Trust and Surrender

 
I am sure most people would think we are crazy by what I did on New Year's Day, but my heart and soul have always been personally nourished by helping others in some capacity. The more broken and wounded, the more I am filled up by absorbing any of that pain and helping to breathe some type of joy into that other soul. I have mentored others my entire life. With that comes pain, so much pain. Taking on the other person's pain, processing their life stories, accepting when they no longer need you and feeling abandoned. Being afraid to help someone else or step in their pain because of what it does to you.....all of those things have made it hard to continue to willingly step into other's pain; and yet, taking a step away from the pain has proven to be just as hard for me. 

Even as a young girl, my father would call me "Dear Abby". For those too young to remember, Abby was a journalist who people would write to and she would answer their questions in the newspaper. My grandmother called me a "bum magnet", which sounds harsh, I know, but she was as well, so I took it as a compliment! We both attracted the hurting and the broken, and weren't afraid to bring them to the family table, LITERALLY. One year I brought a messed up young girl to Thanksgiving and man did she stand out like a sore thumb!  But recently one of my aunts brought that memory up and shared that it is still something God uses to remind her to love the unlovely.  

Anyway, back to the CRAZY part. On New Year's Day this year, my daughter Abby and I went to check out a horse auction with the intention of learning more about how we can get involved in the horse world. We recently bought a horse farm and want to use it to rescue horses and find them good homes. After hours at the auction, watching amazing horses sell for thousands of dollars and then watching others go for pennies on the dollar, we started to see the trends. At the very end of the night, a beautiful Appaloosa gelding came out, under saddle with a rider, and he was beautiful.  That rider rode him like a crazy cowboy, and we could tell he was skinny, but he was managed well under saddle. The auctioneer said he was about 7-10 years old, great under saddle, blah blah blah.  Bidding started at $2000 and ended up at $500!  I don't know what possessed me, but I bid on him. And I won. Then I looked at Abby and said, what the heck did I just do?  She shook her head at me and said, "Well, I think you just got your project Momma!"  Indeed! 

We pulled the trailer around and went to get our new boy. We walked to the pen, and he was no longer under saddle, and I lost my breath. He was skin and bones. He was so weak, and so scared, and so hungry. His eyes were bloodshot and looked like they were popping out of his head. I looked at Abby again and we were both speechless.  It took three REAL cowboys to get him in the trailer because he was SO afraid. A three-hour trip home and we reached our house around midnight. As soon as we opened the door to the trailer, we realized he was also VERY sick. Well, we definitely got our project. 

The world we live in is an excruciating place. So many of us suffer from wounds so deep they cannot be spoken. Abuse, sickness, death, hunger, the list is exhausting and never-ending. That horse's eyes tell his story. I am hurt, I am scared, I am broken, I am hungry, I am thirsty, I do not trust you, I do not want to love you, I do not want to be fixed. I am dead inside, please go away. Does this touch that deep part of you that you don't want to see or feel? How can we feel joy ever again when we are so broken and destroyed? 

Psalm 51: 12 says, "Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me." I read that verse this morning, many times, and I couldn't help but think of our new
boy and how he represents so many of us who are hurting over so many things. David isn't just asking for God to help him. This is how I read that verse, "Please Lord, I want the joy that only you can offer, and I also need you to make me willing to accept it and to accept those moments when I don't feel joy." 

Our new rescue reminds me of myself in so many ways. In the first 24 hours, he literally dared us to try to help him. Even if we gave him food, he grabbed it away and stared at us as if he were saying, "I will not thank you for helping me and I will never trust you." Today when I went out to him, he whinnied when I walked in, and then he would not leave me alone while I tried to clean his stall. I thought the food would distract him since he was so hungry, but nope.....he wanted me to rub his head and talk to him. He wanted to play with my zipper and feed him carrots. It only took a couple days of constant reassurance for him to make a SMALL effort to connect with me. His eyes are not as crazy as they were before, and he isn't as jumpy. Do not get me wrong, I would not try to ride him or even walk behind him yet!  But that dead look in his eyes isn't as prominent. He is allowing the nourishment to calm his grumbling belly, accepting the medication to help cure his pneumonia, and allowing my hands on his face to calm him.  

What a picture I have in my head at this moment of how broken I am, and how allowing my faith and my relationship with Jesus to heal me is exactly the parallel of our rescued horse and us. How patient God needs to be with me on a minute-by-minute basis as I struggle to trust his plans, not just for me and my husband, but for my children and grandchildren. I hold my hands so tight in a fist that doesn't represent surrender of any kind but shows my inability to trust God to do what is right for me. Maybe our boy, now named Apollo, is not just here for me to love and save, but to remind me of how much my God loves me and wants me to have joy.  

Surrender..........release your grip, Heidi. Let me take the REINS, and let me show you my power." -God

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