Hope Rising (23 page)

By the time the parade began to turn into the center of town, the crowd had grown to thousands. People stood ten or more deep on both sides of us. Floats and horses meandered down the main street, a multicolored, glistening river between banks of cheering children, men, and women.

In the midst of all the noise of the celebration I thought I heard a single small voice.
Yes! There it was again
. Barely audible but definite.

“Merry Christmas,” Jennifer breathed to the crowd. And then louder. “Merry Christmas!”

I looked up to see my “gift of love” waving broadly. She met my glance with a huge smile. It was the first time I had ever seen her teeth! Her smile was like a shaft of sunlight, melting the icy chill that had gripped me since I first looked into her tormented eyes. A laser beam to my heart would have had less impact! The tiny spark that had
survived deep inside Jennifer suddenly burst into healing flames. Repressed hope surged to the surface of her soul. Pure joy came pouring out like a white hot fire.

The happy commotion around us seemed suddenly muted, a distant background din underneath Jennifer’s triumphant shouts to the onlookers. It became one of those golden days in my life.

Jennifer had chosen to break through the ice of adversity. I instated her as a junior leader in the daily operations of our ranch, and she continued to grow in every way. Like many girls her age she battled against her sense of insecurity, low self-esteem, and shyness. But she worked hard to conquer those strongholds in her life.

Day by day, step by step, Jennifer grew stronger until finally a newfound sense of confidence emerged the victor. She began to lead the way by hugging others first. Over the following summer she tended to the needs of younger children by making them feel loved and accepted. She even helped teach a junior leader class. I quietly watched as she moved from project to project to help make our ranch a better place. By choosing to allow her anguish to make her stronger, Jennifer soared above what used to be a painful horizon. Now, within a heart full of hope, her evening star had risen.

On a hot September day in her quiet way, Jennifer said, “I think it’s time.” We had talked often about her dream of having a horse of her own. Now I produced a pen and a pad of paper, and we sat down on the tack room porch to compile a list of what she would need and what it would cost.

By the time we had written down every item, the total came to more than two thousand dollars—without the
horse! For Jennifer and her single mother, trying to come up with that kind of money would be like walking on water. Believing it could be possible was a Herculean step of faith.

She needed a miracle.

I told Jennifer to pray about it. “If it’s meant to be,” I said, “it will happen in God’s timing.”

Jennifer began calling me every night to give an account of the day’s miraculous happenings. A family friend had an old English saddle that they were willing to part with. Another friend donated a headstall, reins, and several bits, and then one of her relatives found an old box of grooming equipment in their garage. In only one week, Jennifer had accumulated every item on the list!

All that was left to complete her dream was a horse. Just for fun I asked her, “If money had nothing to do with it, what kind of a horse would you choose?”

She stammered for a moment. It seemed difficult for her to open the door of her imagination and allow her dreams to fly free. She would have been happy with anything that had four legs and a beating heart. But she slowly rose to the challenge and began to envision her dream horse. “If I could choose anything—” her eyes rolled skyward—“I would choose a horse like yours. Like Ele. Someday I’d like to learn dressage and maybe even show in English or hunt seat.” Absently, deep in thought, she rested her chin in one cupped hand. “I think I would really like a thoroughbred—maybe a gelding … no, a mare. Definitely a mare. It would be great if she were tall … maybe sixteen hands.”

“As long as we’re dreaming,” I said with a grin, “let’s dream in color.”

“Hmm … black, or maybe bay. I’ve always liked bays,”
she added, with a distant, upward gaze. She was caught in the act of daring to imagine the perfect horse for her. After a long moment, she returned to reality and looked at me with a smile. Her dream was coming to life through words. I hoped she felt as good about it as I did.

Our equine rescue operation is well known now in our area, and the ranch receives frequent calls from people wanting to donate horses to our program or to adoptive families. Nearly all of these horses have special needs. They are either very young or too old to have much “useful” life left. Often they are physically broken down or have dangerous behavioral problems. Few people donate sound horses because sound horses can be sold.

I received one of these calls five days after Jennifer’s “perfect horse daydream.” The woman’s voice told me how her daughter had shown this mare for several years, but had now moved on to a horse that could compete at a higher level. We had a pleasant chat while I dug out my adoption-placement notebook to take down her name and number.

Then I began my usual list of questions. “What type of showing did your daughter do?”

“Mostly hunt seat,” the woman replied. “The horse is a class A-B show horse. She has no bad habits and is completely sound.”

I sat up straight, hope rising in my heart. “What else can you tell me about her?”

“She’s twelve years old and easily sixteen hands.”

Excitement nearly overtook my ability to write! Mentally I was going down Jennifer’s dream list: Show horse—check. Thoroughbred—check. Mare—check.
Sixteen hands—check.… I had to ask. “I know this is a ridiculous question, but could you tell me what color she is?” I could feel my nose wrinkle as I closed my eyes tightly.

“Why, she’s a black bay,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Yes!”
I all but shouted as I shot up, knocking my chair over backward. I picked it up, laughing, and said breathlessly, “How does it feel to be a child’s answer to prayer?”

A star rising through darkness. A spark igniting into flame. A broken heart gaining strength. A distant wish finding wings. A dream coming true. These had become Jennifer’s stepping stones of gold in her miraculous journey across her sea of despair.

Her sapphire eyes, with the white crackles that had once reminded me of broken glass, now sparkled like brilliant star bursts. Looking at Jennifer’s shining joy as she pressed her soft pale cheek gently against her mare’s soft dark cheek, a friend asked, “What’s your new horse’s name?”

With an enormous flashing smile, in appreciation of the One who answered her prayers, she simply said, “Her name is … Miracle.”

Force of One
 

M
Y LIFE IS SO
completely blessed by a myriad of special friends. Each one is unique and separate, embodying an individual beauty. Like embracing a magnificent bouquet of flowers, each single masterpiece carries with it a fragrance that is unequaled.

Such is Katie, a rare blossom who constantly exemplifies how beautiful a heart can be when it is deeply rooted in the rich soil of selflessness. Katie has taught me on several occasions the beauty of simply giving from where your roots have spread. To her, generosity is one of the most natural things a heart can know.

While I struggle with the foreign entanglements of fundraising and what might work and what hasn’t, she simply does it. With the apparent ease of breathing, Katie intrinsically knows how to gather finances for the things that she believes in. She doesn’t sweat or struggle, beat a drum or ring a bell. Endowed with a quiet confidence, she has learned how to clear a space beneath her flourishing leaves and encourage good will to grow up beside her.

Katie has allowed the normal events of her life to channel help where help is needed. She does innocuous things such as having a concession stand at her own birthday celebration. Katie informed her guests that all of the
proceeds would be donated to the charity of her choice.

Without telling anyone she consolidated all her monetary Christmas gifts. Instead of spending the money on herself, she quietly mailed her gifts off to our ranch to help support horses she barely knows.

To say that Katie’s acts of kindness have humbled me down to the very core of my soul would reveal only a fraction of how much she has actually moved me. I have learned so much from her already. She is definitely an example of what one committed heart can do. Katie constantly reminds me that she is, as anyone
can
be, truly a force of one.

And all this from someone who has experienced the ranch only once, lives hundreds of miles away … and is only eleven years old.

Dumb Farm Animals?
 

U
NDER THE
bright yellow glare of a naked lightbulb, the chestnut gelding stood trembling and groaning in pain. He was crashing fast from a severe case of colic.

Colic, a condition that all horse owners fear, is caused by impaction or blockage in the bowel. The ailment has many origins—a sudden change of diet or weather, stress, too much rich grass, moldy or tainted feed, a foreign object … the list goes on and on. Even though horses are known for their strength and stamina, their digestive systems are remarkably fragile. Horses cannot vomit, so whatever they eat must pass through the entire length of their digestive tract—about a hundred feet of intestines with many tight twists and turns.

Some colics are so mild that they can be remedied simply by keeping the horse walking. Others can be so severe that death comes almost immediately, or the horse writhes in agony—sometimes for days—until its bowels finally rupture, and it collapses in death.

Like cancer in humans, colic in horses is not always fatal, but it is always feared. Surgical options for severely colicky horses are not only excruciatingly painful, but also prohibitively expensive with an often poor prognosis. Of the available options, we had decided to treat our stricken horse Quincy by literally flooding him with intravenous fluids in the hope that the blockage would be saturated into a form that the horse could pass from his system.

Troy, Sarah, and I hastily converted a stall into a makeshift hospital room, loosely tying Quincy in the corner. Above his head we hammered up temporary hooks to hold the bags of intravenous fluids he needed. Catheterization tubes jutted out of veins on each side of his neck. The leads were fully open, allowing a virtual river of fluids to flow uninterrupted into each thumb-sized vein.

An aching cold fog had settled around us, forming a pristine inch-thick layer of intricate lacy ice crystals on every surface. It’s easy to appreciate this white wonder—some of nature’s finest artwork—from the warmth of the house. It’s quite another thing to experience firsthand how needle-sharp the brutal teeth of winter can be.

The penetrating cold was beginning to freeze the IV fluid within the coils of tubing before it could reach our ailing horse. We set up a kerosene heater to keep the fluid flowing and to warm our sick friend.

The five-liter IV bags were emptying into Quincy’s veins at the rate of a bag every fifteen to twenty minutes. We could only watch helplessly as he shuddered and groaned with each painful contraction of his gut.

With cold fluid flowing into his body at an exponential rate, Quincy soon began to shiver violently. In our
desperate effort to maintain his body heat, we wrapped the suffering gelding in three full-size body blankets and then topped those with a heavy-duty sleeping bag. Then we hustled up the hill to our house with twenty bags or more of the IV fluids—about twenty-five gallons—and put them into the hot tub to warm up.

Once that was done, there was little else to do but wait. Minutes ticked by into the early hours of the morning. And then we began to witness something completely unexpected.

The door from Quincy’s “hospital” stall led into the main corral where most of our riding herd lives. We watched in amazement as, one by one, at twenty-minute intervals, almost every horse in the corral came to visit Quincy.

Our massive draft horse, Luke, Quincy’s main playmate, was the first to offer his sympathy and support. Extending his magnificent neck as far as he could, he reached deeply into his ailing buddy’s stall, gently massaging Quincy’s rump and tail with his lips. At times when Quincy groaned in pain, Luke nickered in a voice so low that it could scarcely be heard.