We all have a lot of living left to do, if the Lord wills.  Slow down a little bit.  Savor what means the most to you.  Let's look for the joy in the journey.

God Speaks

So here is one of the things God spoke to me about during the Life Action Summit.  I've dealt with this issue before and even written about it here.  But it has surfaced again in the last few months and God made it clear to me what the deal is. 

For as long as I can remember, I have rejected who I am.  I have believed myself to be inadequate as a person and as a Christian.  I constantly admired other people, comparing myself with them and believing I was less valuable because I didn't have this personality, or that body, or those abilities.  I wasted a lot of time fantasizing about who I wanted to be and the life I wanted to have.  God let me see that there is so much pride in my heart.  Pride told me that I deserved to be someone amazing, someone "better", and that God had withheld the best from me.  Whatever I fantasized about being or doing, I was always the best, the most beautiful, the heroine, the super-talented, the one everyone would envy.  I never saw myself as being anywhere close to those ideals, so I didn't try to meet them; I simply lived them in my fantasy world.  I created an idol in my mind....the image of myself as I wanted to be.  And I raised this image up against the design that God created in me.  I was saying, in effect, "God, You cheated me.  You didn't make me good enough.  This is how you should have made me.  This is who I would be if I were in control."  Along with the pride, God also revealed that I have been bitter towards Him for the way He made me.  Consequently, I've allowed comparison, discontent, and envy to rule me for many years.  These things have held me back from reaching out and loving others unconditionally and giving myself fully to relationships.  And God showed me that by rejecting myself, I have rejected Him as my Creator.  He said that everything He made is very good.  (Gen 1:31)  He inspired the Psalmist to say, "I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." (Psalm 139:14)  In my prideful presumption, I made God a liar.  I believed that what He made in me wasn't good enough. 

God has been working on this issue in my heart for many years, and He used some struggles over the last few months and this week of the revival summit to bring it all together.  Before this week, I was dealing with depression and anxiety over the coming summer season at the ranch.  I had nothing left in me to go on in the work God has given me here.  I was in a desperate place, feeling the weight of my own emptiness.  Do you know that feeling?  Amazing how heavy emptiness can be.  Now I believe that God brought me to the end of myself and shredded every last vestige of my supposed self-sufficiency to prepare me for revival.  What He spoke to me so clearly during one of the messages is this:  "You are empty.  You can't do this.  You don't have the sufficiency in yourself.  But that is where My grace comes in.  My sufficiency meets your need.  My utter strength meets your utter weakness.  I delight in using destitute people.  People who have nothing to offer and know it.  Because that is where I can show Myself.  I don't want the world to see your personality, your gifts, or your strength.  I want the world to see Who I Am."  Wow.  That absolutely floored me.  I mean, I really should have known.  It has never been about who I am or what I could be.  The whole reason for my existence is to know and love my Creator.  The reason I am still on this earth is so He can show Himself in my life! 
 
God asked me to surrender.  He asked me to lay down all I wanted to be and all I was trying to be and throw myself on His grace.  He wants me to embrace who I am as He made me and to allow Him to show people Himself through my life.  I repented of my pride, bitterness, and rejection.  I acknowledged Jesus as Lord of who I am.  I've asked Him to make my life the grounds in which people can see Him and be touched by Him.  He must increase, and I must decrease. 

Now as I step into the summer at His Ranch, here is where the rubber meets the road.  God has lifted my spirits and changed my perspective.  But a brief spiritual high is not going to carry me through.  This doesn't make it any easier to do what's before me.  I have to choose every day to receive fresh grace.  I have to move forward in faith and do the hard things and keep desperately holding on to Jesus to be my sufficiency.  He wants me to depend on Him moment by moment, even for the smallest things.  I know He has brought me here and it is still the place where He wants me to be.  It's easy to be in the place where you want to be.  It's easy when you love it and you think you can handle it.  But when the passion fades and strength is gone and you don't want to be here anymore, I think that's when we have two choices.  We can either quit and run away to a safe, comfortable little bubble where there's no room to grow, or we can bet all our cards on Jesus and find out that He truly is Everything.  Sometimes we have to find out that all our best efforts have been coming out of our flesh.  We have to come broken before God, knowing we have nothing to bring to the table.  That's when we're ready to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  That's when our lives can bring the most glory to Him because it will be obvious that what is being done is totally from God and not from us.  I'm just beginning this journey.  I can't promise that I won't fall away from this truth again.  But I know God is holding me.  I know He's not going to give me what I need for tomorrow, but only what I need for today.  So I'm holding on, because God is my Rock and my Stronghold.  He is the strong hand that is holding on to me, and there is nothing powerful enough to separate me from His love!

Re-vival (Back to Life)

Hello my friends in blog-land!  (If anyone is still out there.  J)  I know it has been ages since I posted.  However, if you are interested, I’ve done quite a bit of writing on the His Ranch blog over the past year.  You can find that at hisranchblog.blogspot.com.  Life just keeps on happening, and as much as I would like to keep a running commentary here, time eludes me.  So instead of picking up wherever I left off, I will share what God is doing in the present. 

I spent most of the winter living at His Ranch, taking care of the horses and doing other part-time work around the place.  God also blessed me with the gift of traveling in Indiana and Ohio for awhile.  I spent a month with some friends and horse people in South Bend, Indiana, and was able to get home for Easter, which was an unexpected blessing!  Now everything is gearing up for the summer season at the ranch, staff and volunteers are in place, and we will be opening, Lord willing, on Monday.  As I write I am actually on the road again.  I just spent two weeks with my family in Ohio for a special time of seeking God with churches in our community.  Today I am in Chicago for a short visit with relatives and will be back in Missouri later this weekend.  God has been so good to let me have this travel time, especially right before we dive into the ranch ministry again.  I have been desperately in need of renewal and personal revival.  This is what my time at home was about. 

For the past five years, two of my siblings have served with Life Action Ministries on their traveling revival team.  If you have never heard of Life Action, you should look up their website and see what it’s all about.  The heart of the ministry is to earnestly seek revival in the church of Jesus Christ through fervent prayer and solid Bible teaching that calls believers to repentance and total surrender to the Lord we claim to follow.  The team that my brother and sister have served with travels around portions of the eastern and south-eastern states during the school year, spending one to two weeks at each church.  They hold special services almost every day during this time, called a Life Action Revival Summit.   Two or three speakers, along with their families, travel with the team and share messages from Scripture on things like repentance, recognizing sin in your life, and the Biblical model for life as individuals and families.  The rest of the team, consisting mainly of college age men and women, serve in various capacities: leading worship music, teaching youth and children’s programs, running sound, and covering the summit in prayer.  God has chosen to use this ministry as a channel to work transformation in the hearts and lives of many of His people. 

It has been a desire of my family for a few years to bring the Life Action team to our church, but this was not feasible due to the small size of the church.  God, however, has been working in our local area for a long time, stirring people to pray and seek revival.  There were things going on that we didn’t even know about.  Pastors meeting to pray.  Community meetings called to seek God where pastors confessed to people the failure of the church to follow God.  And this year God opened the way for the local ministerial group to come together and sponsor a Life Action Summit for the churches of the whole community!  This is something that has never been done before in Life Action’s history. They have always gone to large single congregations.  Needless to say, our excitement was high, and we have asked God to do great things!  Months of prayer and planning went into this event.  We were able to use the county fairgrounds for the services.  For a whole week, Sunday to Sunday, people came together from several churches around the county, different denominations, to seek the Lord in a concentrated time for personal revival that will spread ripples throughout our community and beyond!  The spiritual unity that God brought among the people who attended and especially among the pastors was amazing!  A large group of pastors and other men met every morning of the week at 6:00am to pray.  The pastors also met several other times for special meetings.  The singing during the services was charged with energy and people expressed themselves freely to the Lord.  The messages we heard were not new truths, but things we needed to hear in a fresh way, and I believe God spoke to each person about the specific issues He wants to deal with in our lives.  He certainly spoke to me.  I’ve been in a season of depression and apathy that God used to bring me to the end of myself.  He knew that is what I needed to be ready to begin experiencing revival.  In the past two weeks, God lifted my spirits in a wonderful way, and although it is not any easier to go back to what He has given me to do, I am going with a fresh touch of His grace and a renewed faith in the sufficiency of His strength to meet my emptiness.  I believe that kind of faith and utter dependence on Him is what matters to God more than the specific place I’m in, the work I’m doing, or even how successful I am in that work.  He puts us in the places where He knows we will have to choose between unbelief and faith, between independence and God-dependence, between rebellion and surrender.  He doesn’t want half of my heart.  He wants it all.

I will share more in the coming days.  Today I am grateful for the unfailing love and compassion of my Lord.  He is the reason I can walk forward in hope.   He is our Fountain of Life.

What Is It You Want?

In the sermon yesterday, this story was shared, and it really captured my attention.  I don't know if it's a true story, but it's told that when Socrates, the great philosopher, lived, a young man came to him one day and said, "I want wisdom."  Socrates said, "Alright, if you want wisdom, come with me."  The young man followed him to a river.  The old philosopher walked into the water and told the man to join him.  The young man followed, wondering what in the world Socrates was doing.  The philosopher asked, "Now, what is it you want again?"  "I want wisdom," he replied.  "Alright," said Socrates, and he pushed the man's head under the water and held him there for a moment.  The young man came up dripping and confused.  "Tell me again, what is it you want?"  "I want wisdom!" said the man.  "Alright."  And he pushed his head under again.  This time Socrates held him under a little longer.  The young man came up spluttering.  Again, he asked, "What is it you want?"  "I want wisdom!"  And again he pushed him under, this time holding him for quite awhile, till the young man began to fight and struggle to come up for air.  When he let him up, gasping, again Socrates questioned, "What is it you want?"  Now doubting the wisdom and the sanity of the old philosopher, the man said, "I what wisdom!"  Once more Socrates pushed him under the water and held him for a very long time.  The young man writhed and twisted desperately, until finally he was released.  As he choked and gasped, Socrates asked once more, "What do you want?"  "I want air!"  he gasped.  Satisfied at last, Socrates said, "When you want wisdom as much as you wanted air, you will find it."

The story was told in the context of asking ourselves, "How much do I want God?  How much do I really want to be close to Him?"  In Jeremiah 29:13 God says, "you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart."  I have heard and quoted this verse many times.  But again I find myself asking: what does it mean to seek Him with all my heart?  I really admire people who seem to approach life with an exuberant passion for all they do.  They seem to have a natural ability to put their whole heart into what they are doing and enjoy it fully.  I am not one of those people.  I tend to imagine acheiving lofty things without the intention of fully pursuing those dreams.  I used to spend a lot of time dreaming unrealistic dreams....desiring gifts and abilities that I wasn't given, or just plain wanting to be someone else.  Even in my real-life pursuits, I find myself living half-heartedly.  But nothing grieves me so much as the realization that most of the time, I'm pursuing God half-heartedly.  The story of the young man who wanted wisdom convicted me.  And it also reminded me of something.

When I was little, I was diagnosed with asthma and allergies.  I was taking medication early on and learned to use an emergency inhaler.  If I had too much physical exertion or even got into a fit of laughter, my lungs would constrict and I would have difficulty breathing.  Almost every time I had a cold, it would turn into an asthma attack.  But the worst time was when we would visit my grandparents in West Virginia.  There was something in the air, either inside or out, that got to me every time.  Within hours of our arrival, I usually started sneezing and developed a runny nose.  Within the next day or two it would turn into a full-blown asthma attack.  There was hardly a visit to West Virginia during my childhood that didn't end up with at least a day and night spent in the easy chair in the livingroom, struggling to breathe and passing the miserable hours until I could use my inhaler again and get a brief respite.  My mom would sit up with me some of the time and rub my back and try to encourage me to relax, to sit up straighter and take deeper breaths.  I would be hunched over trying to breathe in shallow gasps.  But there was really nothing else anyone could do for me, and I remember passing many night hours alone, watching the clock, because I knew when I could have my inhaler again, and I would just try to survive till the next relief.  Thankfully my condition was not as serious as some.  I only went to the emergency room once in my life to get more serious intervention.  But in my memory as a child, those attacks were torture, and I sometimes wondered if I would make it through the night.  There was nothing to do but keep breathing, as painful as that was.  Even so, my Father was always there, and He used those dark nights in a special way.  I remember when I was about 11 or 12, spending much of the time singing in my head all of the comforting songs I could think of.  And sometimes I would read the Bible.  I'm sure I talked to God a lot, because there wasn't much else I could focus on besides breathing and the knowledge that He was there, holding me all through the night.

God has been so merciful to strengthen my body and lungs as I grew into my teens and heal me of the asthma!  It's been so long that I almost forget I dealt with it.  But as I listened to that sermon, God took me back, and it was almost like I was there again, ten years old, sitting in that old stuffed rocking chair in the darkness, wrapped in a blanket, concentrating all my energy into that next breath.  I could almost feel the terrible constriction in my lungs, the heaving of my aching chest, and the desperate pulling of oxygen through an airway that was nearly closed.  And I realized I knew how that young man felt.  What a picture!  I've been there!  I know how much you want air when you can't get enough.  And I know that is how much I have to want God, if I would be wholly committed and fully satisfied in Him.  I wish it were as easy as the memory.  But it's not.  It's a daily choice.  It's putting aside other things that are important to me to give God the highest place in my heart and the best of my time.  It's investing more of my treasure in Him instead of using it for myself.  It's purposefully, persistently falling on my face before God day after day, pleading for the outpouring of His glory in my life, until He becomes the greatest passion of my soul.  And I'm not there yet.  But it's where I want to go.  I thank Him for the grace to even desire to go there.  I pray for desperation, to want Him that badly.  And I hope, because I know He wants to take me there even more than I want to go. 

What about you?  What is it you want?

My Amazing God - His Ranch Memoirs

Hi Friends! Now that winter is here and the ranch is closed, I am making an effort to return to blog-land. I discovered this post that I started writing back in November, just after the ranch season ended. So I'm going to do my best to go back to that day and finish what I started. Here it is!
Today has been an amazing day of remembrance as I look back over the summer, now that the ranch is closed for the winter, and I see the hand of God moving mightily in this place. It seems almost impossible to express the wonders of God to which my eyes have been opened! But I will do my humble best. I can tell you that I have grown more in the last six months than I did in the last four years. Father has overwhelmed me today with a greater sense of His love, goodness, and purpose for our lives as I remember what He has done and realize how He has changed me.

When I moved out to His Ranch in May, I believed that God had opened the door for me to follow a long-time desire He had laid on my heart and I was excited at the possibilities. It was a big step of faith for me that has led to other faith choices during the summer. I was thrilled to become part of the ranch team and to find a sense of purpose that had been lacking in my life for a few years. But I also dragged with me a lot of insecurities about who I was and building new relationships. I had some deeply buried addiction to sinful thought patterns and chronic comparison. These were things I'd been fighting for what seemed like an eternity. Little did I know that God was ready to give them the boot!

He blessed me with a deeper fellowship and accountability in the body of Christ. I've always tended to be somewhat of a loner as an individual and as a Christian. But in my time here I've learned that God has put us in this body to encourage and strengthen each other to follow harder after Christ. We do need each other as believers...we need the prayers, the love, the sharing of provision, the spiritual openness, the differing perspectives, the challenging to move out of comfort zones, the inspiration to be more like Christ. I was able to be involved in a couple different Bible study groups over the summer, which really helped me to become more passionate about living the Word. Each one pinpointed a particular stronghold in my life and as I finally responded actively to the Truth, God brought real freedom in these areas. One study was Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby. such a good study that's been around for quite a few years; if you've never been through I highly recommend it. The point God really brought out to me in this study was to accept and embrace the person God made me to be. I'd known for years that I had problems accepting myself and constantly comparing myself to others. I've spent most of my life wanting to be someone else. I knew the truth about this in my head, but for the first time, I realized that I wasn't really rejecting myself; I was rejecting God because He made me exactly who He wanted, and my attitude was basically telling Him that He made a mistake. It would have been better for me to be that other person who I so admired. As if He didn't know what was best for me. I knew I couldn't do this anymore. So I chose, by faith, to embrace who I am, believing that I am perfect in my Maker's eyes. Comparison has lost its power over me. Yes, it still challenges me at times, but I've never been happier to be me than I am now! God also used some of my friends on the ranch to teach me this lesson. I struggled with jealousy and comparison, just as I have in every place I've gone and made new friends. But this time I was able to break out of that and begin to truly appreciate our differences while being secure in who God says I am. Now my desire is to love people more than needing them to love me. And you know what? I've found that when I stop trying to be like someone else or to make myself more acceptable to them, and I am simply true to myself, other people enjoy me more and I have a lot more fun too!

Another very meaningful study was Believing God by Beth Moore. He's used this one to challenge me to actually take Him at His word. And He brought me to the place of stepping out in faith to move a mountain of fantasy thought patterns that have controlled me for years, and I had almost given up on ever being free from it. I can't really explain how, but He made the truth sink in, and I am free! I told that mountain to move, and I've shut the door on it, and I'm moving forward one day at a time, trusting in Jesus to keep me faithful. That old habit just isn't an option any more. It has no place in my life. I know there is so much more to this walk of faith than I have yet experienced, but praise God! I believe that I'm on the path to living it.

Another thing God's teaching me is to sometimes say no to good things in order to focus on the best things, like investing in my relationship with Him. There were times I had to forego a fun activity or a weekend trip because I knew I needed to refocus on God and also recharge physically. You can't give what you don't have. It's been an interesting balancing act between enjoying and investing in great friendships and making space to be still before God.

And then there are the horses. I've learned so much from these beautiful creatures; about myself, about God's dealings with me, about relating with other people. They are teaching me patience and perseverance. Challenging me to think outside the box, and to keep trying new things. Convicting me to not let mistakes or fear of failure keep me from moving forward. I've found a passion here, working with these horses and all the kids. I love the constant interaction with nature, the fun spirit and joy of the kids, the smells of horse and hay, the physical work, even the hot sun and the sweat and the sore muscles.

It's been a wonderful summer, forming a special bond as ranch staff, brought together from such different places, with different gifts and personalities and perspectives. Praying together, talking about spiritual truth, working together for a common purpose, eating together, traveling together, playing together, worshipping together, and just simply living together as part of the family of God, seeking to lift Him up in a dark and hurting world. I have memories I will treasure forever, and I have expectations for God to do even greater things next season! I feel so incredibly blessed to be here and to be loved by Father. I don't know what is ahead but I know He is good, and my life is in His hands. I will try to keep you more up to date on the journey in 2012!

Hicks In The City

Last weekend the ranch crew went to the big city....Chicago! After a summer in the country in tiny little Taylor, Missouri, where we we've all become cowboyfied, we made quite a contrast to downtown Chicago, walking around in the midst of its business, sophistication, and artsyness, dressed in cowboy boots and Carhart jackets. Well, some of us, anyway. The spurs were supposed to come too, but they got left at home.
We took our wonderful tour guide, Diana, with us. She used to live in Chicago and knew all the fun stuff to hit up, plus she had her trusty smart phone to get us around the city with confidence!

 
It was a blast, and the weather was beautiful. We experienced deep dish Chicago style pizza.....amazing.....I will never look at pizza the same way; I have been completely ruined for the ordinary brand. We got to participate in a random drama class historical skit by the river. I got to be the Great Chicago Fire!  We checked out Navy Pier, where we watched a sword swallower, threw a bone for a random human lizard thing in a pool, bought world famous popcorn, and saw a jazz band marching through the mall.

We ate lunch at this restaurant where the staff is purposely rude. They are actually supposed to get tipped for rudeness.

We sat on the sidewalk like bums and people watched. We had lots of coffee and ice cream. And took lots of cool pictures. And walked our feet off. And spent lots of time on the train to and from the city.  We even found some horses!  According to Ben, our equine expert, the artist knew what he was doing.





We got to stay with Ben's brother and sister-in-law and adorable little blue-eyed blond neice. All in all, the trip was a tremendous success.

Family Picture in The Bean!

Our time together as a ranch family is quickly drawing to a close. We end the season a week from Saturday with the annual fundraiser, and everyone besides me will be going home. We hope to be together again next summer, but only God knows what will be. However, we're already making a list for next year's ranch road trips! Let me just say, it has been the best summer ever! Horses, kids, the incredible opportunity to serve God in this special place, the best team of such crazy variety, put together by our amazing Creator, and the freedom to take such random mini vacations!

My Latest Adventure

Look, it's a new post from me! Sorry that I'm so bad at keeping up, ya'll. I'm so busy living life that blogging has fallen far behind. I have much I could tell, but today I'll give you the latest news: I earned my brand! You see, on His Ranch, the rule is that when you fall off a horse, you get to have the ranch brand put on your boots. It's a medal of honor. That doesn't mean we go around trying to fall off. But it is a great point of pride.So last weekend I was gonna take it easy and have some alone time to recharge while the rest of the ranch staff spent some time in Illinois. Saturday afternoon, I decided to go for a horseback ride. I chose a certain horse because I haven't ridden him a lot lately and now that I am pretty confident running on horseback, I wanted to run with this particular guy because he's one of the fastest we have. I thought I'd go somewhere with some good flat out ground for running. So we went up along the edge of a field by the highway that runs through Taylor. I knew that all the horses, and particularly this one, have gotten quite barn sour over the summer. Horses get bored with routine and stubborn about working, just like we do. We've had to help the kids deal with that just riding in the arena during lessons. But each horse also has their own issues about leaving their home turf to go trail riding. All of them tend to do better in a group. They are herd animals and used to being together, so they don't like being taken out alone. And we usually ride in groups, though we should give them more experience going separate. We simply don't have the time and the staff to give the horses as much individual attention and diversion as they need. So the horse I rode out has a bad habit of running full speed toward home and being very hard to control when doing so. As long as you keep him at a slower pace starting out and get a good distance away from home, he will be fine and go forward at any speed you wish. So when we got to where I though we were far enough, I asked him to run. Apparently it wasn't far enough. His mind was on one track. He immediately started veering off into the field. He didn't respond to my attempts to move him back over, and soon we were turned in the opposite direction, racing full speed back towards the ranch. My efforts to stop him were futile. I wasn't that worried about running home; I was just focused on getting him to stop and turn around and go where I wanted. Though there was a ditch between there and home that I didn't want to hit at full speed. So I'm thinking about that and I'm focusing on pulling his head around for an emergency stop. A horse's drive, their "engine", is in their hindquarters. Pulling their head around sharply to one side forces them to disengage their hindquarters and stop. I was a little nervous about pulling him around too sharply because I know he can turn and stop suddenly and I could lose my balance. So maybe I wasn't trying hard enough. But he got partway turned and was headed towards the road, a major highway! We weren't too far off from the road, and at that speed it was coming up fast, so I started to panic, still trying to turn the horse and getting no control. It was at that point where you stop thinking clearly because it's just about too late to do anything except gasp a prayer. That's what I did. Help me Jesus! I saw we were running straight for a telephone pole with two guy wires coming off it, and all I could think was we're either going to hit the pole, the wires, or the road. And then we hit the wires and I went flying. That happened so fast it was almost like nothing. One second we collided with the wire, and the next I slammed the ground with my face. For a moment everything stopped. I didn't black out, it was just like when your ipod or cd skips a beat because you hit a bump. Or like having the wind knocked out of your head. Then I realized I was still cognizant and able to move. I could hear the horse still running away and I was concerned about what would happen to him, so I tried to get up and get my bearings right away, but it was slow going. Once I realized nothing was broken or majorly damaged, my main concern was, what does my face look like? I was kind of mad and embarrassed for losing control of my horse and I didn't want anybody freaking out over me; I just wanted to get home and assess the damage. A couple people pulled over right away to help. Someone came to check me out and then gave me a ride back to the ranch. Someone else caught the horse and walked him back. I walked into Shannon and Susan's house and said, Don't freak out; I think I'm okay but I just did a faceplant off the horse. They took good care of me, helping me clean up and checking on the horse and assessing the situation. Then I went home and spent the rest of the day laying out and nursing my wounds. The side of my face was scraped up pretty good and my lip blew up really huge. My major complaint was my eye. I'm not sure if I hit it or just the bone around it, but it was scratchy and irritated and watering profusely. I scratched the cornea in this eye a couple years ago and it's been sensitive ever since and the original wound site reaggravated a few times by jabs or bumps. Turns out I have a large gash in my cornea. Everything else checks out good and it seems to be on its way to a promising recovery. I also had some soreness in my neck the first few days, which is to be expected from the way I fell. But I went to a chiropractor and he said I'm in good shape for that kind of an impact. He told me I'm tough! My body is taking this extremely well and I have so much to be grateful for! So after a few days of lying around, I'm ready to start getting back into action. I just have blurriness in my eye and have to keep nursing it for awhile. When I think about everything that could have happened, I am awed at God's protection over me. I nearly landed on my head. I could have had a concussion or broken my neck. I could have landed on the road. Or we could have gone in the road and been hit. I could have landed on my face in the field stubble and pierced my eye. I could have broken a bone. It's really a mercy those wires were there, stopping us from reaching the road. Most of the poles along that stretch don't have guy wires. With such an impact, I should have done more damage to my neck or facial bones or something more internal in my eye. I didn't even have a headach or a faceache. No symptoms of concussion. My scrapes look bad but they're only surface. I didn't knock out any teeth or bite through my tongue. So you better believe I'm thanking God and looking on the bright side! I'm not sure what all God has for me to learn from this, but there is a lot of good to be found if you're looking for it. I know it could have been worse. I know that much worse has happened to others. Beloved children of God. And He is no less good in those situations. There's no human answers why such should happen to them and not to me. There's no guarantee that it won't. There is so much of what we see as senseless tragedy and sorrow in our world. God's not playing favorites by keeping one from harm more than another. We simply cannot fathom his thoughts and His ways and His purposes. He is so huge and so much higher than us. Who can fathom the purposes of the sovereign Creator, who breathed out the stars, who spoke and everything came into being, who exists outside of time, space, and flesh? And who can fathom the love of that One who left His glory and made Himself the servant of all, and suffered more than any other man could possibly suffer, all for the sake of redeeming His fallen creatures, while we were living as His enemies? And who can fathom the glories and pleasures and ecstatic joy that awaits every redeemed child of God when we step from life here in the shadowlands into reality and discover what it feels like to be fully alive? To come home to the place King Jesus has prepared for us and the inheritance of forever glory that is ours because of Him! Try to imagine that. Dive into the wonder of it. Can you understand at least a little why Paul said that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that awaits us? Yes, the pain is real and it is huge to us in this world. Jesus never discounts that. He felt the full weight of our pain on the cross. But when we have no answers, and we can't see any good in the pain, and maybe we can't even imagine surviving to come out on the other side of it, know that the One who is the Answer is still here. You can lose everything else, but no one and nothing can ever take Him away from you. He is your life. Even if your worst fears were to come upon you, He will still be there. He is our hope and assurance for life beyond the sorrow and suffering and struggle of this world. That is reason to rejoice no matter what you are going through.

And that, my friends, is some of the thought that has come out of my accident. Deep stuff, I know. But it just goes to show that God doesn't waste anything in our lives. I believe He had a purpose for allowing this to happen, and He had a reason for protecting me the way He did. Even now, as I finish writing, you would hardly be able to tell that anything happened, because I've healed so quickly. But I pray that I won't let the experience fade into distant memory. I have often prayed to live each day with eternity in mind. When something happens that makes you aware of how easily life could change in an instant and how close we are to eternity every moment, that should be a stone of remembrance in your heart. I want to remember. I want to remember God's mercy and kindness towards me. I want to remember that each moment counts. I want to remember that God is good and worthy of my trust, no matter what. Even if this accident had turned out differently. I want to remember that when it's all been said and done, He is all I have, and He is all I need.